[Nickel]

A few things I would do are:

1) pass a flat 15% tax regardless of income.

Bzzzt. No way. There are basic human subsistence needs regardless of how rich or poor you are...

I agree. What I would do rather than install a flat tax would be to ease the upper bracket to 25% tops (lower bracket would be somewhere near 15%). In conjunction with this I would put in a 1% (no more than that) national sales tax.

Well, I'll tell you what I'd consider. I'd go with a flat tax IF, and only IF, a sales tax -- called a "luxury tax" to make it plain -- was instituted on non-subsistence items. I'd exempt food (including restaurants, but not booze or beer), books and educational items, basic clothing, and the like. There'd be a range of taxes for items under, say, $200 (to be adjusted from time to time to reflect inflation and rising wages) of, say, 2-5%, 5-7% on items from $200-$1500, and 20% on true luxury items, like gas guzzlers, boats, foreign vacations, non-principle residences, etc. On that basis, yeah, okay, a flat tax.

[Nickel]

Most of the "rich" people live rather mundane lives, spending many hours per day/week working, running businesses, earning money and managing investments. Their wealth serves mainly to provide jobs for people who work fewer hours than they do, yet who still get enough to eat and have a place to stay. The more you "spread the wealth," the less wealth there will be. The FairTax would be much better than any type of income tax, flat or not.

You have it entirely backward. It's the surplus labour of the society that those with "a good idea" can avail themselves of that enables them to realize the ideas and organize a segment of society's resources in their own favour. Without that labour, those ideas stay just ideas. It doesn't matter how hot you get -- you don't have a fire without oxygen. Labour is oxygen. Society supplies it, and the wealth is society's. The rich should be glad for anything they have out of the ordinary. They need the labour much more than labour needs them. Labour can always subsist; it has for eons.

[Daphne64]

There's a lot of interesting ideas here. I was kind of hoping for comments a little more geared toward our current situation:

Banks exploding

Budget deficit 1.19T for current year (which undercounts TARP by $300 billion, doesn't count the wars, and doesn't count any stimulus package).

Deficit unlikely to be funded by legitimate buyers going forward.

Over 10,000 mass layoffs announced daily probably matched in equal amounts by layoffs from small firms.

States governments facing massive shortfalls.

Looming oil crises, fish population collapse, global warming.

It would also be nice to have implementable suggestions. For example: it would be all but impossible for a US president to shrink the size of government by more than 10% in a single term, unless the dollar has completely collapsed (admittedly a likely event). So if you plan on shrinking the government by some huge amount, give a little comment on how the destruction of the dollar would be a reasonable price to pay to meet that end, or some argument that it would be implementable by some other method.

[StormBringer]

A few things I would do are:

1) pass a flat 15% tax regardless of income.

Bzzzt. No way. There are basic human subsistence needs regardless of how rich or poor you are...

I agree. What I would do rather than install a flat tax would be to ease the upper bracket to 25% tops (lower bracket would be somewhere near 15%). In conjunction with this I would put in a 1% (no more than that) national sales tax.

Well, I'll tell you what I'd consider. I'd go with a flat tax IF, and only IF, a sales tax -- called a "luxury tax" to make it plain -- was instituted on non-subsistence items. I'd exempt food (including restaurants, but not booze or beer), books and educational items, basic clothing, and the like. There'd be a range of taxes for items under, say, $200 (to be adjusted from time to time to reflect inflation and rising wages) of, say, 2-5%, 5-7% on items from $200-$1500, and 20% on true luxury items, like gas guzzlers, boats, foreign vacations, non-principle residences, etc. On that basis, yeah, okay, a flat tax.

I stated a flat tax to be fair. The rich think the poor pay no taxes and the poor think the rich don't pay enough and the middle class gets the burden. If everyone payed the same a whole lot of arguing in the gooberment would stop and something just might get done every great while. There are reports that the top 1% of the country pay the largest percent of taxes yet they on average only pay 1% based on income. Now whether these reports are true or not I don't know or care. And the poor get all of there taxes back each year and more with the earned income allowance, and as one of the folks teetering between middle and lower class I to would pay more but it would at least be fair.

[Pops]

There's a lot of interesting ideas here. I was kind of hoping for comments a little more geared toward our current situation:...

or some argument that it would be implementable by some other method.

