Your Opinion: Fair Tax called 'dumb, dangerous'

Dear Editor:

Reading Gilbert Schanzmeyer's letter transported me to some sort of wonderland where words mean the opposite of their real meaning.

The Fair Tax is the most unfair tax that could be conceived. The lower a person's income, the higher percent he would pay in taxes. Wealthy people spend less on necessities than poor people so would pay a lower rate. The regressive, not progressive, rate of sales tax is a well established economic rule.

Sales taxes would be expanded to every financial transaction. Would you like to pay taxes on medical services? Are you willing to pay a sales tax on the labor to repair your car? The wild claims of prosperity are ridiculous.

To increase sales taxes enough to produce a huge increase in tax receipts would require an increase of 10-20 percent. Such an increase in prices would lower demand. People would not buy more if prices go up any more than they buy more fuel when the price of gas increases. Fuel would need a sales tax too.

His current assessment of the national economy is also 180 degrees off. Unemployment is decreasing, jobs are being created and housing and auto sales are increasing. The only segment of the economy that is decreasing is employment by government.

That will change as the economy improves and tax collections increase as it has started to do. It takes awhile for the current administration to correct the blunders of the Bush administration. I see improvement every day in my work in the retail sector.

The so-called Fair Taxers point to some vague unfairness in the current system. I suspect the unfairness they see is the fact that they have to pay something resembling their fair share of taxes.

I have noticed that no specific examples of unfairness are ever stated. There are probably some unfair taxes, but spreading the unfairness to most of the population is no solution. My suggestion for them would be to name and correct the inequities.

A huge increase in sales taxes has never been tried and is a tremendous risk to our economy as well as being unfair to lower income people. I hope this dumb and dangerous idea never sees the light of day.