Originally posted by: Specop 007
Originally posted by: BD2003
Real convenient for you to say. As long as you capitalize it, it become truth. It may be an equal tax, but its not fair, or just.
We have tax brackets for a reason. Rich people can and should be rich, but there needs to be a limit to this, or else it is greed, greed that spirals wildly out of control. The richest of people make money not on what they do, but on compound interest from the money they or their parents have saved. With your *fair* tax, none of that would be taxed. It grows to ridiculous amounts, and the cycle just continues. More money goes to the people who have money.
Those that don't have the money, those that have to live check to check, will be adversely affected. Rather than paying a lower amount of tax because they're barely scraping by, will get hit on the head with a disproportionate burden. They're paying the same percentage, but they need that money far far more than the wealthy who complains that he only gained 1 million instead of 1.5 million in the stock market last year. Boo hoo....he's not starving, and because his money is making his money, essentially his earnings are coming from those working blokes who are now paying more and earning less while he works less and earns more.
Sure, you could argue that anyone could invest, which is true - but the flat tax raises the barrier of entry even further.
The rich are the largest contributors, ignoring corporate tax. Yet they still remain rich. You don't hear a lot of stories nowadays how the wealthier are getting less wealthy...quite the opposite. Flat tax = less tax from rich, so to make up the shortfall, it comes from the poor.
Might as well forget about charitable deductions, educational or child credits. Just what we need, a nation of even poorer people, less charity, less education, and less children (that last one is arguable).
What a fantastic idea. I wonder why we haven't implemented it yet.
We havent implemented it yet because poor people dont want to be treated fairly, they want special treatment.
Would it be fair if we just gave everyone a college degree? You reward ones hard work, not ones ability to leech. You reward ones drive for success, not their drive to do notrhing.
Your system, the current system, does a wonderful job of enabling people to continue doing nothing. It empowers the poor to remain poor.
Few people will admit it, but the fact is social systems are the biggest sham ever pulled on poor people.
The problem is you are measuring success by achievement, and ignoring opportunity.
The rich want special treatment just as much as the poor. As badly as the welfare mom wants to get that free check every month, the trust fund kid wants to keep every cent. Both want to justify earning what they have.
The welfare mom says I'm starving, I need food, are you going to let me and my kids go homeless and die in the street? She's right, and we as a civilized nation shouldnt let that happen. But give that helping hand, and she'll come to expect it, and feels she deserves it. It only ends up compounding the problem.
The trust fund kid believes that it's his birthright. His parents rightfully earned the money, so she should have it. And he's right. They most likely legally earned it, and why shouldnt he be able to keep ALL of it? But that money just makes more money, and it only concentrates the wealth in the hands of the few, which is something as a nation that we aren't really cool with.
In other words, dont think you deserve what you haven't earned. The wealthy peoples investment in our stock market etc, is an important part of our economy, and should and is rewarded. But there is a point where both the poor and the rich expect too much, for too little work.
The poor get a lot of help in this country, but it isnt a nanny state. If you've lived in or near a poor neighborhood, you'd know that regardless of the help they get, they lead sh*tty lives...theyre not dancing in the street from free money. No one chooses to be in that situation. They are there because they dont know any better, or don't have the opportunity to learn or do any better because theyre struggling to survive. The fantasy you are having about the poor people who live off the free handout and love every minute of not having to work is absurd, applicable to surely only a small minority.
The rich get taxed more heavily than the middle and lower classes, but at the end of the day, theyre still rich. They're rich because they are at the top of the pyramid, the pyramid which cannot exist without the middle and lower classes below them. So should they get taxed more, because they are rich essentially only with the help of everyone else? Hell yes.
Right now, the system is still functioning to maintain that balance, but it is tipping in the direction of polarization, which I personally think is a bad thing. I don't claim to have the answer to poverty...our current system isnt really it, but yours DEFINITELY isnt it.
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