Mises Institute muffles FairTax debate
Those of you that support the FairTax have no doubt had articles by a Mr. Lawrence Vance thrust in your direction by understandably skeptical people who did a cursory net search, found a critical document, and assumed that since a FairTax critic existed then it must be a scam. The articles written by Vance were posted on the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s website. The Mises Institute can best be described as a libertarian think tank that advocates the Austrian School of economics.
Vance purportedly teaches accounting and economics at Pensacola Junior College (although he is not listed on their faculty roster) and has a number of articles and blog posts on the Mises website. He first wrote about the FairTax in May of 2005 in an article titled “The Fair Tax Fraud.” His article was littered with inaccuracies too numerous to list here. For example, he claims that the “FairTax turns every business into a tax collector.” But every business is already a tax collector (and remitter), whether its sales, FICA, or income taxes. Vance couldn’t even stay on topic to discuss the merits/drawbacks of the FairTax as he fell into a kind of libertarian sleepwalk of pleading for reduced government spending.
Near the end of 2005 Vance wrote another piece, this time a review of Neal Boortz and John Linder’s FairTax Book. He pretty much loses all credibility near the beginning of his article.
But rather than just calling for the elimination of Social Security and Medicare taxes, withholding taxes, corporate taxes, gift taxes, estate taxes, capital gains taxes, and personal income taxes, Boortz proposes to replace all of these taxes with the FairTax.
I hate paying taxes as much as anyone, but any tax reform proposal that attempts to just get rid of all, or nearly all, taxes is too unrealistic to mention with a straight face. I doubt you could find ten elected people in Washington who would support eliminating nearly all of our country’s revenue.
Vance then complains that the FairTax doesn’t eliminate Social Security and Medicare.
Although the FairTax Plan would eliminate Social Security and Medicare taxes, it would not eliminate the programs.
…
So, instead of calling for the elimination of the various federal programs that feed off tax dollars, Boortz wants to merely change the way they are funded.
Mr. Vance shouldn’t even be writing about the FairTax because he isn’t interested in tax reform. He wants to see a single bill that accomplishes all of his desires (elimination of taxes and entitlement programs) and anything short of that is unacceptable. This is why (big L) Libertarians will never be a viable party in this country. They are unwilling to compromise.
Vance has since written a third column regurgitating his mantra. He hates the FairTax, but he sure loves the notoriety it is giving him!
By the way, I’ve discussed Vance before.
Why do I bring this up? Well, one would think that the Mises Institute would encourage debate on a topic – it is a think tank after all. But, the powers that be at Mises have refused to permit any prominent rebuttals to Vance or any pro-FairTax columns on their website. They will not even allow corrections of Mr.Vance’s factual errors! Economist Dan Mastromarco has written a rebuttal to Vance’s third column that is posted on the FairTax site, but again Mises would not put it on theirs.
Aaron Shutte of FairTax.org said the following in an email:
Mises.org specifically declined an article by renowned economist Laurence Kotlikoff, instead posting it to the blog where it would get the least attention.
Jeffrey Tucker of Mises.org specifically declined an article by Dan R. Mastromarco, even refusing to yield when a Mises Adjunct Scholar argued in favor of its publication.
When Mr. Mastromarco then posted his rebuttal to the Misses blog, Tucker took the highly unusual step of writing a comment himself, critical of the posting and threatening to exercise more censorship.
The Mises Institute is a private organization and they are free to allow or not allow whatever content they so desire. That isn’t the point. To maintain some semblance of credibility it is necessary for institutions of the think tank variety to openly engage all aspects of the positions they hold. To do otherwise raises the specter of a near religious like dogmatic mantra that favors rote responses over open dialog.
