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"Main Street" and "Wall Street" are the latest media buzz words, but what do these words represent? "Main Street" is where we (300 million of us) live, work, and play; every car, house, grocery store, in fact, all consumer retail goods are contained here. Economists measure the annual amount of money we spend on retail goods and label it the GDP (Gross Domestic Product); we spend about 15 trillion dollars per year. "Wall Street" contains the financial sector; stocks, bonds, Federal Reserve, currency transactions, etc. I coined the term "Business Street" to represent the wholesale business sector; GM builds cars here and sends them to their "Main Street" dealers.

A picture is worth a thousand words; in this case a picture is worth a trillion dollars! If a 100-story building represented America's economy, floors 1 through 4 would contain "Main Street" (retail consumer spending), floors 5 to 19 would contain "Business Street" (wholesale manufacturing) and floors 20 to 100 would contain "Wall Street" (financial sector). We spend, or transact, 15 trillion dollars on "Main Street" but the entire economy spends, or transacts, over 800 trillion dollars! Eighty percent of the economy flows through "Wall Street" but "Main Street" pays virtually all the taxes! The VTax spreads the tax base throughout the entire building by taxing every transaction a mere one-fifth of one percent. When 500 dollars is spent the tax is only one-dollar. This will fund sixty percent of the Federal budget, and eliminates all Federal taxes on the middle-class. By spreading taxes evenly and fairly throughout the entire building, not only will we bring tax fairness to the middle-class, it will inject a trillion dollars into "Main Street" and diffuse our current economic Armageddon! Middle-class Americans will see an annual average increase of 5 to 30 thousand dollars in disposable income. What will we do with this money? We will pay our bills, getting us out of the credit crunch, or spend it, stimulating the retail and wholesale sectors, or invest it, which will "trickle up" to Wall Street. How can we have a healthy economic system when eighty percent of the economy contributes nothing to the tax base? Balancing the flow of energy in the system will allow our economy to quickly and easily heal. We earn some money; we then spend that money on bills, food, and entertainment. The money you spent at the store is used by the storeowner to pay its bills and employees, which, in turn, is used to pay their bills and so on down the line. Those nice green bills we covet are constantly flowing, and they flow a lot, over 800 trillion dollars exchanges hands every year. Money has little intrinsic value; it is the flow of money that demonstrates its value. An economic slowdown, or recession, is an accurate term; money is flowing less then the previous year. In a depression money scarcely flows. Stimulate, or unblock, the flow and we can cure our economic sickness! The beauty of the VTax is that it eliminates most of the present Federal taxes: Income taxes on the middle class-gone, Social Security taxes-gone, Medicare taxes-gone, Energy taxes-gone, Excise taxes-gone; any federal taxes you can think of-gone! Finally, a simple and fair tax system.

Will "Wall Street" object to this minuscule tax? Probably, but this is my reply to them; a homeless person is given a very generous gift of five hundred dollars by a "Wall Street" executive (he was in a good mood that day). The homeless person is approached and asked to pay a one-dollar tax on the five hundred dollar gift, as it would help save the economy and the middle-class. He, or she, is grateful that this small amount becomes a constructive contribution to society. If a homeless person can contribute one-fifth of one percent of his, or her transaction without harm, how can "Wall Street" object to paying the same percentage?

Realizing most problems are self-induced is the first step in healing those problems. Hard working Americans did not create this fiasco, but we will need to accept responsibility and take action to correct it. We are bombarded with news that we must suffer greatly before the economy is back on track. By enacting the VTax we can eliminate the predicted economic suffering and devote our energies to the real issues facing our planet. Our newly elected President ran on the platform of change, perhaps we should make him and our other elected officials aware that true change is possible, now!

Avoiding the Next Economic Depression:
Not a Stimulus, a Revolution

- Kellen Merrill

Our economy is now unarguably in a recession; the bail out for the banks, and now a proposed second stimulus package are clear evidence of how we are in need of some extreme help. Instead of enlarging the debt, which all of this assistance has done and will continue to do, Jonathon Brown has a solution that will permanently solve our problems: the V-Tax.

Like the guy with the bomb deactivation codes in an action movie, Brown believes he has the answer and is trying to get it to the right people to save us from the impending doom.

The V-Tax starts with understanding the economy as it really is; the economy is not only the GDP, to which most will point when regarding it. The key to Brown's plan is this fact: 80% of our economy is "Wall Street", 15% is business to business or industrial and only 5% is the GDP, or "Main Street." While Main Street is the smallest contributor, it pays 90% of taxes. The rest is from business to business. Wall Street pays $0 in taxes. That's right; zero taxes are collected from Wall Street.

