Obama Signs No Child Left Behind Rewrite Into Law

You didn't specify only secondary education.

Yes, what Altmia stated was a university, but private schools aren't limited to only universities/colleges....

Oh I definitely agree I was just using that as a quick example. South Korea actually has a pretty good implementation of that system. Actual income tax is low but they have a whole range of taxes on items depending on if they were made domestically or imported along with their specific usage. For cars they use vehicle weight to determine the tax class, if the engine is over a certain size another tax is added on and if the vehicle was made by a non-Korean manufacturer another tax is tossed in. Foreign made luxury cars are easily double the cost, and professional / upper middle class Koreans are still buying them to show off. Same with clothing, if it's made from a domestic producer and doesn't carry a branded logo, then it's sales tax is the lowest. Add on a branded logo and it goes up so more, if it's made my a non-Korean manufacturer then it's tax goes up again. And like with cars we see the same situation, professional and above class Koreans will purchase them just to show off. The most expensive something is the most exclusive it becomes which just drives it's demand higher amongst that market segment.

This same system is applied to food, medicine, and even utilities. Electricity is tiered in it's cost. The lowest tier is really cheap, like $15~%25 USD a month type cheap. But once your utilization goes over a certain amount, the price per KWH doubles. Go over another amount and it doubles again, and again, and again. Wealthy people with large, or multiple, homes who like to run lots of lights and electrical devices will pay well over $1000 USD a month in electricity and another $300~500 USD in gas. Poor people with smaller homes and less gadgets would pay $20 USD a month for electricity and $5 USD for gas. I'm in a moderately large high rise apartment with lots of computers but live alone, my bill is usually $300~400 USD in the summer and ~$200 USD in the winter.

So yeah it's a pretty ingenious tax system. They are still taxing the wealthy at abnormally higher rates then the working class or even professional class, but the tax isn't visible as the law prohibits the tax from being calculated separated at bill time. Or rather the law prohibits a selling from advertising, displaying or negotiating a price that doesn't include the appropriate tax's. The wealthy still buy all those modern devices just to show off how stylish and modern their lives are, and how much better they think of themselves. The middle class still consumes and does so to show that they aren't the poor class. The poor class gets huge economic breaks on cost of living with the downside being they won't get modern stylish lifestyles.

Ohh also the government turns a blind eye to second hand "cash only" sales, of which there is zero tax being taken. Those sales are almost entirely to the poorer class of citizenry as the other class's are simply too proud to deal with second hand stuff. So the poor class still has computers, cell phones, TV's and various other devices, it's just going to be several years older.

That system won't work in America because it's placing tariffs on items, and we have multiple free-trade agreements that prevent that from happening.

Oh it'll certainly work because those aren't tariffs. If you check you'll notice that the USA has a free trade agreement with South Korea and many of those products are imported tariff free. Those are domestic taxes that must be paid by the seller not import taxes to be paid by the importer.

Now we both know that economically those are the same thing as all taxes are passed on to the consumer, but legally those are two separate items. This is one of the many loop holes that countries use to get around those pesky FTA's. The USA is one of the few countries actually following the spirit of FTA's, everyone else just looks for ways to protect domestic business from foreign competition.

Oh, they are tariffs because tariffs are designed to tax imported goods in favor of domestic goods.

Any tax designed to tax goods just based on if they are foreign or not is a tariff. There is no going around that definition, even if the end payer of the tariff is the consumer (to be honest, even if the tariff was paid by the importer, the consumer ultimately pays the tariff due to higher prices).

The US can only impose the free-trade agreement on their end. If South Korea doesn't impose the free-trade agreement on South Korea's end, then there's nothing the US can do about it except when it comes to negotiating with South Korea on the next agreement. Do you honestly think that the US is going to tear up their agreement with South Korea (along with all the other countries in that same agreement) just because they impose a domestic-paid tariff?

South Korea has more to gain about imposing these domestic-paid tariffs than the US nulling the agreement. They also have more to lose, but in all honesty, too many other countries would side with South Korea if the US ever pitches a fit. Especially China.

They aren't considered tariffs though, they are domestic luxury taxes paid on the purchase of specific items. I agree they function the same as tariffs but legally they are not and South Korea isn't breaking their FTA with the USA. It's one of those Clintonesqe definitions. You can argue all day that the effect is as a tariff and thus it must be a tariff, but the legalese is pretty concrete on this. Many nations use such technical techniques to get out completely honoring their side of FTA's with the USA.

A prime example of a company who got around this was GM when they bought Daewoo motors. GM purchased Daewoo and then turned them into "GM Korea" and used this Korean entity to sell US cars to the Koreans and bypass that luxury tax. You can now purchase Chevrolet cars over here at domestic prices which are more competitive against Kia, Hyundai and SsangYong then Ford, BMW, Audie and so forth.

To give an example I'll use BMW. A nice 3 series BMW will cost approximately $50,000 USD. That exact same car will cost 120,000,000 KRW, which converts over to about $104,347 USD depending on exchange rate. But there is also a Korean luxury car the SsangYong Chairman which similarly costs a ***ton of money.
A pair of levi's 550 jeans costs about $50 USD in a US mall. At the Korean department store right next to my house, those same jeans costs 187,000 KRW, which is lower then their previous cost of 210,000 KRW. That's $162 USD for a pair of designer jeans. There are also some domestic clothing brands that have ridiculous price tags. Yeah that's the kind of price difference we're talking about here. Lets not even get into makeup prices.

Middle class and wealthy Koreans like to show off those "luxury" branded items. It just happens that in Korean, almost anything imported is automatically placed in the "luxury" tax bracket while domestic products must meet certain requirements to be put into that bracket.

Ok got a good example of how they avoid violating the FTA. There is a Korean luxury brand car that is sold outside of SK and I'll use that as a case.

Hyundai Equus

https://www.hyundaiusa.com/equus/index.aspx

That's gonna run you about $75,000 USD with packages and what not. That same setup will cost you 180,000 ~ 220,000 KRW to purchase. Even though it's a Korean brand, it meets the criteria to be put into the "luxury item" tax bracket and thus it's hit with that huge *** tax. And Koreans still buy the hell out of that car, especially older married men who want to show off their status as a management or business owner while also bragging about how "Korean proud" they are.

Anyhow this is all just to demonstrate that using a progressive consumption tax is a far better way to run an economy then a progressive income tax. It plays on human vanity since there is absolutely nothing stopping a successful business from buying a Kia Morning, living in a smaller apartment and wearing common unbranded clothing.

This law really tied the room together didn't it ?

I would like to see something like that as well, it seems to be better in theory, I'm curious how well it would work in reality.

One of the reasons I have plenty of money is not only just from working a lot in the past (and recent present) and making some good investments, but also not spending money on stuff I don't need. For the past 3 years almost I've been really mindful of all my spending. No reason to buy a car when I was in the U.S. for 7 months, although at the time I had no idea how long I was staying, etc. I find it easier nowadays to curtail spending and let the money and assets build up.

Now with owning a bunch of apartments and renting them out, I do the same kind of monitoring and manage all my assets, etc. myself using a similar system.

Tax the rich*?

Oh **** no. EAT the rich*.

They have been eating the rest of us since 1972.

*I am talking about the .001% here.

Not literally...

I shouldnt talk about fight club...

The only party who is damaged from these types of taxes is the US, and they aren't complaining (at least the federal government isn't. Businesses are to a point).

The thing is, it's still considered a tariff (on international law standards), no matter how you dress it up, but there still has to be somebody to complain about it. The US isn't.

Ask France. They are the poster child of VAT.