Quotes from Chairman Steve

Investment U has a good interview with Steve Forbes. The magazine publisher/presidential candidate has a new book out, The Flat Tax Revolution, which advocates leaving the IRS to the dustbin of history.
Forbes wants to scrap the tax code and replace it with one 17% across-the-board tax rate. It’s really not so outlandish; a flat tax is already the law of the land in several Eastern European countries. Here are some highlights from Part I of the interview.

Mark Skousen: I carefully read your book, The Flat Tax Revolution. Regarding privatized social security, a flat tax and a balanced budget amendment, why does it take so long for government to solve these types of problems?
Steve Forbes: In the public square, the way you make things happen is by having a vested interest, organizing to push your interest, and then politicians respond to those interests. So petitioners have a bigger voice than the general public. The way you try to change something with the public is to put an idea out, advocate it, and start organizing around it, and eventually you will triumph if people feel it has legitimacy.
I just think that you have to marinate your ideas. For example, on the flat tax, one of the things we’re doing is in New Hampshire. Every candidate that comes into that state is going to get questioned, Democrat and Republican alike: “What are you going to do about this horrific tax code? If you’ve been in Congress, why haven’t you done anything about it? Why wouldn’t you go with a flat tax? Why wouldn’t you go with lower rates?” You put pressure on that way. I hope that in the 2008 Presidential primaries, at least one candidate will be entrepreneurial enough to stand out and take an unusual stand on an issue where there seems to be some real public resentment, where the public is ready to explode.
Mark Skousen: Would that candidate be you in 2008?
Steve Forbes: Not me in ’08. I’m an agitator now, but it could be a Democrat or Republican, or a couple of both. A Democrat could easily pick up on the flat tax idea and run with it. They may not endorse my version of a flat tax, but they might support a low rate like 15% that would apply to the big capital gains, dividends, death duties, income, etc. It would be a vast improvement over what we have now. It certainly could appeal to a piece of their constituency because of the high exemptions. If the Republicans don’t get serious about this, a Democrat is going to run with it.
The other thing is, in the real world, events can push policy. Everyone now knows we face more tax competition. Everyone now knows more of the world is getting its economic act together. In the Cold War, you had a big portion of the world under a horrific ideology that was anti-growth. You had mild variations of socialism, which is anti-growth… Now, the world is catching up. You know about China and India, Central and Eastern Europe – they are determined to replicate what Ireland did…

Read the whole thing.

Posted by on October 14th, 2005 at 4:24 pm


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