Did You Watch The Republican Debates? Here Are 5 military and vets moments of note at the debate.

Agree. Sales tax, and import and export taxes are the way to go. Imagin how much money would be available for vets and struggling seiniors if we could cut most of the IRS payroll. There is also allot of money wrapped up in parts of education and other social programs that could be revamped. No Vet or hard working senior should ever go hungry.

SSG Gerhard S. - Staff; The main problem with a "sales tax based funding system" is the propensity for it to encourage a "grey/black economy" where no taxes are paid at all.

However, the idea is a good one PROVIDED that money sent out of the country is deemed to be money spent and taxed accordingly AND the only place that the tax is levied is at the "ultimate consumer" level (i.e. no "sales tax" of the stuff needed to make the stuff you are going to sell).

Of course, having a 101% sales tax (that's the equivalent of 15% tacked on at five levels) could be a bit hard to sell to the voters and it's what you would have to set the rate at if you didn't want to hide the 87+% that you can hide by imposing the tax at each level.

While taxes can put pressure on a company to raise prices, the price is actually set by what consumers are willing to pay for a product. Do you believe Pharmaceuticals in this country are so expensive because of government taxes? No, their that expensive because that's what consumers are willing to pay for them.

http://www.examiner.com/article/us-drug-prices-outpace-britain-three-fold

First, you are correct, consumers set the prices, based upon what they are willing to pay. That being said, taxes don't "put pressure" on a company to raise prices. Taxes ARE an expense, like any other expense a company has. It's a cost of producing their products, and reflects in the minimum price that will allow for a profit. Either way, taxes are rolled into the price of the products, causing higher prices for products produced in the US which has the highest corporate income tax in the world. The Economists and Tax experts who developed the Fair Tax determined that Taxes, compliance costs (attorneys and accounts, filing fees, etc, account for an increase of 23%. Meaning, if we had no corporate income tax, our products could be 23% cheaper, and thus able to compete with, and overcome some of the inherent costs of doing business overseas, such as transportation costs, pay to play (bribery) foreign taxes, etc.... (of course, foreign countries often have an advantage in the cost of labor aspect, which are somewhat mitigated by security concerns, increased lodging costs, and the need for infrastructure in some of those countries.)

As far as Pharmaceuticals are concerned, their prices are so high for a number of reasons. First, is the enormous cost of developing, testing, and going through the FDA Trials, (even for drugs that have already gone through, and been approve by the European trials). This process costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and upward of over a billion for some drugs.... and not all drugs even get to the point of actually being marketed. Those costs have to be absorbed from the prices of successful drugs. And this money has to be recouped before the patent runs out on the drug and is open to be produced by anybody. The second factor has less to do with how much a patient is willing to pay for a drug, and more to do with a second payer system where the patient is typically very detached from the price of a drug because either an insurance company, or the government is paying for the medication while the patient typically only pays a co-pay, unless they're on medicaid, in which case they're likely paying little or nothing. Nobody would argue that the cost of only producing a medication is minimal... it is the research, development, and testing costs needing to be recouped that makes new drugs in particular, more expensive. That being said, some drugs are remarkably inexpensive.... I used to take Lisinopril for blood pressure, and it only cost about $2.00 for a monthly prescription (my co-pay would have been more than the drug costs.) It's not a simple issue, but the alternative is to take the profit out of pharmaceuticals and have the government develop all our new drugs... of course, then there would be no new drugs.

MSgt Robert Pellam, Good luck on seeing any actions from either party. Don't hold your breath. All of them are full of BS. All I heard was what they would like to see done to help America. I didn't hear any positive solutions offered. Hell, I know what I would like to see happen. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that. IMO, they won't give us a plan to help America, because they know, when they become the POTUS, their hands are tied either by the Dems or their own party.

SGT (Join to see) Oh I am not holding my breath. I know the Dems are just as bad as the Republicans on this. Shoot, when ever the government has to cut the Military budget, they immediately go after benefits. Not the billions on wasted contracts or fraud that happens. Nope.. Makes my eye twitch every time they talk.

MSgt Robert Pellam, I know you aren't. Besides the cuts made toward veteran's benefits, it curls my nails when I read about some stupid scientific project, costing hundreds of thousands up to millions spent to find out how many times a frog hops in an hour, or some other stupid research. I never hear about any cuts to those scientific projects. Grrrrrr!

CPT (Join to see), And Sir, they are all full of BS.