I think the implementation will either be due to painful foresight (which is unlikely in the US) or much more painful hindsight...

In which event most probably too late for the majority.

[Javaman]

Most of the "rich" people live rather mundane lives, spending many hours per day/week working, running businesses, earning money and managing investments. Their wealth serves mainly to provide jobs for people who work fewer hours than they do, yet who still get enough to eat and have a place to stay. The more you "spread the wealth," the less wealth there will be. The FairTax would be much better than any type of income tax, flat or not.

You have it entirely backward. It's the surplus labour of the society that those with "a good idea" can avail themselves of that enables them to realize the ideas and organize a segment of society's resources in their own favour. Without that labour, those ideas stay just ideas. It doesn't matter how hot you get -- you don't have a fire without oxygen. Labour is oxygen. Society supplies it, and the wealth is society's. The rich should be glad for anything they have out of the ordinary. They need the labour much more than labour needs them. Labour can always subsist; it has for eons.

Actually I am entirely correct. You did get one thing right.... labor would subsist...with high mortality, disease, hunger, grinding poverty and a life expectancy of maybe 35 years. Or you could accept the value of capitalism and recognize that it provides a better life for a given amount of labor.

And if there really is a surplus of labor, I'm sure someone, somewhere would be happy to take a job offered up by a capitalist who has come up with a good idea.

[Nickel]

I stated a flat tax to be fair.

Yeah, I know. But a flat tax isn't fair; that's the point. If you have two people in a room, and one has a loaf of bread to eat in a day and one has a slice, and you say, "Oh, give me 25%", how is it fair if at the end of the week, one guy's fat and the other guy's dead?

There are reports that the top 1% of the country pay the largest percent of taxes yet they on average only pay 1% based on income. Now whether these reports are true or not I don't know or care.

I do. Let's see 'em.

[Nickel]

You did get one thing right.... labor would subsist...with high mortality, disease, hunger, grinding poverty and a life expectancy of maybe 35 years.

Yeah, thank you. And "rich people" would be among them without the willing cooperation of others to invest their labour in other enterprises. So as you've just demonstrated, and admitted, labour is the fundamental, and wealth (concentrated or distributed) is its outcome. Not the other way around.

[StormBringer]

I stated a flat tax to be fair.

Yeah, I know. But a flat tax isn't fair; that's the point. If you have two people in a room, and one has a loaf of bread to eat in a day and one has a slice, and you say, "Oh, give me 25%", how is it fair if at the end of the week, one guy's fat and the other guy's dead?

I know this is going to start something, but how the hek is a tax refund at the end of the year, which is what we have now, going to make any difference whether he starves now or not...Your argument is not well substantiated on this one sorry.

[Ludi]

labor would subsist...with high mortality, disease, hunger, grinding poverty and a life expectancy of maybe 35 years.

Or labor would pool their resources and start their own business.

[StormBringer]

There are reports that the top 1% of the country pay the largest percent of taxes yet they on average only pay 1% based on income. Now whether these reports are true or not I don't know or care.

I do. Let's see 'em.

You will hear often such quotes like:

The top 25% of US taxpayers earned about 67% of all income, and paid more than 85% of all the taxes, according to IRS data

Which is true.........But the percentages are misleading and munipulated. We all know the bottom 25% dont pay any taxes at all right SO that only leaves the 50% in the middle with the top 25% so take that 85 % they are winning about and subtract for the 25% lower class not paying and OOOPS the middle pays the bigger share.......The rich are actually paying 61% of the Taxes at 67% of the (REPORTED estimated 10% of income by upper class is not reported) income which we all know is inaccurate with all the ways to hide money in off shore accounts................

Now lets use there numbers against them 25% makes 67% of all income WOW think about that.......DOES ANY ONE FEEL SORRY FOR THE TOP 25% NOT ME. Now lets break it down for every 100 dollars made 67 of them go to the rich.........And the remaining 33 dollars goes to the other 75% of the population so lets work that out. WHICH WORKS OUT TO BE 44 cents each out of every 100 dollars made in the U.S. HOW FAIR IS THAT.

So lets put that in perspective if 100 people worked all day and all 100 went to stand in line to get paid 25 would get 67 dollars each and the other 75 get .44 cents each. SOMEBODY WOULD GET THERE REAR END KICKED.........Yet this is happening every day we just dont see it..............

