Fareed Zakaria Campaigns For A National Sales Tax

Fareed Zakaria used his CNN program Sunday to campaign for a national sales tax.

This came just two weeks after he absurdly accused the tax cuts implemented by George W. Bush of being the biggest cause of today's budget deficit.

Zakaria began the most recent installment of "GPS" by first discussing how great a country America is, but "we have big problems."

"[T]he biggest one, by far, the one to worry about is the growing national debt."

Of course, his solution was to raise taxes (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST: Now, we have big problems, but the biggest one, by far, the one to worry about is the growing national debt. It's worth reminding ourselves, however, this is not a fact of life that we simply have to accept. There are many simple economic measures that would correct the budgetary fix easily.

Let me give you just one, a value-added tax. Now, this is a tax that 130 countries have. It's a tax on consumption, a national sales tax, if you will. Most countries have one that ranges from 5 to 25 percent. We have none.

Were we to adopt a national sales tax in the 10 to 14 percent range, it would allow us to eliminate the income tax for anyone earning 100,000 dollars, which is 90 percent of American households. If we went up to the highest rate, which is used in Scandinavian countries, many of which have grown faster than United States over the past two decades, we could eliminate the income tax for the vast majority of people, balance the federal budget, fund healthcare for all Americans, and slash the top income tax rate to 25 percent. So the solutions are out there. We just need leadership in Washington to implement some of them, stabilize the budget, and thus revive the fortunes of this country. Is there anyone in Washington willing to show that courage?

The first thing that should pop out is how once again Zakaria didn't discuss cutting spending to address the growing national debt. With him, it's always taxes.

And, as we made quite clear two weeks ago, he wants taxes dramatically raised on January 1, 2011, by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire.

Beyond this, when Zakaria said America has no national sales tax, he was ignoring that unlike most countries that do, we have state sales tax. In fact, all except Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon have some form of sales tax.

Obviously, this complicates matters greatly.

Beyond this, although most VAT schemes have a regressive component - meaning that they can have a greater percentage negative impact on folks making less money - Zakaria made his progressive tax proclivities quite clear:

Were we to adopt a national sales tax in the 10 to 14 percent range, it would allow us to eliminate the income tax for anyone earning 100,000 dollars, which is 90 percent of American households. If we went up to the highest rate, which is used in Scandinavian countries, many of which have grown faster than United States over the past two decades, we could eliminate the income tax for the vast majority of people.

Clearly, his vision is one where a continually greater amount of the total taxes collected are paid by those he and his ilk consider wealthy, which more and more means having a decent job or owning a business.

As such, the scheme he advocated, which includes funding "healthcare for all Americans," is just another redistribution of wealth scam liberal media members love.

Now, if Zakaria wants to discuss a strategy whereby income taxes are completely replaced by sales taxes, I'm all ears.

Until that point, his modus operandi is quite transparent, and not at all in the best interest of working Americans across the fruited plain.