I'm more a fan of replacing income tax with a flat sales tax on all goods.  Basically, the more you spend, the more tax you pay. 

Of course, this can unjustly effect lower income brackets, given they are forced to spend a much higher portion of their income on essential goods, and thus arguably pay an unfair percentage of taxes.  To solve this problem, I would forgo sales tax on certain essential goods, namely food and non-alcoholic drinks bought via typical retail methods.  For gasoline and other energy sources, I would at least limit the tax, and I would also limit the tax for the rest of the food industry, given paying a 20-30% tax on a burger at Burger King sounds outrageous.

So basically, something like this:

Food and non-alcoholic beverages bought via retail - no tax
Food bought wholesale and from restaurants - low tax
Gasoline/Energy - low tax
Everything else - high tax

I don't really know how that would work out numbers wise, but it seems like it'd get the job done, and in a much simpler and fairer way than the horrible system we have implemented currently.

yes i am also in favor of this, i would want a higher tax on luxury goods though.  Also low taxes on anything like clothing, shelter, and any kind of food.  Then you can take away pretty much all taxes being taken out before you get payed.  Huckabee was proposing something like this before.  

Yeah, I forgot about clothing and whatnot.  I need to expand the scope of what I consider to be an essential good!

Actually, if you look at test scores vs. funding, you find that the less a school gets, the better the grades. Compare inner city Detroit schools which get ~$16,000 per student with my rural Ohio school which gets $6,000 per student. Actually, you can compare virtually every under-performing school in any city with virtually any school outside and find that the inner city schools always spend far more for far less.

Heck, look at Cornerstone in Detroit. They have a 98% graduation rate and cost about $10,000 per student. They take the same poverty-striken kids on welfare and graduate them at a rate 3x that of public school. I wonder...Why should we continue to fund failing schools when we see private ones that do so much better with so less?

The (edit) rich pay less taxes?  Last I heard, the top 5% of our country pays like 90%, or something like that, of our taxes.  And while I will agree it is very difficult to find a full time job, the people that are searching can easily get a part time, minimum wage job that will at least help for bills (obviously won't cover near the full cost, but still helps)...I see places saying they are hiring all the time, even now.  So to some degree, yes, they are lazy, because they could go get one of these jobs if they wanted.  Also, if you'd look, its mostly uneducated people getting unemployed.

Now, I haven't looked into this but it sounds like the causation is the other way around. It's not "if you spend less money you get better grades" but rather "struggling schools get more money". That doesn't mean spending less money is the answer, it more likely means the money needs to get spent trying to change inner city culture, which is probably the actual culprate.

The reason private schools do better isn't necessarily that they are just so much more thrifty and smart, so much as culturally a private school is going to be vastly different than an inner city public school. You don't pay top dollar to put your kid into a private school and then they are spending their time trying to get their gun through the metal detector because a rival gang is gunning for you for dealing on their turf.

I really don't think that the spending is the causal agent here, and saying that privitization is obviously the key to better education because they get more for less, is probably ignoring a number of cultural factors. If you removed the inner city public schools where way too much is being spent on students, and suddenly there was nothing but private schools, all of the drug addiction, teen pregnancy, violence, abusive households, uneducated parents, and alcoholism don't just disappear because the school is thrifty and trying to aggressively seek profit.

i dont' have all the stats for everywhere in front of me, but for example in new york there is a direct correlation with graduation rate and the amount of money spent.  This is for new york state.

 School districts with graduation rates of less than 50% spent an average of $13,593; 

School districts with a 50% to 67% graduation rate spent an average of $15,009;  

School districts with a graduation rate of between 67% and 90% spent an average of $15,916; 

School districts with more than a 90% graduation rate spent an average of $18,551

Politicians talking economics, is like philosophers talking science, or postmodern writers talking about anything.

That would be awesome!!  Have you read anything from Milton Friedman?  I am completely for a flat rate tax.  Did you know that progressive tax comes straight from karl marx.  The only other option I would be for would be eliminating the income tax and moving to consumption tax.

Politicians are not usually the best people to decide economic/financial policies. Politicians are talking heads usually with a lawyer background. Lawyers usually do not fully understand economic policies. They only do what is best for their power brokers: Unions, Civil rights, Environments or Big Corporate business mates. 

A Flat tax rate system would be a terrible idea unless there was a tax free zone up to the first $30,000 to compensate the low income earners. The high income earners have the luxury of reducing their taxes through foreign markets and tax loopholes. There are always loopholes in a tax system for the rich elites to exploit. 

The military and police need  adequate funding to protect citizens and the nation's assets. Infrastructure, Welfare, pensions, education and health system need to be paid for by the collection of taxes. Wealthy people need to pay taxes and contribute towards society just like all other citizens of a democratic society.