Repugs for Ron Paul!

[strokeitnow]

The reason I prefer flat tax is equality. If it ends up being 50% of total gross income so be it as long as everyone who draws a wage in the US pays 50% I am cool with it.

[trish]

However, as a wealthy American you use and benefit more from the services provided by the government. You probably utilize the federal highway system for your personal use. If you have a business, you probably depend on the system to transport the goods you provide and the parts you need to produce those good. Someone who can't even afford a car only benefits indirectly from the highway system. It's not equitable that he should pay the same amount toward the system as you.

Once again by suggesting a flat tax is fair, you already concede it's fair for you to pay more; you concede your greater benefits and larger uses require you, in the interest of equity, to pay more. So it comes down to a matter of totaling up uses and other benefits and weighing them against taxes paid. What you need to do to substantiate your claim is prove that uses, benefits and cost to the commons are somehow miraculously proportional to taxable income.

[strokeitnow]

Well try this one out, I am a single male. Drive maybe perhaps 6000 miles per year tops. Not because I want to by the way, where I live there is no public transportation. I have no children yet I pay taxes for schools. Give because I want a considerable amount to local charities, boys & girls club, center for abused women. Don't own a business that benefits from our transportation system. How am I using a disproportionate amount of the services provided by our govt?

[trish]

Do you own a business that benefits from the government launched GPS satellite system? Perhaps you depend on cell phones or the internet. Are you invested in companies that use the transportation system? How about the airlines (whose traffic control is government run)? Do you use the monetary system? Do you benefit from living in a society where people can read and write? Does your business use the mail system (which provides special rates for business advertising)?

We certainly aren't going to construct a tax system based on your special case. So can you prove that use, benefits and cost to the commons is generally proportional to taxable income?

[NYBURBS]

Look there are a web of services and just about anyone can come up with a theory on how people benefit from it. That is aside from the fact that the tax system in this country is insane.

We are all (well most) paying too much of our incomes into ineffective government services. Property taxes for schools are forcing many people to pack up and leave a town they have lived in all their lives. Our paychecks are greatly diminished in the name of military and social programs, so on and so forth.

Then there are the tolls (5 dollars each way on a lot of bridges in NY), but I notice all the time that for all the damn road work projects, we in NY seem to have some of the worst roads in the country.

It's not that many of the programs we have aren't laudable goals, it's just that the bureaucracy required to run it usually fucks it up and turns it into someone's cash cow.

[trish]

It's not just a theory that we all benefit and use government services. Business in the modern world is impossible without government. There are no "self-made men" who owe nothing to infrastructure of laws and services government provides.

Did I say the current tax system is sane? I agree most people are paying way too much, except for the top 1% who over the past 7 years received the benefit of the projected ten year budgetary surplus we had at the end of the Clinton administration.

Schools are in financial difficulty all over and they are largely supported by local property taxes. That system needs to change.

Yeah, I hate toll roads too, and privatization of government services will only increase their number.

There's lot's of room for improvement. But can it be shown that a flat tax system will fix these and other inequities? One thing I can say in its favor is that at least the rich will pay something out of what they haven't managed to shelter.

[NYBURBS]

I'm not necessarily advocating a flat tax, but I'm not opposed to it in principal either. You're right that the extremely wealthy do shelter much of their income. There's also the issue of all the people that work off the books or cash business owners that under-report their earnings.

[trish]

Indeed, those off the book businesses are a perfect example of unregulated free-market enterprise. They offer no protections to the customers or the owners; and as you imply, they put nothing back.

[NYBURBS]

Indeed, those off the book businesses are a perfect example of unregulated free-market enterprise. They offer no protections to the customers or the owners; and as you imply, they put nothing back.

Regulation that we all pay the taxes due and free markets are not mutually exclusive. With the exception of anarchy, there will always be taxes. The main issues are really how much in services do we want or need, and what system is best for evenly collecting the taxes needed to support those services.

[trish]

Regulation that we all pay the taxes due and free markets are not mutually exclusive.

True enough. That why it's not redundant to use "unregulated" or "regulated" as a modifier to "free market".

As far a what services to we want or need...that's always in flux. People always want more than they think until it's time to pay for it. The "wants" and the "costs" have to find each other over the course of time.