surrounded by idiots

I begin to realize PT Barnum was the master of understatement. "There's a sucker born every minute" indeed.

Three of Georgia's counties held a referendum on FairTax. That's HR25 - you'll have to search at http://thomas.loc.gov to get it, I can't direct link a cgi-search result.

Anyway, Cobb, Gwinnett and Fayette counties held referendums on FairTax, and over 85% said, "Yes". Suckers.

FairTax. Everybody increases their takehome pay by about 25%. Everything they buy goes up by about 10% - food, clothes, EVERYTHING. In addition, some things jump by 30% - things like rent and cars and gasoline and doctor visits.

Here's the core of the con. The following are exempt from paying the sales tax:
a) Any "legitimate" business expense;
b) investments;
c) anything purchased to be resold;
d) fees (expense based), dues, and gifts/contributions collected by non-profits and charitable organizations.
AND
Everybody gets a check from the government equal to 23% of the national poverty level. At the present ~20,000 that's about $385 per person every month.

BUT
The government is expected to collect as much as it did before all the income taxes (including corporate) and estate taxes and all of that were eliminated.

Now to really catch the con you have to remember that somewhere over $200,000 you quit spending as much of your paycheck on "stuff to use" and more of it on "investments". As a result, this is FairTax in a nutshell:

Corporations quit paying taxes.
The Rich quit paying most taxes.
The Poor still don't pay taxes.
Who is left to make up the difference?

well, given the median household income of those three Georgian counties, 85% of the people will say, "Me, Me."

idiots.