Atlas Shrugged and the FAIRtax

Today’s Chairman’s Report is written by Jade Walle.  Jade is a partner of a CPA firm and is on the board of Americans For Fair Taxation.  

---

Ayn Rand’s 1957 larger-than-life novel, Atlas Shrugged, was light years ahead of its time.  Its insights into the human psyche and our role in a larger society and governmental construct are illuminating to this very day, if not even predictive.  As my daughter embarks upon reading this masterful piece of work and penning a scholarship essay on the book this summer, a thought arose.

Would the FAIRtax be compatible with Ayn Rand’s epic novel and John Galt’s implied preferred form of new government in the remote, cloaked mountain valleys of Colorado?

For those of you who have read Atlas Shrugged, as the plot progresses you recall that there are economic forces at work as material goods that many of the characters had taken for granted become increasingly difficult to obtain.  Both individuals and businesses lost their autonomy and independence over time, as the state began to control the means of production.  

One of the main characters, John Galt, embarked upon a quest to stop the engine that drove this rotting system of government.  

While there are numerous economic and moral-philosophical forces at work in the various disappearances that occur, there are significant similarities with the supply chain, shortages of key products and components, and inflation-related issues we are currently experiencing, not to mention the overuse of the phrase, “fair share.”  

As the beginnings of a new society were established in rural Colorado, we can examine the new system and how the FAIRtax would fit in this new model of government.  First, the fledgling societal system was based on fierce independence and personal responsibility.  No one was subjected to a governmental seizure of funds (aka, taxes), based on the amount of product or service they produced or provided.  Everyone was expected to take care of their own obligations and any charity was the choice of the individual, as opposed to mandatory confiscation of income by an all-powerful bureaucracy.  

There were numerous new businesses in the neophyte society, but no tax on the income garnered by these innovative and courageous patriots.  Governmental operations and services were extremely limited.  The size, breadth and reach of a government is the subject of a different debate, however, the novel’s new government would have been completely capable of functioning on an extremely minimal sales tax.

The FAIRtax is based on several principles- those being simplicity, fairness, transparency, new goods and services being taxed once and only once, efficiency and visibility.  The FAIRtax principles would have been ideally crafted to perfectly serve the contemporary new society in Atlas Shrugged.  As the society grew, and a social safety net became preferred by the citizens in the rare case that someone fell on hard times, the FAIRtax prebate, which untaxes expenditures on life’s basic necessities, would ensure that no citizen paid consumption tax on life’s required inevitabilities.  

Further, the ferociously independent and resolutely self-made concepts in the novel would work perfectly with the FAIRtax.  
 

• The FAIRtax would not confiscate the income or property of any man or woman working hard in the new society to improve their station in life.  
• The people would have a choice, a prerequisite for a free and independent society, as to when and how much consumption tax they would pay to fund the government’s needed services.  
• This choice would be made as a citizen decided on whether to purchase goods and services beyond their rudimentary compulsions and provisions.  
• One of the incredible effects of taxing consumption rather than income is that it is a natural hedge against illegal tax evasion, which is currently $1 trillion a year in the U.S.  
• The new citizens would have a completely different psychological reaction to paying taxes when they chose on consumption beyond necessities, as opposed to having a portion of their hard-earned income appropriated by the governmental regime of the day.

 

Conclusion

What does all this mean?  The FAIRtax and its core principles hold up to one of the most admired, innovative, and dare I say, desired governmental systems contemplated in recent history.  Some argue that the system envisioned in Atlas Shrugged is the very system that the U.S. began as but has since lost its way.  It is apparent that the FAIRtax would work incredibly well in our current behemoth of a federal government as a preferred system of taxation.  This has been argued successfully in years of AFFT Chairman’s Reports and FAIRtax Power Radio broadcasts.  However, when we look back to a straightforward and more simplistic application of government, it is good to know that the FAIRtax also passes this test with flying colors!

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?”

HELP BRING ABOUT REAL TAX REFORM AND STOP FUTURE IRS ABUSES

By contributing (investing) $10.40 per month, you help provide a financial base to AFFT. If you can make larger contributions (investments), these will be used not for salaries, as we are all volunteers, but for the needed updates to our economic studies which will be vital in 2022 and beyond.

Please go to this link to invest in AFFT and in your and your family’s future.