OT: Rating the President

[Fian]

While storing your money in a hole in the ground may be bad for the economy, saving it in a bank is not. Savings allow the financing of big projects plus the creation of new companies (who usually take several years to become profitable) which creates new jobs. While not an economist, I can't see how anyone would think that saving money is a bad thing. Encouraging people to go into debt to continue to keep spending levels up (which incidentally requires that someone must have saved that money in order for them to borrow it) is the true recipe for disaster.

On another note, while the idea of a federal sales tax in lieu of an income tax sounds like a good idea, it would be devastating to the economies of areas near Canada or Mexico. Currently, goods in Mexico are more expensive than the goods in the US, so you find that many Mexicans drive accross the border to purchase American goods, devastating the local economy on the Mexican side. If the situation were reversed, you would see the American side devastated and everyone going accross the borders to buy their goods. You would also need to deal with the export of goods as well. If we were to charge other countries our sales tax, that would raise the prices of our goods, making them less competitive, hence fewer American goods would be purchased. This second issue, probably has ways around it, though, like no tax on exported goods, however I suspect it wouldn't be that simple.