72.5% of physicians favor public health insurance

[Tsukiyumi]

"Ridiculous"? Right. It's simple math. Person A loses half of their income and becomes homeless. Person B loses half of their income, and they still have 5 MILLION DOLLARS. How can this be any more obvious? Flat tax is bullsh*t.

No, the ridiculous part is suggesting that the tax rate would go to 50%.

Ah, okay. I wasn't clear on which part you were referring to.

As Glitch pointed out, though, even a modest 10% from a person living below the poverty line would put them on perilous ground, and a single emergency (car breaks down, they get sick, etc) would put them on the street. The same 10% from a person making $10 million a year would be a minor inconvenience, if that.

I like the idea of massive luxury taxes. No tax at all on any food or essentials like toilet paper or school supplies, but if you want a fancy (see: $1,000) pair of shoes, or a new yacht, toss on another 90%.

[stitch626]

Actually, a tax on luxury items would be much more "fair" that either system proposed so far.

[Vic]

I don't see why a flat tax has to include people who make less than say 20,000.00. Put a floor on it, anything below that level does not pay taxes, just like now. A flat tax is a hell of a lot fairer than what we have now. The wealthy get all sorts of tax breaks than the less well to do get, how fair is that? Married couples get to pay more than singles do, I know this for a fact. I was single for most of my life, got married in '07, here came the tax ax, wham, you get to pay more how fair is that? A flat tax eliminates all of those inequities, whatever percentage no deductions period.

[sunnyside]

In principle I actually support a luxury tax. Better than the somewhat seriously proposed "fairtax" that puts a sales tax on everything.

Though in practice you'd have to be very careful with that sort of a thing. First off all because whoever legislates it would probalby assume people will buy the same number of luxuries when the price doubles, which won't be the case. And also that you'd likely see grey markets cropping up.


As to the fairness thing, while it's possible someone with a good job or even the owner of a company got their because of their parents passing it on (though we have estate taxes to take a chunk out of that), most often it's through having worked harder and smarter up to that point, while a janitor likely spent high school goofing off.

I suppose I should seperate respect and what I think a proper system should do for monitary rewards. A janitor who made some poor life choices early in life, but is working hard at two jobs to put in hours like a high end salaried worker, gets the same level of respect, and more than a hypothetical CEO who only has to put in 40 hours a week.

For monitary rewards I do think the early life choices should factor in, and to have a better functioning economy pay should be allowed to, for the most part, be determined by the market. But, yes, tax the rich more. Not arbitrarily massive amounts, and don't let the poor off completely. Also from an economic point of view keeping taxes on the lower incomes down encourages jobs here as the employees don't need to be paid as much.