I would ask him why he believes the flat tax is better than the fair tax being touted by Neil Boortz.

BTW, someone promised us Tim Blair... maybe you should ask him Forbes if he has Tim's home number.

We'll work on that. It's another case of having to pretape an interview due to the terrible time difference between the US and Sydney Australia.

He's willing to get up early to do the interview, but unfortuately we're asking him to get up early on his day off, which Blair is understandably reluctant to do.

Ask him whether he's running again in '08 (at which point you Rudy can suck it!)
Hey I can dream can't I?

What's being done to convince the "right people" to switch over to flat tax? Are there efforts to implement flat taxes in state income taxes? How does one determine the "right" tax rate?

Ask Mr. Forbes if he will be doing another Saturday Night Live appearance.

I can give you at least one reason against the Fair Tax: business expenses. Some businesses have high gross income, but also high expenses. The Fair Tax hits those pretty hard.

Here's another: the list of "exempt" items will grow. Right now it's educational services. That will change. And it offers the opportunity for patronage and vote-buying. Left-handed poultry farmers will end up being exempt.

I like the Flat Tax because it doesn't change the fundamentals of our current tax system. Granted, that fundamental change would be nice, but it's highly, highly unlikely to happen. The Flat Tax has a chance.

Ask him if he's ever gone by the name Teve Torbes, and if he's ever had a Victor-Mature, musk-like scent.

(Sorry, SNL flashback).

I guess my question would be, given that Mr Forbes has been unsuccessful in seeking political office, what steps does he think can be taken to craft a permanent campaign for structural tax reform, including a flat tax? Basically, if he's never going to be POTUS, where do supporters of tax reform turn to in order to mobilize political change in favor of it? Are there other political leaders? Academics? Think tanks?

I certainly don't want this sort of thing to die off just because regular voters never liked how Steve Forbes never seems to blink. Ever.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Rho:

Well, Boorz said that business purchases weren't taxed at all, only the final sale to the consumer. So, if that's true, I don't see how business costs would enter into it.

Do things like Republicans work on repealing the estate tax give the Dems a bat to (fairly) bash the Repubs with? Does it show and give good mileage to the notion that Repubs care about the filthy rich, not the poor and middle class?

rho; are you saying businesses that run on a thin margin would get screwed?

I was working and only heard Boortz intermittently; is he suggesting a tax on a business's gross revenues??
Because that would be total bullshit.

Perhaps you could throw him a change-up.

Instead of discussing politics only, you could discuss the circulation number scandals which recently came to light at Newsday, The Chicago Sun-Times, etc.

As a publisher, how widespread does he think the numbers fraud is? Does he think the fraud portends the end of print media? (Their lying to prop up circulation numbers). What does he think the future holds for print media? Since circ. numbers are self-reported how can we trust the veracity of any of them?

Some background info:

ref 1
ref 2

You sure Forbes wants a corporate tax at all? It IS, after all, double taxation.

I seem to recall that Forbes recently said something to the effect that high oil prices were being kept high to some degree by speculators in the commodoties market, that it was on a bubble much like the housing bubbles in many areas, and that the bubble would soon burst, triggering lower gas prices. Confirm that he's the one who said this (obviously) and ask him to expand if he wouldn't mind.

Is being super-rich:

a) awesome
b) so. f'n. cool.
c) seriously, man, it's pretty nice
d) get away from me, peasant!

Is having a name in common with John Forbes Kerry:

a) just a coincidence, no big deal
b) kinduv embarrassing
c) seriously, man, what a drag
d) John who now?

Ask him if he would be willing to run for an office other than the Presidency. If he says no, ask him why not?

My 10 questions -- no particular order.

1. So, about your dad: Gay? Biker? Gay biker?*

2. Please describe your lair -- Stainless steel, or more of a cave motif?

3. Your skin -- burned in an accident while trying to develop a Doomsday device, or just really bad acne as a teenager?

4. Assuming #3 is acne -- was being worth $700 million still good enough to pull the really hot chicks in high school?

5. If a secret agent were assigned to find out what you're really up to, and you captured him, would you have a novel way of killing him (e.g., slow moving laser) or would you play for the sure thing and just have a henchman blow his brains out?

6. Are you full-blown "The CIA is planning to disrupt my daughter's wedding, Ross Perot crazy" or more just "Bill Gates the world revolves around me crazy"?

7. Martha Stewart -- innocent, classy millionairess or nouveau riche hag?

8. Who has more money -- you or fellow New Jerseyite Bruce Springsteen?

9. The Flat tax -- is there anything it can't do?

10. Which is better to light a cigar with -- a twenty of a fifty?

* Kidding. I'm assuming your going in like David Gregory interrogating Jeff Gannon.

If the sales tax only applies to consumers and not businesses, hello 300 million instant corporations!

Consulting firms often have high business costs. They may need--numbers produced fresh from my ass--$100,000 in revenues in order to make $40,000 in profit because they have to have a LOT of "business lunches" and suchlike.

As I understood the Fair Tax (which may have morphed into something different since I last studied it, which was a while back), businesses had to pay the sales tax as well. In general, I have several problems with it:

1) I don't like the idea of the gov't mailing checks to people. This goes from "a rebate" to "my check" to "gimme more" as fast as you can sell a vote.
2) It moves the overhead cost of taxes to businesses. (This worked well with health insurance.) This seperates The People from the problems of tax code complexity, and the code will grow more complex over time, but who cares? It's only "Big Business" that has to deal with it.
3) All of the tax reforms fail the chicken-and-egg test. The egg is spending. No matter how you kill and cook the chicken, the egg is still there. Okay, that metaphor sucked. The problem isn't the complex tax code. It's government spending. Unless your tax plan involves cutting half of the gov't revenues, it's not going to do any good.
4) Boortz can be a real snot sometimes; rubbing his nose in his Big Idea appeals to me.
5) Forbes' flat tax, with no brackets, eliminates a lot of the fiddling with the tax code that's presently used as bribes. It cuts gov't revenue. It doesn't affect the poor. It puts no regulation barriers in the way of businesses.

Either tax proposal will generate new winners and new losers. One is honest about cutting gov't revenues, which is the real problem. I like it better.

Colossus, LOL. If you put those questions on your blog, you earned a (largely useless) link from me.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge