Tax discussion thread (U.S. focused)

[Final-Fan]

My point was that (as I've said before) even if I cannot point to such studies (and I can't currently), that doesn't mean they cannot be found or created, so your argument that a progressive income tax is necessarily founded on fuzzy rhetoric is not true. Sorry about being unclear about that and if that's not what you meant, then never mind.

If such a (definitive, nonpartisan) study was conducted and found that the top 100,000 was just as useful to a person making 1,000,000/year as the top 1,000 was useful to a person making 10,000/year [edit: above bare survival income for both], then I would change my tune.

I agree that Hollifield's housing has hit diminishing returns, but you forget that we're not talking about a direct wealth tax or any other tax but an INCOME tax and you also seem to have missed the other objections to your example I mentioned.

The REASON I favor an income tax (and why are we suddenly back to this subject? just curious) I have stated before: direct wealth taxes on the living unjustly impact those with little or no income but who still have substantial assets (e.g. retirees).

I'm slightly confused by your closing paragraph, since we've had a progressive income tax for almost a century. I would think that most of the consequences would have manifested by now and the ones that haven't ought to be forseeable. Why the doomsaying?  ("Who knows what's next?")  Also, I could argue with your apparent premise that Social Security is a bad idea, but I'd rather not move so clearly beyond the scope of the thread when we still have so much ground to cover on topic.