| TheRealMafoo said:
Your quote "Money does not equal liberty" is inaccurate. Well, money does not in itself. If I were able to acquire it with no effort, it would not represent my time. I unfortunately, have not learned that trick, so for me (and hundreds of millions of other americans) money means time. My time. If all taxes were used for, was to run a government (pay for roads, military, police, fire, judges,congress, etc..), then asking me to pay that is not an infringement on my liberties. When you create a social program however (like healthcare), and I am required to pay for some else's service with money I am required to earn. I am working in the service of others forcibly. I become an indentured servant. That is a loss of liberty. So two ways to fix this.
Either one of those goes into service, then no longer is the government taking away my liberties (with respect to taking my time and giving it to someone else) As for your comment that no one is forcing you to become rich (and 1/3 of what I make goes to the government, and I am anything but rich), is the same argument that no one is forcing a man to marry a woman. You say not having same sex marriage is a loss of liberty. I could say that's true only if a gay man was not allowed to marry a woman, and straight men were allowed to marry men. Every man in this country has the same right with respect to marriage. Every one of then can marry a woman. If you don't want to (for whatever reason), that's not a loss of liberty. There you go, I used your philosophy about rich and poor, and applied it to marriage. It sounds just as stupid there too. |
Even a lot of conservative economists would call your ideas poorly thought out.
Flat taxes just flat out don't work, because they would have to be somewhere around 30% to work. That makes poor people's disposable income much lower, which means that over 95% of the consumers in the economy have less disposable income than they used to. I don't think I need to go any further to tell you that this will hurt EVERYONE, especially the rich people who own all the corporations that make a profit based on how strong aggregate demand is. Those with higher incomes more reliably save their income, so those who were benefitting from the flat tax system (the highest in income) would not be able to make up for the loss in demand.
So even if what you are proposing is "fair," it would derail the economy and stifle demand. And that would mean EVEN LESS money for rich people, since there would be less demand for the goods and services that the companies they own/work for offer.
So it is highly probable that rich people would actually end up making less money under a flat tax, since the economy would not be as strong as it would be otherwise. Not to mention wages would most likely have to be higher since most people would be paying higher taxes.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
