Would a national sales tax help bring down the deficit?

[TheViper]

Could a national sales tax help fix the deficit and gain enough political support to break the stalemate in the nation's capital? Yahoo! reader Brad Sylvester believes it could.

Following a contentious midterm election, some 81 percent of respondents to a recent ABC News/Yahoo! News poll said they expect partisan warfare and inaction to continue over the next two years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive/20101213/pl_yblog_exclusive/would-a-national-sales-tax-help-bring-down-the-deficit

[cjd]

Could a national sales tax help fix the deficit and gain enough political support to break the stalemate in the nation's capital? Yahoo! reader Brad Sylvester believes it could.

Following a contentious midterm election, some 81 percent of respondents to a recent ABC News/Yahoo! News poll said they expect partisan warfare and inaction to continue over the next two years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive/20101213/pl_yblog_exclusive/would-a-national-sales-tax-help-bring-down-the-deficit

The shvartza Administration's mouth is watering at the idea of a nation wide Value added tax... This would be one of the most regressive things possible for the U.S economy... The one and only way to reduce the deficit is to reduce spending... Is just that simple.

[briann]

Yes it would, BUT the only thing that would REALLY put a dent in the deficit would be to reduce spending.

and YES, when things start to get really nasty, we may very well see a VAT tax.