For starters, the reality of the current income-based tax system is well illustrated by another essay that I have previously posted on this site.  The fact of the matter is that, under the current tax system, the richest ten percent pick up the tab for nearly sixty percent of the total tax burden in this country (that includes income, sales, gas, property, and everything else).  I'm going to guess, based on the still-unrefuted assertion that you are as yet a college undergrad (probably not yet having achieved legal drinking age), that you likely don't have the clue before the first clue on the hard effects of bad tax policy.  However, I could also be very wrong, and in any event it's rather pointless, because I'm not going to stoop to an ad hominem attack . . . as I can just shred you on reason alone.

Would you please tell me, Mister Mason (if that is indeed your name), precisely how much brand-new stuff - of any sort - the poor buy?  Seriously, those among the population who live at, or below, the poverty line, or those who live on blue-collar incomes . . . how much do they typically buy brand-new at retail?  Do you know?  I happen to be one of those people, and I can tell you quite certainly that my usual brand new purchases are gasoline and groceries, with the occasional clothing item thrown in.  Outside of that, I buy used goods (strictly second-hand stuff) as often as possible.  I can also tell you with a good deal of certainty that nearly everyone in the similar economic circumstances have nearly identical shopping habits to my own, else they'll not last long financially.

You wonder why I ask that question?  Anyone truly familiar with the FairTax Initiative (federal or state) wouldn't wonder so much.  The tax is applied only at the point of final retail sale of new goods and services.  That's right, used goods are not taxed under the FairTax!  This, of course, is something that anyone who has done the basic research on the issue would know.

So, then, who buys the brand-new big-ticket items (such as boats, cars, houses, suits) at retail?  Do the poor buy luxury yachts?  Do they buy brand-new full-size cars?  Do they buy new-construction houses?  Do they buy the fancy clothing and all of the bling that properly accessorizes it?  No, the poor and the blue-collar do not buy such things, because they cannot afford to.  But someone must, because these things do get purchased after all; so who must be buying these very expensive items at retail?

That's right!  Those filthy, greedy, rich people are buying the big-ticket brand-new things at retail!  They're spending all of that money that they've earned in the free-market capitalistic system buying high-dollar status symbols so they can show off how wealthy and important and special they are.  Why, we simply cannot have any of that!  We must devise a way to tax them for having so much money!  They must pay their fair share!

And you know what?  We've done that.  We have devised a taxation system that absolutely nails the rich to the proverbial wall.  And the real beauty of it is that we do it in a way that is so loophole-proof that all the lawyers and tax professionals that the wealthy can buy cannot get them out of it.  Even better, we don't just catch them when they buy only the big ticket stuff, we also get them when they buy basic necessities, like the gas and groceries and clothing that you and I also have to pay for.

It is the very taxation system that you (and every other self-proclaimed master economist that I've listened to) deride as being so regressive as to actually screw over the citizens at the bottom of the economic ladder.  And the problem with your derision is that you haven't bothered to do your homework and gather all of the facts.  Rather, you start from a false premise and then weave together fallacious arguments of amazing familiarity, appeal to fear, and straw man extensions so as to make the uneducated believe that you are protecting them from this monstrosity . . . when the truth is that those who espouse the positions that you just have are the ones who would shackle the poor in the chains of taxation slavery so that the political elite can live as the "greater equals" in their Orwellian fantasy of utopia.

Here's my challenge to you.  It's the same challenge that every single member of the MFTA District 3 leadership team has leveled to our opponents at some time or another.  If you can, find me one honest flaw in this system.  Seriously, find even one hole in the FairTax Initiative that I cannot refute.  On the assumption that you can do that, we'll publicly pull our support tomorrow.  (By the way, no one's successfully accomplished that in the past three years that I've been working on this initiative, and I've debated far better than you.)