I don't doubt there's a lot of uncertainty in the exact revenue will it bring in. With exemptions and other factors such as fraud etc., the total revenue will certainly not equal a simple VAT% * economic activity -- and most level-headed people who have lived for a while would not expect that to be true. I think having moderate expectations is wise -- I don't think we disagree there. None of us (I hope) truly expects any single move to "save" us as such, merely that some moves are more reasonable and pragmatic than others.
That said, I think it's a move in the right direction based on my experience with it in the countries I've lived in. It will definitely raise positive revenue (this is incontrovertible -- whether it raises enough revenue is another issue). My intuition tells me a VAT will likely not be a merely lateral move but of course I have no proof. Theoretical analyses on a complex system are often unconvincing, so I won't advance those.
What I find compelling though--and I offer this not to convince you or others, but merely something I personally find reasonably persuasive--is that unlike mere economic theory, the VAT idea is actually a live experiment running in 166 countries right now, with different parameters. One may argue that none of those experiments have scales that match the gargantuan size of the U.S. economy, and that many of them are encumbered with different issues like complexity, but nonetheless many of those experiments have actually been fairly successful over a long period of time.
I guess I'll make the modest suggestion that a VAT is at the very least not a crackpot idea and worth thinking about. Whether or not it will work in the U.S. isn't something we can definitively know without actually running the experiment.
That said, I think it's a move in the right direction based on my experience with it in the countries I've lived in. It will definitely raise positive revenue (this is incontrovertible -- whether it raises enough revenue is another issue). My intuition tells me a VAT will likely not be a merely lateral move but of course I have no proof. Theoretical analyses on a complex system are often unconvincing, so I won't advance those.
What I find compelling though--and I offer this not to convince you or others, but merely something I personally find reasonably persuasive--is that unlike mere economic theory, the VAT idea is actually a live experiment running in 166 countries right now, with different parameters. One may argue that none of those experiments have scales that match the gargantuan size of the U.S. economy, and that many of them are encumbered with different issues like complexity, but nonetheless many of those experiments have actually been fairly successful over a long period of time.
I guess I'll make the modest suggestion that a VAT is at the very least not a crackpot idea and worth thinking about. Whether or not it will work in the U.S. isn't something we can definitively know without actually running the experiment.