Brown asks the obvious question: "why?" If Wall Street paid 1/5 of 1% or 1 penny out of every 5 dollars from its transactions, we could raise 1.6 trillion dollars in one year's time. That's ten times the amount of the second stimulus package.

What is included in this Wall Street definition? Basically, the exchange of stocks, bonds, currency, and the banking system; they are the 80% of our economy operating tax free. A concern you might have when considering taxing Wall Street is the effect it may have on interest rates. Brown estimates a maximum rise of 1% as a reaction to the V-Tax. The positives far outweigh the possibility of this relatively miniscule increase.

Remember, the V-Tax can provide a stimulus package 10 times larger than what is proposed right now. According to Brown, if we passed the V-Tax, taxing the velocity (movement of money) in Wall Street would eliminate the need for income tax for working Americans earning less than $50,000 a year. Those earning above this would still pay taxes, but on a much smaller scale than now.

Social Security could also be funded through the V-Tax. This would alleviate your paying and your employer's matching your payments into Social Security. Business in America would save money, while also enjoying the increased spending that would result from the V-Tax. If the average American did not have to pay federal taxes, Brown estimates half of the money would be invested and the other spent. It would revitalize the economy using our money saved, not more money borrowed by the government.

Why hasn't someone else brought this up? The reality of how our economy breaks down and where our taxes are coming from is generally misunderstood. Brown has put fifteen years of research into economics before solidifying his ideas. To help illustrate the economy with Brown's favorite example: if you picture a building with a hundred floors making up our economic system, the first five floors would be Main Street, or the GDP, the next 15 floors would be the business to business or whole sale market; the remaining 80 floors are Wall Street.

The V-Tax is like taking a small drop out of a bucket. Wall Street is many buckets (80% of all of America's buckets) moving around, sharing water, and to date, untaxed. If we adopt the V-Tax, the benefits felt on Main Street would trickle up to Wall Street, benefiting everyone, and heal the economy for good. Brown has written a book to get this plan for economic salvation to the powers that be. Originally meant to for publication, like Brown's first book, which had an untimely release of a week before nine eleven, his current work is available via download from his website: www.v4victorytax.com. Brown has made it available this way in an effort to get the word out to as many people and as quickly as he possibly can.

According to Brown, The V-Tax is the answer to our failing economy, and it doesn't require enlarging the already massive national-debt. It would eliminate income tax for 50% of working Americans, and fund Social Security. The V-Tax sounding too good to be true is an obstacle Brown has to overcome. Jonathon Brown is the underdog protagonist trying to save the day in this action/suspense turned horror movie that is our economy. Only it's not a movie; it's real. Does he have the answer? Download Brown's book to see for yourself.

Find out more at: www.v4victorytax.com; help spark the revolution.

Kellen Merrill is a contributor for "In Hollywood" magazine.

VTax = Victory Over Taxes?
By Marti Johnson

What if the income taxes we all pay just went away? If instead of income taxes, the government taxed every transaction made in the U.S. economy, what would happen then? Would we have enough money to cover our needs in this great society? Or would the economy break down and the government go broke?

One man says that plan could yank our economy back from the edge of the abyss it seems to have arrived at. Jonathon Brown is a Burbank-area engineer, college instructor and dreamer who says what he calls the "VTax" could end our economic woes by virtually eliminating income taxes for middle class Americans and adding a small transaction tax in its place.

"The VTax will revolutionize the way we pay taxes. This will pump over a trillion dollars into the consumer markets, which will 'trickle up' to the investment community and get us out of economic Armageddon!" According to Brown, taxpayers which represent only five percent of the dollars in the economy are the only ones paying taxes. We're struggling to pay for the bailouts that Congress has already and will yet approve. But if income taxes ended for America's middle class, and instead his "VTax" was put in place, it would immediately raise over one and a half trillion dollars, while giving consumers a large enough tax break that they would spend the American economy back to a state of financial health.

How does the "VTax" work? It would slap every transaction made every day in this country with a tiny little tax; just one-fifth of one percent. Whoever spends money in this country would pay the tax, including big business and Wall Street. How would taxpayers feel? Brown seems to think that most Americans would be ecstatic to trade their tax rate of approximately 35% for a transaction tax of just 1/5 of one-percent, or twenty cents per hundred dollars.

It's all in his book, "The V4 Victory Tax: True Tax Reform in the 21st Century," offered in downloadable form at his website www.4victorytax.com.

"There are two ways to get the economy out of its doom and gloom," the V tax proponent says. "We can print more money or stimulate the economy through tax breaks. This would provide a huge tax break to Americans, by ending income tax, putting millions of dollars into the hands of those who circulate it. Americans spend money like no one else. This will get us out of the problem." And if Brown gets his way, it could be fixing our problems as soon as next April 15th.

Marti Johnson is a Freelance Journalist