THE FAIRTAX AND LITERACY
Every responsible parent wants a good education for their children because they know that means more future job opportunities. Many parents choose a place to live based on the quality of the public schools.
No one disputes the fact that literacy is vital to having citizens who can understand the complicated issues that face all of us. Yes, many now get their information from video and social media, but to really understand that information requires basic literacy.
However, our public schools are failing our children in many areas of the country and this means real problems for the future of our country.
Here are some facts about the current state of education in the United States:
- 42 million adults cannot read at all.
- 21% of US adults read below the 5th grade level.
- 19% of high school graduates cannot read.
- 85% of juveniles who interact with the juvenile court system are considered functionally illiterate.
- 70% of inmates in America’s prisons cannot read above the fourth-grade level.
- 2/3 of students that are unable to read proficiently by the end of the 4th grade will end up in jail or on welfare.
- 90% of welfare recipients are high school dropouts.
- 20 million Americans pay someone to file the 1040 EZ, a one-page tax form with about 10 blanks to complete.
- Half of all 17 year-olds do not have the math skills required to work in an auto plant, according to the President’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel.
- An average of 1 in every 5 adults are unable to calculate their weekly salary when told what their hourly rate of pay will be.
Based on these statistics, is it any wonder that more and more states are enacting legislation to provide scholarships and vouchers to families that can be used to pay some or all of the tuition charged by private schools?
The latest example is Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Program. Once signed by Governor Ducey, Arizona will provide a $7,000 annual scholarship per child to the parents of the 1.1 million K-12 students in Arizona. The scholarships can be used for expenses such as tuition and tutoring, transportation, education tools (i.e. textbooks and computers), and other costs directly related to supporting a student’s educational needs.
HOW CAN THE FAIRTAX HELP SOLVE THE NATION’S EDUCATION PROBLEM?
First, we need to enact legislation to implement a state version of the FAIRtax in each state. Currently , there are bills in Alabama, Georgia and Nebraska which will replace the present state income taxes in those states with a state FAIRtax. These state level measures all include a prebate so that no one pays taxes on their basic necessities. This ensures that low-income workers don’t pay an unfairly high portion of the overall tax burden.
Second, passing state FAIRtax bills will allow the states to reduce or even eliminate their property tax. This is important because about half of school district funding comes from property taxes. The present dependence on property taxes often results in wealthier communities having better-funded schools.
Third, a state FAIRtax can provide all of the funding a city, county or state needs. With a state FAIRtax, citizens can see the portion of the FAIRtax that will be used to fund education, scholarships that can be used at private schools, the courts, the police, the fire department and other government services. In addition, people will no longer have to pay property taxes to help fund local public schools, and then have to spend additional money to send their children to private schools.
Fourth, states that enact state FAIRtax laws will be more attractive to both individuals and businesses than their neighbors with an income tax. To an even greater degree than the states who currently have no state income tax, states that replace their income taxes with a state FAIRtax can increase the prosperity of its citizens and generate more income into state coffers. This additional income can be used to fund better government services, like the schools, or it could possibly be used to put more money in people’s pockets by reducing the tax rate.
Finally, enacting the FAIRtax at the national level will result in:
- Economic growth that’s unimaginable under the income/payroll tax.
- Significantly increased demand for labor resulting in higher wages for more workers.
- A booming economy that will result in a stronger and more stable revenue stream for the state and federal government.
- The elimination of federal payroll taxes. This will result in a 7.65% pay increase for employees and 15.3% pay increase for self-employed workers.
- Payments for private school tuition can be made with 100 cent dollars and not with the net amount after deducting income/payroll taxes because education costs are not subject to the FAIRtax.
- A reduction of between 12% and 20% in the price of items we purchase because the costs of the income/payroll tax system have been removed and competition will lower the prices.
- CITIZENS TAKING BACK CONTROL!
CONCLUSION
Nelson Mandela said, Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Many of you reading this article were able to achieve success in your life due, in large part, to your ability to read and understand what you were reading. Your level of education is directly related to your ability to understand the FAIRtax.
One of the reasons that more Americans don’t support the FAIRtax is that they simply don’t understand it. It’s not that they’re stupid, it that they just haven’t been educated on all the benefits that the FAIRtax will bring to them and to the country in general.
Unfortunately, the decreasing literacy level helps the Ruling Class and their D.C. minions justify their unstated goal—to control us under the guise of taking care of us because they think we’re incapable of understanding what’s in our own best interests. They think we need their help because we are just not as enlightened as they are.
Most of us are aware of the book, Common Sense by Thomas Paine. A blog posted on the freakonomics website pointed out:
- It is not a simple book to read and people need to be “proficient” in literacy to read and understand it.
- In 1776 it sold 500,000 copies in a population of 2.5 million.
- If the same percentage of the American population today purchased the book, it would sell 60 million copies.
- The National Assessment of Adult Literacy estimates that only 13% of Americans today are “proficient” in literacy—not the 20% of Americans who purchased the book in 1776.
The income/payroll tax system is broken and no longer working—we can’t repair it but we can replace it with the FAIRTAX!
ALL AMERICANS MUST JOIN US BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE AND THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY WE LOVE IS FURTHER HARMED.
Join us and TAKE BACK CONTROL OF OUR COUNTRY—NOT WITH BULLETS BUT WITH THE ELIMINATION OF ONE OF THE BIGGEST THREATS TO OUR LIBERTY AND ECONOMIC PROSPERITY—THE INCOME/PAYROLL TAX.
We all should remember Edmund Burke’s warning that applies to our efforts to TAKE BACK CONTROL,
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
We should also remember this quote from George Orwell's 1984, which, if we do nothing, may foretell your and your children's future:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”
WHAT CAN EACH OF US DO?
We can write letters and make calls to our elected representatives and attend Zoom town hall meetings demanding that if they really want to allow Americans to “TAKE BACK CONTROL”, the first step is to eliminate the income/payroll tax system and enact the FAIRTAX!
TAKE BACK CONTROL! Help us PASS THE FAIRTAX!
The IRS will be gone and we will pay our taxes when we make purchases.
WE and not the Ruling Class and their minions in D.C. will decide how much federal tax we pay!
WE will know how much tax we and everyone else are really paying because taxes will no longer be hidden from us. It will be clearly shown on every retail receipt.
If you have friends who don’t know about the FAIRtax, send them to FAIRtax.org. Have them watch the white boards under “How It Works” and, if they agree, ask them to please join us.
Then contact your Members of Congress and the President and demand that Congress pass -the FAIRtax—the only fair tax.
Is it hopeless? When confronted with a seemingly impossible problem, remember the statement attributed to the author George Bernard Shaw who wrote, You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”
Isn’t it time for us to ask, “Why not?”
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