There is a caste system whether or not the government admits it or not.
The people that gain the most from the system should also pay the most to the system.

You would just cement the class system with your ideas.

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Walt Whitman
"I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences."

Well the rich would also benefit because of the overall benefit to the economy. This plan will benefit almost everyone. Also the rich could just spend less.

Sorry mwillman that how the tax is progressive post will have to wait until tomorrow.

And your principle of highlighting those castes and basing government policy on them does nothing to break them and everything to affirm them. We've had a progressive tax structure since God knows when, always with the wealthiest *insert single digit number* paying nearly half of the government's expenses and yet SOMEHOW the poor stay poor. No matter what you've been TOLD, the Bush taxcuts actually gave a 37% cut to the POOR and thus benefitted them even more than the "richest Americans" (households making over $90k included mind you) who only received a cut of around 32%. Progessive taxation does NOTHING to further your cause of economic equality (which is a losing proposition by the way, ask history, it'll tell you), and in fact is demonstrably detrimental to that end.

Agreed, tax the poor people who use social services disporportionately. Rich people don't benefit from governmental services, so you're right, they shouldn't pay the most into that system. You made my case for me. However, since the rich (and everybody else) DO benefit from free markets and low taxes, perhaps they should pay some measure of compensation.......ike say a flat tax of a low rate equal to all other EQUAL citizens? Yeah, good call man, you're so smart, I wish I'da thought of that.

Right. By making everybody legal equals, eliminating tax loopholes through simplification of the code, and pushing an aggregate drop in government expenditures my policy would cement existing class structures that are based on legal inequalities, loopholes in taxation, a complicated tax code, and massive government spending. Can I buy pot from you? Seems to me that your policy of progessive taxation has been doing just fine, why should I help out? Fact is that flat taxation and limited government spending represent the only sane and workable tax plan to have ever graced humanity with its presence. Unfortunately, corrupt politicians and know-nothings like Obama and McCain get bleeding-heart do-gooders like yourself to vote for them based on a system of gifts and blaming others for shared problems. Thank God for the informed electorate who have done so very much to PLUNGE this nation into fiscal insolvency. Great job champ, keep on voting for entitlements and voodoo economics, see where it gets ya.

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"Bring me that horizon".

90% of all wealth is controlled by 3% of the people.
If the 3% are paying 40% of all taxes then 60% of all taxes is coming out of 10% of the wealth.

And that is with a progressive tax system.

If you go to a flat tax then the 3% are only paying 15% of the taxes which means that 85% of all taxes comes out of 10% of the wealth.

In both cases the poor and middle class are paying the lions share of taxes while making much less money.


Your system does not create equality it increases the tax burden for the majority of people while decreasing the tax burden of the rich. The American dream should not be to steal your way into the 3% where you never have to worry again. While the masses pay the costs for all the resources your money uses.




Blah blah blah

I have heard the flat tax arguments before and they still don't impress me.
A flat tax is just another way for those with money to keep more of it.

__________________
Walt Whitman
"I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences."

The poor and middle class pay the majority of the tax burden because they're the majority of the population, and so as a consequence the tax dollars coming from that population segment will exceed those coming from the smaller population segments. A flat tax would actually DECREASE the tax burden of the poor and middle classes by dropping their income tax rate (while raising that paid by the poor, whose pay is untaxed as is despite their collection of social services) to around 10-15% (as opposed to the 20%+ currently paid by people making over $30k). You seem to think I propose a flat tax on our current budget, which is already unaffordable given ANY tax system BEFORE Obama's proposed nanny-state additions (which I suspect he knows are not possible but harps anyway to get votes). Flat tax, small government, and legal equality breed economic prosperity. We tried it your way, it sucks, so how about we try it my way now?

Did you just willfully ignore my entire post? Flat taxation does NOT increase the tax rate on those who already pay taxes, it LOWERS the rate for EVERYBODY but admittedly requires those whose incomes are presently NOT taxed to pay their share. The rich would see a tax reduction, but so would every other American tax-payer, many of them middle class homeowners who would seriously notice the 5-15% of their incomes left IN THEIR POCKETS each year. What do you suppose they'll do with that extra cash? Burn it, or buy new things and re-invest in an economy bankrupted by the lethargy of entitlement spending and central regulation? Your plan FAILED, it's time for a new plan that reflects REALITY and no the fantasy world in which contemporary fiscal liberals live where the government can pay for everything and nobody has to work hard.





