Fair taxation must be defended. History demands it, and my conscience begs me to respond to the comments that Ella Johnson made in her dissent on Tuesday (“Nothing fair about columnist’s tax reform”).

Apparently, she created a stir that caused my e-mail to fill faster than, as Dan Rather would say, Al Gore running to the Supreme Court to prove he was the loser.

I am not sure if Ms. Johnson has been told, but she is famous. Her letter to the editor was read aloud on a nationally ranked syndicated radio talk show on Tuesday — “The Neil Boortz Show.” It may not sound like much, except he has well over 20 million listeners. I really doubt I could do a better job of absolutely destroying Ms. Johnson’s opine, but, hey, I don’t get paid the big bucks either. I digress.

I’m not sure why she brought up the state tax issue because the Fair Tax plan is not meant to be a state issue, though I believe most states would end up conforming. Her state tax assertion is irrelevant to this issue.

Ms. Johnson mentioned that we would pay a 30 percent sales tax on everything we consume. What she doesn’t understand is that the consumption tax is embedded. That means if an item costs $1 you pay $1 for the item. I’m assuming she’s adding the 7 percent state tax to the 23 percent federal tax to reach the 30 percent, so in that case the retailer would get 70 cents, the federal government would get 23 cents and the other 7 cents would go to the state. This is called an embedded tax.

This is where prices come into play. Given the economic law of supply and demand, the prices of goods and services would remain largely unchanged as we know them because the cost of production would decrease and employers would no longer be paying the taxes included in the price such as the income tax your employer pays for you. Compliance costs would also disappear. This coupled with competition would stabilize prices.

Ms. Johnson mentioned tax-free necessities due to the prebate. The reason it’s a prebate is because every person gets a check from the government at the first of every month. The truth is that the prebate only covers the taxes you would pay on necessities up to the poverty level. It is a tax plan, not a blank-check plan. But what it does is federally “un-tax” the people under the poverty level. I’m not sure what’s unfair about that.

To end my response I would like to remind Ms. Johnson that our country began with only a consumption tax because the founding fathers concluded an income tax to be immoral. Here is a quote from Alexander Hamilton, who happens to be on the $10 bill:

… There is no method of steering clear of this inconvenience, but by authorizing the national government to raise its own revenues in its own way. Imposts, excises, and, in general, all duties upon articles of consumption, may be compared to a fluid, which will, in time, find its level with the means of paying them. The amount to be contributed by each citizen will in a degree be at his own option, and can be regulated by an attention to his resources. The rich may be extravagant, the poor can be frugal; and private oppression may always be avoided by a judicious selection of objects proper for such impositions. If inequalities should arise in some States from duties on particular objects, these will, in all probability, be counterbalanced by proportional inequalities in other States, from the duties on other objects. In the course of time and things, an equilibrium, as far as it is attainable in so complicated a subject, will be established everywhere. Or, if inequalities should still exist, they would neither be so great in their degree, so uniform in their operation, nor so odious in their appearance, as those which would necessarily spring from quotas, upon any scale that can possibly be devised.

It is a single advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess.

I would also like to plead with those of you who support the Fair Tax to make it a priority to learn more so when you debate or address someone on the issue, you will advance the cause of fair taxation for all people regardless of their station in life.

Lenny Joiner is a Collinsville resident. His e-mail address is LDjoin@aol.com.