[paimei01]

I would declare all money illegal and ban any form of money. Then I would be put in some mental hospital
hahahah

http://sites.google.com/site/livingwithoutmoney/

[Javaman]

labor would subsist...with high mortality, disease, hunger, grinding poverty and a life expectancy of maybe 35 years.

Or labor would pool their resources and start their own business.

What's stopping them now?

[Javaman]

You did get one thing right.... labor would subsist...with high mortality, disease, hunger, grinding poverty and a life expectancy of maybe 35 years.

Yeah, thank you. And "rich people" would be among them without the willing cooperation of others to invest their labour in other enterprises. So as you've just demonstrated, and admitted, labour is the fundamental, and wealth (concentrated or distributed) is its outcome. Not the other way around.

The rich would still do better than the poor. As long as working in a factory or on a mechanized farm looks like a better deal than scrounging for something to eat, the poor will continue to work for the rich. The rich will get richer, and the poor...well, they will get richer too.

I had written earlier: "And if there really is a surplus of labor, I'm sure someone, somewhere would be happy to take a job offered up by a capitalist who has come up with a good idea" but you edited that out of course.

[Ludi]

What's stopping them now?

Maybe they're afraid of the risk and the responsibility.

You couldn't pay me enough to work for someone else anymore. I'm too used to being my own boss.

[Tanada]

What's stopping them now?

Maybe they're afraid of the risk and the responsibility.

You couldn't pay me enough to work for someone else anymore. I'm too used to being my own boss.

Congradulations Ludi, that makes you part of the 10% who is willing to actually do rather than the 90% who just complain about how someone else is doing it.

[Javaman]

What's stopping them now?

Maybe they're afraid of the risk and the responsibility.

You couldn't pay me enough to work for someone else anymore. I'm too used to being my own boss.

If "labor" pools its resources then it would be spreading any risk and responsibility among all its members. Or it could be that "labor" is only interested in spreading the wealth of others, the "rich," who were willing to take on the risk and responsibility themselves.

Another problem is that each member of "labor" would not be bringing equal "resources" into the game, so how would they decide who gets how much of the wealth?

[Nickel]

I know this is going to start something, but how the hek is a tax refund at the end of the year

Who said anything about a refund at the end of the year? We're talking about tax rates. How much they take off you paycheque by paycheque. How much you get to take home every couple of weeks to live on, less what's deducted. It's not like people wait till April to eat or something.

Maybe the bread analogy didn't cut it. Something a little more concrete, then. If Dave makes $20,000 a week, and you take away $5,000, he curses and swears as he drives his Beamer to his filet mignon dinner dinner downtown after seeing an off-Broadway play. If Sam makes $200 a week, and you take away $50, there's no filet mignon, there's no play, there might not even be a decent winter coat for one of the kids this year. That's what I'm talking about. To you, 25% is just a number. To real human beings out there, it's not. Dave could afford to give up a lot more than 25% of what he's making and still live decently. Sam probably can't even afford to give up 25%, let alone more.

A dollar -- a pound, a euro, a yen -- is a constant. It doesn't raise or lower the amount it buys to match one's personal financial straits. There's a point at which you need so many of them just to survive. Progressive taxes are the only way for a compassionate, democratic society to go. Flat taxes are for oligarchies and plutocracies.

[Nickel]

labor would subsist...with high mortality, disease, hunger, grinding poverty and a life expectancy of maybe 35 years.

Or labor would pool their resources and start their own business.

What's stopping them now?

Nothing. Small businesses start up all the time. Some succeed, some fail.

[Nickel]

We all know the bottom 25% dont pay any taxes

No, we don't know that. It's an oft-quoted bullsh!t story that self-servingly overlooks the payroll tax whenever it's trotted out. It's a direct tax on labour. Factor that in with the more visible income taxes and rework your figures to find out what segment of society is being depended upon in what proportion.

Now lets use there numbers against them 25% makes 67% of all income WOW think about that.......DOES ANY ONE FEEL SORRY FOR THE TOP 25% NOT ME.

Yeah, then why are you a proponent of a flat tax, rather than a progressive tax that would give back to society what their income could much more readily bear?