Without a doubt. Good for Mr. Greenspan. Sounds like comments I made here a couple of months back.

Mr. G's retiring. He can let it all hang out.

Yoda is a right winger from way back. he started life as a Randian. Clinton kept him on because Bob Rubin said don't rock the boat.

Maybe this idea will get some traction again. We need to get government out of our bank accounts and business affairs. Why should we be reduced to a nation of packrats and bookkeepers?

I don't think switching to a consumption tax will be as beneficial as many expect. There needs to be a good balance between available capital (which would be increased by switching to consumption taxes) and demand (which would be decreased by switching to consumption taxes) to optimize innovation and productivity growth over the long haul. Given the current productivity growth is quite good, and capital is currently readily available, I wouldn't tamper with success.

I'm all for simplifying the existing tax system and perhaps partially moving to consumption taxes (though this has the danger of causing higher overall taxes as politicians try to hide increases on the consumption side), but not for scrapping income taxes and replacing them with consumption taxes.

Aside from the increase in basic liberty, a consumption tax would create a natural balance between the demands of government and economic reality. If cosnumption is overtaxed revenues will dry up. A modicum of discipline will be imposed on government spending which does not currently exist. Savings will increase and non-productive spending will be tamed. The blatant, arbitrary silliness embodied in current tax regulations which make it more difficult to hire workers and expand newer businesses would end. Natural efficiencies would be encouraged and most of the compliance costs of current regulations would end.
The current law directs law makers toward unsustainable social engineering schemes which are almost uniformly counterproductive and palinly unjust. Had there been a consumption rather than income tax during the 1960's LBJ's 'war on poverty' would not have been attempted and the capital base of the nation would have been that much more advanced than it is today. The 'underground economy' not currently taxed would begin to contribute its share. The only downside is the effect on the municipal bond market as well as the multi-billion dollar industry devoted to tax sheltering savings and capital through the use of highly inefficient but absurdly profitable insurance products which serve no truly economical
purpose. The current system encourages Washington politicians to direct the activities of individuals in ways which serve no real efficient or economically productive purpose and ther is no real check on their self-serving actions other than the fiction of some kind of economic 'justice'. The fiction that 'income' is the object of taxation would end and the open ended and unlimited power of taxation would come to a halt. Enforcible limitations on the power of the central state are good for noother reason that the Harry Byrds, Nancy Pelosi's, Ted Kennedy's and Massachusettes state delegations of the world will always be with us, in one form or another.