Comments by "" (@TheHuxleyAgnostic) on "Andrew Yang Gets Ripped Apart Over Sociopathic Tweet" video.

  1.  @Xpistos510  The guy was also totally clueless as to how a major tax policy he wanted to implement on the country actually works. A VAT is specifically designed to NOT tax businesses in order to avoid double taxation, yet he kept claiming it was a way to tax major corporations. He even linked to a pass through rate study, that he totally failed to understand, which showed a near 100% pass through rate, debunking his own claims.
    7
  2. How a UBI is paid for matters. In a future end game, where everything is automated, it would need to be paid for by the corporations. Yang's VAT/UBI combo wouldn't have corporations paying into his UBI, at all, since a VAT is specifically designed to NOT tax businesses in order to avoid double taxation.
    4
  3.  @Xpistos510  If your "plan" doesn't actually have the giant corporations paying into the dividend, then they only get the benefits of extra trillions being spent, funneling money to the very top faster than ever before. That seems pretty neoliberal.
    4
  4. And?
    3
  5.  @Xpistos510  The basic VAT formula for a business is ... x = input VAT (collected on sales) y = output VAT (paid on expenses) x - y = z If z > 0, the business repays itself for y from the x it collected, and sends z to the government. It has paid 0 in the end. If z < 0, the business keeps all of x it collected, and gets a refund for z from the government. It has paid 0 in the end. It is only the final consumer that doesn't get paid back, so ends up paying the entire VAT. Paying the businesses back is based on the basic principle that, if you leave it as a cost, they'll include it in their price anyway, and then the next stage would end up paying taxes on taxes. You find that in some places where businesses don't get a sales tax exemption. They'll pay sales tax on an expense, add that sales tax they paid into their own sale price, and then a portion of the sales tax on their sale is a tax upon a tax. After multiple stages, you get cascading taxes upon taxes upon taxes... So, even if Yang didn't use the VAT formula, and did use a sales tax, attempting to tax businesses, it would actually end up being even worse. Consumption taxes aren't the way to go, to attempt to tax businesses. So, then you get Yang cultists, like SR, arguing price elasticity, or whatnot, claiming that, even though the VAT might not directly tax businesses, businesses will adjust their pre tax prices down, effectively eating some of the tax, paying some indirectly. But, Yang's own linked to pass through rate study totally debunks that argument. If you actually read it, it shows an almost 100% pass through on standard rated (20% VAT) goods and services. It was only by including lesser rated (8% VAT), and zero rated (0% VAT), goods and services, that the overall pass through rate dropped to around 50%. Yang mistakenly took that to mean that businesses were paying half the tax, when it actually means that there was less tax, or no tax, on most of the sales (the zero rated category is for staples, the necessities that people buy most), and that consumers were paying the entire tax, on what was taxed. The lesser rated category even showed that not only did businesses mark up their price to include the entire 8% VAT, but they marked it up even a bit more, for a little added profit.
    2
  6. There were years of terrorist organizations, before declaring themselves a country. Begin was a leader of one of those terrorist groups. Early Zionosts openly admitted to being colonizers, and knew exactly how the native population would react. It's just like taking over N America. Do something to piss off the natives, the natives retaliate with violence, then you act like the poor victim, send in the military, and expand your borders or ethnically cleans them them from within your borders.
    1