Mike Huckabee: Poor Americans will be better off if we treat them like we ‘train dogs’

[Katashi_itto]

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee argued on Thursday that the “common sense” way to improve the economy was to treat taxpayers the with same techniques used to “train dogs.”

Speaking at the Republican presidential debate on the Fox Business channel, Huckabee argued that Americans were having trouble getting ahead because “the tax system punishes them.”

“If you work really hard and you start moving up the economic ladder, you get bumped into a different tax bracket so the government thinks it deserves more of your hard work than you do,” he explained. “It’s time for something big.”

According to the former Arkansas governor, Americans would be better off with a national flat sales tax of 10 percent, which he refers to as the “Fair Tax” plan.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/mike-huckabee-poor-americans-will-be-better-off-if-we-treat-them-like-we-train-dogs/

[hobbit709]

1. The wannabe Nehemia Scudder flaps jaws again.

Is he going to treat us like his son did that dog?

[tkmorris]

9. +1 for the Nehemiah Scudder reference

It is apt I think, that is EXACTLY who he'd like to be.

[KamaAina]

16. I just Googled that

Turns out there is some Heinlein I haven't read!

[DetlefK]

2. It's interesting that the Republicans never give a full run-down of their tax-policy.

"Why can't we just reduce this tax to that value?"

- Well, by how many billions of dollars would the tax-revenue decline under your proposal?
- By how many billions of dollars would you reduce government-spending? What program would you cut by how much and what would the economic consequences be for the agencies/institutions/corporations/people who rely on that government spending?
- Weighing the billions in reduced revenue and the billions in reduced spending, by how many percent would the national economy have to grow to still yield enough tax-revenue under your tax-policy?

[Vinca]

3. Of all the Bible thumpers I find disgusting, Huckabee is always fighting for the top spot.

[stillwaiting]

4. He's such an asshole. He likes a system where poor people pay a higher % of their income in taxes

than the rich. And, the poor need that money so much more than the rich.

He's a disgrace.

[KentuckyWoman]

5. I'd agree to a flat sales tax only if

it applied to the sale of investments (stock trades, bonds etc) along with everything else except for any product covered by food stamp cards, rent for a primary residence, and owner occupied home sales with a sale price under 125% of the median in the zip code.

Of course it will never happen because the rich will not agree to pay 10% in sales taxes every time they flip stocks. The biggest traders will buy and sell the same stocks several times a day gaming the system. So a 10% tax on every sale would kill the predatory game.

[Odin2005]

6. There are so manty racist undertones to this...

[gratuitous]

7. Those darned poors, and the way they complicated the tax system!

Why, I hear some of them even scam some programs for an extra $10 in SNAP benefits some months! It's a disgrace! Let's get a national program going of National Scolds who will roam the countryside, whopping people on the nose with rolled up newspapers. It's the Huckabee Way.

Oh, and we need to pass laws granting more subsidies and tax breaks to Big Oil and military contractors.

[katmondoo]

8. Thanks Mike

[Sunlei]

10. We already pay about 10% sales tax, except the 'republican charities' who do NOT pay sales tax.

Republican 'charities' like the one who paid millions to sent all the RW congress on vacation to Israel and brought back Netanyahu to embarrass America.

[Octafish]

11. Dogs.

Dog House, the Huckabee beachfront home in Florida.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026206198

NAZIs labeled human beings "Vermin" in order to dehumanize segments of the population before their extermination as "Untermenschen."

[CTyankee]

12. did the man never study econ 101...or otherwise read enough to know that a sales tax

is as shitty a regressive tax as you can get? Is he THAT uninformed or is he just omitting knowing about it? Either way, the man should just go away...

[hunter]

13. Huckabee must not remember what happened to the upper classes in France...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine

[Javaman]

14. i don't think mike fuckabee has been house trained himself.

what a colossally heartless mother fucker.

[KamaAina]

15. So now his son's gonna go around killing poor people?

[FSogol]

17. Someone smack Huckabee on the snout with a rolled up newspaper for me.

TIA.

It is funny that he has to go out of his way to prove he's just as big of an ass as Trump, Christie, and Cruz.

[Initech]

18. And this kind of Ayn Randian compassion is why the Huckster is polling dead last.

[HughBeaumont]

19. Geeez, Suckabee, fuck off with this FairTax CRAP.

"It's time for something big. Let's fuck everyone but the wealthy worse than they're being fucked now."

23%?! More like 30%!

The 23% sales tax would not operate like traditional sales taxes, in which only the register price is taxed. Instead, the percentage would operate like the current income tax does; the 23% means 23% of the register price and tax. So, while a $100 purchase would cost the consumer $123 under a "traditional" 23% sales tax, it would cost about $130 under the FairTax (23% of $130 is $30). Thus, the "23% sales tax" is actually closer to what popular understanding would consider a 30% sales tax.

That's not really an argument against the tax per se, but saying 23% when most people would say 30% raises "They're being weaselly just to get this passed" questions.

Letting the rich off the hook?

The FairTax is in part based on the idea that the rich buy the most stuff, so they would pay more taxes. But critics argue that the tax is regressive on income (while it is not mathematically regressive against its base, i.e. sales, this is nonetheless a valid statement in terms of the common understanding of the term regressive, i.e. harsher on those with low incomes), so that the rich effectively get a sizable tax break while taxes actually increase for the middle class.

One way to think of this is to ask what percentage of income people use to purchase goods. Poor and middle class individuals use almost all of their income, but richer people (though purchasing more) use a far smaller percentage of their income. With the current tax system a person's whole income is taxed but with the FairTax rich people essentially get the majority of their income tax-free, while poor and middle class individuals receive no break.

Even worse off are the people who saved up post-tax dollars through their career and intended to use those savings to retire and live off the declining balance of their savings would be completely hosed, as the purchasing power of a saved dollar saved would immediately fall by 30%. Enjoy that, seniors!