Paul M. Jones

That is, a value-added tax. This is a tax applied to every transfer of goods and services between businesses, and between businesses and consumers.

Charles Krauthammer predicted it on Fri 26 Mar:

As the night follows the day, VAT follows health-care reform.

With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.

We are now $8 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that $12 trillion will be added over the next decade. Obamacare, when stripped of its budgetary gimmicks — the unfunded $200 billion-plus “doctor fix,” the double counting of Medicare cuts, the 10-6 sleight-of-hand (counting 10 years of revenue and only six years of outflows) — is at minimum a $2 trillion new entitlement.

Paul Volcker, former Fed chief and now advisor to President Obama, helps show Krauthammer’s prediction is accurate:

The United States should consider raising taxes to help bring deficits under control and may need to consider a European-style value-added tax, White House adviser Paul Volcker said on Tuesday.

…

… he said getting entitlement costs and the U.S. budget deficit under control may require such moves. “If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes,” he said.

James Pethokoukis agrees on its inevitability:

Now that America has gone French (and German and British) with universal healthcare, expect Washington to eventually propose a European-style, value-added consumption tax to pay for it -- as well as the rest of the historic rise in federal spending.

…

For Washington insiders, it’s a matter of “when” not “if.” Politicians and economists I chat with from the White House to Capitol Hill to the Federal Reserve think a VAT inevitable. Healthcare reform has only hardened that consensus. Spending cuts to pay for expanded coverage may not happen. Either way, the budget numbers scream for action. Annual federal spending as a share of GDP will likely outpace revenue by at least six percentage points for years to come. Trillion-dollar deficits the norm.
…

VAT proponents assume political intransigence without a financial crisis to spur action, just as market chaos helped get the $700 billion bank rescue passed in 2008.

Now that we have the so-called health care reform, deficits are going to expand enormously, and will stay permanently higher.

When the next financial crisis hits, whether related to the so-called health care reform or related to the uncorrected fundamentals that caused the current recession, the VAT will be posed as the fiscally responsible thing to do so “we” can pay for “our” spending. It will be in addition to the income tax, not in place of the income tax. The VAT code will subject to gaming by politicians on behalf of their preferred corporations and industries, made possible in part by the opaqueness of the VAT to voters.

Over the last year or so, I have attempted to show that for free traders to win the “great trade debate,” they must rethink their current, data-driven approach. This means that before getting into all of the fancy charts and historical lessons, free traders first must demonstrate that trade is foremost a moral issue, and that free traders, not protectionists, are on the “right side.” This is done simply by showing how anti-traders seek to forcibly thwart voluntary, mutually-beneficial cross-border transactions in order to transfer wealth from politically-underrepresented groups (i.e., individual consumers, service-providers, and downstream manufacturers) to other, politically-favored classes (typically heavy manufacturers or agribusiness). It is reinforced by showing how protectionism is an invisible and regressive tax that disproportionately punishes low-income American families by forcing them to expend more of their paychecks to buy protected (and more expensive) food, clothing and shelter. In short, protectionism is classic beltway politics, where special tax breaks, sweetheart deals and secretive earmarks rule the day.

via Scott Lincicome: Scoring the Great Trade Debate.

But now, for the first time in our history, we are becoming just another European nation, with bigger government, higher taxes, more regulation of almost everything, and the basic public-policy preference that the government, not we the people, should be in charge of the nation's choices.

So America has indeed changed, perhaps forever, as the White House and brazen congressional leadership nationalized 17% of our economy, replacing individual choices with governmental regulation. The sunset of the American belief in economic growth and individual choice and responsibility is now with us. If we do not change our course, that will be a shame.

via Welcome to Europe - WSJ.com.

Government already plays such a large role in health care that it may be hard to understand what "separation of health and state" means. Let me be clear: In my ideal world, we wouldn't just abolish Obamacare. We'd abolish Medicare, Medicaid, regulation of health insurance, medical licensing, and the Food and Drug Administration... for starters. Unlike many opponents of the latest legislation, I'm not saying, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare."

Needless to say, my position is unpopular.

via My Opening Statement, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.

As the joint complaint of the 13 Attorneys General has argued, Obamacare constitutes an immense assault on federalism. If Obamacare is upheld, the states may be well on the way to becoming like the Roman Senate in 100 A.D.: formerly the an essential component of republican sovereignty, but now a hollowed remnant, possessing the forms of the old republic but really functioning as a mere puppet of the Leviathan.

via The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Destroying the Constitution’s Structure is not Constitutional.

The Progressives had their way for much of the 20th century. But it became apparent that centralized experts weren't disinterested, but always sought to expand their power. And it became clear that central planners can never have the kind of information that is transmitted instantly, as Friedrich von Hayek observed, by price signals in free markets.

It turned out that centralized experts are not as wise and ordinary Americans are not as helpless as the Progressives thought. By passing the stimulus package and the health care bills the Democrats produced expansion of government. But voters seem to prefer expansion of liberty.

via Tea partiers embrace liberty not big government | Washington Examiner.

For much the same reason that Starbucks specializes in retailing coffee, government specializes in enforcing law. And just as Starbucks responds to prevailing consumer demands--just as Starbucks is not in business to tell consumers what they want and don’t want, but instead is in business to serve consumers according to their specific tastes for coffee and pastries--a genuinely classical-liberal government is not in business to foist its demands and dictates on citizens, but instead to serve citizens by enforcing laws that exist independently of government.

via On the Rule of Law | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty.

People, as in the People, have every right to be angry, furious, shocked, appalled and disgusted by what Congress and our ambitious young prince have done. And bringing the FBI into it? Oh, the FBI is watching! Everybody be careful that they not get too angry! Or else who knows who might come knocking at 3 in the morning! It sure looks like a disgraceful attempt to intimidate those of us who don't like what the Dems have wrought, who hate it in fact, into silence. Ironic, of course. Somebody yelled at me! Me! Call the FBI!

via The Right Coast: Good for Professor Althouse Tom Smith.

Health insurers -- once private companies -- are now organs of the federal government. Every citizen is a ward of the state, which can now compel you to have insurance, punish you if you don't; determine if your insurance is acceptable, punish you if it isn't. Thousands of new federal bureaucrats will soon spill from the D.C. Beltway and flood the country, scrutinizing our finances to verify compliance with this new law.

A government that grants itself this kind of power over us can conceivably do anything to us. For our own good, of course. Such a country is in no meaningful sense "free."

And this is only the beginning.

via American Thinker: Where Were You When the Republic Died?.

After having sold some (the last?) of their constituents' precious liberty, Democrat politicians are afraid of violence when they return to their home districts. Republican John Boehner says:

“I know many Americans are angry over this health care bill, and that Washington Democrats just aren’t listening,” Boehner said. “But, as I’ve said, violence and threats are unacceptable. That’s not the American way.”

Bullshit, Mr. Boehner. Tar and feathers are fully in keeping with American tradition.

via Steny Hoyer: Members are at risk - Jake Sherman - POLITICO.com.