Thinking about the ObamaTax

The curious thing about Mr. Obama is that he is both the first American president not to consider his heritage to be that of northern Europe and the first to believe that the U.S. would be better off if it turned itself into a European society. Government ownership of the means of production, mandatory health insurance, higher taxes on "the rich," demonization of disfavored industries and activities ... and inevitably, the value-added tax. Irwin Stelzer of the conservative Hudson Institute has a piece in the WSJ this morning about the VAT, as it is nicely abbreviated. (Nice, because the acronym is as ugly as the tax.) He takes the British VAT as his model for discussion. It's hilarious, especially the bit about bras and body stockings: bras up to 34B and body stockings up to 27.5 inches crotch to shoulder are deemed children's clothing, hence free of tax; above those limits, add 17.5 percent to pay the salary of the bureaucrats to wrote the rules. Read it and weep. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford