Huckabee tax plan a step back in time

Here we go again. Another Republican who wants to turn back the clock to before the Industrial Revolution. Haven't we seen enough lunacy from the loony party? I have to laugh with the VAT tax Huckabee (oh sorry, he's calls it a "FairTax") that will somehow scrap the current tax system and replace it with a highly unfair tax on the middle class. Haven't we already debated this issue decades (centuries?) ago and concluded that this will be a big hit to those in the middle? And taxing everything that moves, including little Billy and Susie who are doing jobs for the neighborhood such as mowing lawns, shoveling snow and babysitting? How fair is that?

Even Adam Smith concluded that a progressive tax (what we have today) was a better option that would be fair to all economic groups. Haven't we already seen enough giveaways to the richest Americans in the last few years? Just how well has that worked for the rest of us? More on the Huckabee unFairTax plan after the jump...

Like any tax on consumption, the biggest burden, comparatively, would fall on the poor. To help compensate for this, the plan would provide a monthly check from the government to every American household, rich and poor alike.

The rebate amount would be set to equal what a household living at the poverty level would pay in taxes, leaving some of the poor better off and cushioning the proposal’s impact on the middle class.

But, apart from the administrative nightmares associated with giving every household a rebate, it would still not prevent transferring a substantial part of the current tax burden from those with annual incomes above $200,000, who tend to save a large part of their income rather than spending it, to those earning less.

“Even with the rebate counted the way FairTax supporters want it calculated,” said Bruce Bartlett, a conservative tax analyst and policy maker in the Reagan administration who has emerged as one of the proposal’s most powerful critics, “there would be an enormous shift in the tax burden from the wealthy to those with lower and middle incomes.”