The Fax Tax Cult

I am so weary with these FairTax people. In response to my LRC article today on the FairTax, “Dear Congressman,” I received several replies that said something like this:

“Under the FairTax I have the freedom to choose to keep all of my earnings by not purchasing anything.”

But don’t we have that freedom now? Make no income; pay no taxes. We have freedom now to not pay any taxes. The FairTax, since it is a consumption tax, is exactly what Murray Rothbard said it was, “a payment for permission-to-live.” Here is his entire quote:

“The consumption tax, on the other hand, can only be regarded as a payment for permission-to-live. It implies that a man will not be allowed to advance or even sustain his own life, unless he pays, off the top, a fee to the State for permission to do so. The consumption tax does not strike me, in its philosophical implications, as one whit more noble, or less presumptuous, than the income tax.”

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5:10 pm on June 26, 2006