Beware of the VAT rats!

For those of you who have been privileged to live in a country without a Value Added Tax (VAT), count your blessings! This regressive tax has crushed economies around the world when imposed by gob'mints who were too afraid to impose straight income taxes on the citizens.

The VAT is a surreptitious, sneaky, gold mine for big spending governments. As George will points out in his column this week:

"Yet while government diminishes America's comparative advantages, liberals are clamoring for . . . higher taxes. Partly because of changes endorsed by presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, some 60 percent of taxpayers now pay either no income tax (43 percent) or less than 5 percent of their income. Because one can't raise significant money by that tax without nicking the middle class, or without bringing millions of people back onto the income tax rolls, attention is turning to a value-added tax.

A VAT is levied at every stage of production. Like cap-and-trade, a VAT is a liberal politician's delight: It taxes everything, but opaquely.

Before he became an economic adviser in the Obama White House, where wit can be dangerous, Larry Summers said: Liberals oppose a VAT because it is regressive and conservatives oppose it because it is a money machine, but a VAT might come when liberals realize it is a money machine and conservatives realize it is regressive."

Right here, I was about to 'splain in more detail what a VAT is and what it's impact on we consumers -- but shucks, you just type 'value added tax' in your search box up there and look at the hundreds of definitions and comments... Meanwhile pilgrims --- stay alert -- and make sure your Representatives in both houses are not 'VAT RATS'!!!

If the gob'mint needs more money - let 'em stand up on their hind legs and justify an income tax and own up to what they are doing --- not hide under a VAT RAT hole.......