Comments on: National Retail Federation Asks Obama to Overstep His Boundaries

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 19:22:44 +0000

OBAMA overstep his boundaries as President?
Why isn’t he doing that already ?

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:23:48 +0000

I still find just not spending any money at all is the best way to “save” money.

OTOH, if I could buy my new car I’ve been needing after 12 years of driving my Toyota (that still gets 33mpg thank you very much) and the rest of you would chip in for the taxes, I personally wouldn’t mind it.

Selfish reasons to game the system aside, this is a stupid idea. But you’re never going to succeed at explaining basic economics to most people. That old saying, “common sense isn’t so common” is so sadly true. I played poker with someone who never did grasp that buying $50 worth of chips just before we all folded for the evening doesn’t make you a “winner” because you had $40 more than the rest of us who went home with $5 apiece. although, that WAS the dotcom definition of “Profit”, so what the heck.

Heck, 20+ years ago I was teaching assistant for a graduate class in Logic, and it was a real eye opener. These folks were supposedly pretty smart to have passed the GRE’s, and yet 3/4 of them couldn’t grasp basic predicate logic. Then again, it was before the logic section was mandatory, so maybe nowadays they wouldn’t have made the cut.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:54:43 +0000

Putting aside the Federal government interfering in the State government. Let’s look at how it would affect the Businesses that actually collect and had it over to the States. How would the business get their software updated prior to the ‘Holiday’ so they don’t collected and then what if they did, would the government fine the business for collecting it. It would be a mess.

Smaller government, requiring less taxation on the US citizen would be the BEST solution by far.

Of course this would make my job as a CPA more valuable, but I would rather be out of a job than to create more mess.

By: Paul Koehler

Paul Koehler — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:27:21 +0000

I’m a liberal Democrat and even *I* think that this idea is bad. Why complicate things more?

By: EllAnn

EllAnn — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:48:39 +0000

When I first heard this I kept thinking, “What? How?” I knew we had no national sales tax so I figured that they wanted Obama to force the states to forgo their sales tax. Stupid! We don’t pay sales tax for a few days, but we’ll end up paying higher state taxes for years to make it up.

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:53:07 +0000

Wouldn’t people just not spend until the holiday, then go out find the stores full and decide they don’t need whatever that bad. Might have the opposite effect.

By: Suz

Suz — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:06:05 +0000

Why does this sound like Bush’s failed plan which was that the more we spend the better the economy? Will no one learn that consumerism itself is not the answer to our economic problems?

By: Jerry

Jerry — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:47:55 +0000

This idea is unconstituional as it has the feds controlling the state laws in areas where they have no rights whatsoever.
But then, so are bailouts.

All of it is a collection of very bad ideas.

By: Mike P

Mike P — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:59:32 +0000

I’m with you on both points. It’s clearly way beyond the role of the executive branch to be setting state tax policy. And as to the concept that all government spending is (eventually) funded by taxpayers: I know it will never happen, but if the public at large could grasp this fact, so many problems would disappear.

By: lindsy

lindsy — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:34:27 +0000

Tax free days sound good, generally. A few states do it. This, however, sounds ridiculous.