Rational taxation

Taxes are discouraging - We'll get less from each other of what we tax, so let's tax, not income or goods, but 'bads'; the use of non-renewable and polluting resources.

Jobs:

Each of us needs work, yet now one of five of us is out of, or short of, work. Each willing worker should have a job open to them. This is only fair, since we generally must work for what we need.

Labor versus Resources:

We now use resources to eliminate labor via clever technology, which, in a world empty of people and full of resources, brilliantly complemented limited labor. But now we live in a world full of people eager to work, and running empty of resources. We can use more labor and less resources and thrive more. This will reduce pollution from resource use, as well as provide more equal opportunity to work for the the less fortunate among us.

Growth versus Maturity:

We relied on economic growth to provide more jobs, more opportunity for the less lucky, but now our world is full of us people, and more growth can't fit well. Like a growing child becoming adult, humanity as a species has become mature. Further physical growth of our society is unhealthy, since we must all fit together on this limited planet. We still have enough now for each of our needs, yet not enough for our greeds. And if we grow economically while not growing physically, we produce only needless inflation. Now what? And how do taxes affect jobs and resource use?

Fuller Employment and Tax-Shifting:

We can have enough jobs without unhealthy continued growth through inspiring more labor use and less resource use, via different technologies and different incentives. How can we inspire replacing resource use with labor? Now we tax labor use through income taxes, but don't tax resource use. We can switch this, taxing use of resources to cover the revenues from now-eliminated income taxes. Then labor will be cheaper for bosses. This will inspire more hiring and less buying resources, saving rare resources for our children, while reducing subsequent pollution, and inspiring creation of more of the jobs we all need. Furthermore this helps reduce costly resource imports and damaging trade deficits, all while maintaining or increasing governmental revenues.

In Massachusetts:

Not only can we shift our state taxes from income to resource use, but at a state level we can reverse federal income taxation with state rebates, and pay for the rebates out of further resource use taxation. Thus we can lead the US in building a sustainable economy here in Massachusetts, inspiring extensive hiring and resource conservation.

Taxing Sales:

Poor spend more of their income than rich, so taxing spending hits poor harder as a percentage of expenditures, which really isn't fair.