Yeah, what's wrong with people keeping their money again? Your plan is aimed at wealth re-distribution when all it does is help make the rich richer. By using an overly complex tax-code that is easily exploitable by the rich (and complex law is the only way to form a progessive tax structure) you create a society in which only the upper middle-class who cannot afford highly paid lawyers and accountants bear the full tax burden. The poor and middle classes then spend what is left of their income on goods and services from companies owned by the very class of rich people who your plan failed to tax.

The flat tax puts money back into the hands of EVERYBODY (except those on the government dole, who should rightfully pay taxes), especially the over-taxed middle class (I'm one of them, nearly 30% of my income goes to Uncle Sam each year, and I make just under six figures, meanwhile Trump gets to hide his money using YOUR system of deductions and write-offs, thus leaving ME and the rest of the working men in this country (yeah, WORKING men, not the people collecting a government check for doing nothing) to foot the bill for your out of control social spending)) who essentially decide whether the economy lives or dies. A low rate flat tax with slashed government expenditures is the only way to run an effective treasury. Notice how individuals who deficit spend usually end up in financial trouble? Same thing applies to governments.

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"Bring me that horizon".

I agree that the loop holes for the wealthy needs to be stopped
and that corprations have to many ways to not pay taxes including leaving the country.

But you will never get me to buy into your ignore the less fortunate becuase you feel they are a drain on your pocket book ideology.

the flat tax puts more burden on the poor and middle class. I dont buy your argument to the contrary. The rich are not suffering becuase of taxes and neither are you if you are making close to 6 figures and have a family. Unless by suffering you mean you can't have 2 houses and you can only have a 30 foot boat instead of a giant yacht.

__________________
Walt Whitman
"I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences."

And how does this tax system plan on getting the poor what it needs. Right now food stamps gives only $300 a month to a family of four, and they get their food tax free. Well the big problem would be, since you can't drop food stamps, how do we cover for the rise in prices that will happen. $300 dollars is not enough now to buy all the food a family needs in one month, and prices keep rising. This system leaves the poor behind as the current system does. I see no change for the poors situation.

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Non concupisces domum proximi tui; nec desiderabis uxorem eius, non servum, non ancillam, non bowem, non asinum, nec omnia quae illius sunt.

You can't stop the loopholes in a progessive tax system. Progessive taxation by its complex nature BREEDS loopholes and evaporates the middle class, thus creating the same type of rich/poor dichotomy you see in Mexico.

I give to several charities year 'round because people need a little help every once in a while. To suggest however that it is a societal RESPONSIBILITY to look after the poor is idiocy, as such a proposition would deny the entire premise of property rights around which all liberty is built. Further, if you give people social welfare benefits for their housing, food, and clothing, educate their children for free, and pay for their health care (yep, the poor already have national health care), why should their incomes not be taxed? It's double-dipping; either they should get social welfare benefits, or a lower rate of taxation, but giving them both is redundant.

You just keep saying, "the flat tax puts more of a burden on the poor and middle class" without providing a sound theoretical or empirical argument to back-up that claim. The average household pays over 20% of their income to the feds each year, but with a 5-15% flat tax and lowered government expenditures, the tax burden for EVERYBODY is demonstrably lower. 15% is less than 20% when last I checked. Provide an arugment other than, "No. No. Kevin Bacon was not in Footloose. Nope, no he wasn't, uh-uh."

Do you even know what things cost? On my income I BRING HOME (after the feds rape me) about sixty grande cash. I own a home in a state with almost non-existant taxes (Delaware owns), but even then with electricity, insurance, grocery bills, and the like, my wife and I certainly can't afford to live like royalty (we live comfortably but refuse to use debt, like the poor do, to feel richer than we are). You are NOT in a position to tell myself or anybody else what they "need", that's MY call sport-o. A yacht? Really? On under $100k a year you think people are buying yachts? What planet are you on?

The difference between you and I is I believe that the poor can achieve something substantive whereas you do not. Hard work and determination coupled with ambition are a proven formula for success. If we shrink the size of government we shrink the tax burden for EVERYBODY (except those currently NOT paying taxes), and if we simplify the tax code, we ensure that the mega rich (those of us making over $50k apparently *rolls eyes*) can't hide their money, the country as a whole will prosper. You look down on the poor as people needing your protection. I look the poor in the eye as if they were any other person in need of a sense of self-esteem. That's the dark secret of fiscal liberalism that nobody talks about: it's nanny-state thought-process sees people as units of measurement, just like every other dictatorial system in human history.

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"Bring me that horizon".

I'd like to see the 16th Amendment repealed and the US return to the tax policy originally set forth in the Constitution.

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

So, why should three percent of the population pay 40 percent of the taxes? Why shouldn't they only pay three percent of the taxes? Why should the top 50 percent of wage earners pay 96 percent of the taxes?

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."