| Rath said: A flat tax is basically 'lets fuck the poor so the rich get richer'. It's obvious that the poor can't afford to have as much of their income taxed as the rich can. A flat tax is not a 'fair' tax, it's a blatantly unfair tax when you consider quality of life, it essentially means that the rich will be able to live a better quality of life than the good one they currently have and the poor will be able to live a worse quality of life than the poor one they currently have. Because widening the wealth gap is what everyone wants right? Also relying on charity doesn't work. Charity is nice, but it's not thorough.
Finally the 'trickle down' effect is complete rubbish, it doesn't trickle down, it just pools at the top. |
Should read the comments by most of the pro-flat tax people here.
Most of us that are for flat taxes believe that those making underneath a certain income should not have to pay taxes at all. In America, you can make $200 a month and still be required to pay approximately 20% to the government today, to get it back next April. This causes those that are poor to acquire loans or other forms of debt to survive today, while they wait for the government to tell them they can have their money back.
We need a flat tax system with a minimum threshold that one must make in order to pay taxes - e.g. $40,000/yr. Furthermore, we must ensure that there are absolutely no loopholes. The issue with our current American system is that the most wealthy do not pay their fair share because instead of politicians closing loopholes, they raise taxes...Which only hurts some of the wealthy. In America, we have a $350 billion USD/yr compliance industry to pay accountants to figure out our tax code. If we had a very simple flat tax, the money could be invested in better areas of the economy, and lift the burden of the poor and middle class from needing accountants and expensive tax software to figure out what they're supposed to pay.
In such a system, we could bring in a decent amount of tax income for the government (albiet not enough to pay for their runaway spending). The American tax system is atrocious, and it needs fixed. Making it simple and easy to understand would ensure that accountants and the wealthy could not leverage loopholes to pay less. Even at a flat 20% of income, the wealthiest 1% would actually pay more than they do now, at 35%.
Oh, and while we're at it:
- Privatize pension plans in America
- Offer vouchers to every child in America to pick their own schools based on merits, and not districting
- Privatize medical pensions in America (medicare)
- Get massive cost-saving government interferrence out of medicine all together
- Reduce military spending
- Decriminalize drugs and let 50% of our prision population free
....Of course, it'd save us too much money to do this, and give us a better country in return.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
