Why not have a REAL flat tax?

I don't mind helping since you're such a swell guy.

It's called a user fee.


And the poll tax (head tax) is also extremely fair. Plus, a side-benefit of a poll tax, people might spawn fewer rugrats that they can't afford .

A much fairer system would be that all who think like you contribute all disposable income after housing and other necessities to the common fund. It's very simple to administrate. And it's the most fair (other than a user fee, poll tax or flat tax) since the only persons paying disproportionately more in tax are those who advocate taxing people as much as possible in the first place.

What could be fairer than the golden rule?

If I had my way, Tuttle, nobody you or I have ever met would have greater taxes; in fact, they'd have much lower.

You can't? I thought you had a better grasp of economics than that.

If you get a more or less fair return, in the form of goods or services, for money you pay, it is not stealing. Thus, if people are taxed in a way that more or less covers the services they use that are paid for out of tax money, it cannot rightly be called stealing.

But to simply reason, "Hey, they have a lot of money, and we would like to have it, so we'll take it without giving them any more advantages for their money," that is stealing.

Are you really going to pretend you can't see the difference between those two ways of raising tax money?

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Since the whole concept of property is defined and maintained by government, I don't think the word "stealing" ever applies. That is not to say that all taxes are just and sound.

This is where I disagree with you thoroughly and fundamentally. Therefore, any conclusions that flow from this absurd proposition are not logically supported.

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I don't accept the "stealing" argument at all for reasons similar to the one Rob gave, but if one proceeds with your argument, taking your money without your permission is stealing regardless of what it's spent on. It makes little difference if those who steal it decide to use it to buy you stuff.

IMO you're trying to have your cake and eat it here.

Without entering the debate on one side or the other, this definition is really the type of thing that is at the core of the issue.

But you can't really say that the conclusions are not "logically" supported based solely on a disagreement on this particular statement. They are supported BY that statement.

Debating whether or not the statement is valid is another thing entirely.

Yes you can. That's the whole point of logic. In formal logic, a conclusion is said to be "logically supported" if all the terms are unambiguous, all the propositions are true, and the form of the argument is valid. If any of that is false, or contested, then the conclusion does not meet the criteria for "logically supported."

It seems to me that you are trying to contest the term that logicians use. You are of course free to do so, but you are not free to tell someone else that the standard definition of the term is not valid. Only that you, personally, want to use some other term than the one that is commonly used.

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I've always been fascinated by the term "progressive" tax. I understand why the term is used, since the rate at which you're taxed progresses as your income rises, but progressive tax schemes are almost always regressive in their effects. Simply put, a "progressive" tax undercuts the motive for putting out maximum effort and being successful. If I work really hard and catch the right breaks and figure out the market properly, I become successful and make more money. Which the government then takes away from me to support someone who didn't work as hard, or wasn't as good at figuring the market, or didn't recognize an opportunity when it presented itself. That removes my incentive, or at least reduces it, and I'm unlikely to work as hard in the future (this is also the core issue that makes communism unworkable in the real world). Under some people's vision of how this should work, some self-appointed elite gets to decide when I have "enough" and compels me to surrender anything above that to the "common good" which, conveniently, that same elite has also defined.

IMHO the only "fair" tax is a flat-rate tax on income above a certain minimum - probably something above what we call the "poverty line". No deductions allowed.

You are missing the point of what I am saying. You've simply stated that his statement was wrong (without giving any justification), and then you are using that as your justification to discredit the rest of his argument.

You have to argue why that statement is invalid, you can't just "assume" it is and then claim that you can now use that assumption as a "logical" rebuttal.

So, my point is that you need to actually argue THAT point, not step around it and use it to discredit the rest of what he said.

Otherwise, your fancy statement might as well just say "you're wrong".

He may actually be wrong, but you aren't really debating if you don't at least make some justification.

I think he's basically getting at the same thing I was getting at, which is this: Is there any argument against a progressive income tax and for a flat tax that cannot just as easily be used against a flat tax and for a head tax?

Let's imagine that the for the last 100 years we've had some sort of national flat/sales tax in place.

Somebody sell me on switching to a 'progressive' income tax.

However, that's not how it generally works, at least not in the U.S. You're not required to surrender anything above a certain level, and under every system I'm familiar with, the tiers are set up so that no matter what your income level is, there is no point at which earning more money would end up putting you behind after taxes.

That's with most graduated income taxes. Where I admit there is a lot of potential for problems is with the line we've been hearing a lot from the Obama administration -- "this will be paid for by ending this deduction or that deduction for people making over $200,000 a year." If there are a half-dozen substantial deductions that you can get at $195,000 but not at $205,000, then it probably does become feasible to lose money by making more money, and that's obviously a problem.

If we had a national flat/sales tax in place and it actually worked -- we could do everything we needed to do, without the flat tax rate being so high as to keep working-class people in crippling poverty -- there would be no need to switch. In fact, I think the flat tax is a very appealing idea -- and the head tax even more so -- in theory.

However, I suspect the argument would go something like this:

"Our infrastructure is crumbling, there's no safety net keeping our senior citizens from living in poverty, and our military is still using equipment from the Korean War. We're a second-rate power rapidly on our way to becoming a third-rate power, and our lowest-income citizens are on the verge of armed revolt because they're being taxed to death by a government that still isn't capable of doing much of anything."

Believe it or not, there actually IS an income threshold in which your Income minus Taxes leaves you with slightly less if you go above that income threshold. It's around $150,000 right now.

A head tax would be fairest. Fair doesn't seem to be what government is after though.

Really? Federal or state? That seems like an awfully big mistake to make in setting up the structure.

Is it because of the way the tiers are set up, or is it because of things like thresholds above which deductions go away?

^^^ Federal.

It has to do with what percentage of certain things you're allowed to claim. Above the threshold you can't claim the entire amount of certain things. And, if I recall correctly, there are certain things that you can't claim AT ALL if you are above the threshold.

I'm not at that part of the curve yet. I still keep most of what I make.

You've also got to consider that as people get into the higher income ranges, they devote greater effort to sheltering that income from taxes.

The "targets" should be dictated by what is made available by the flat tax. I live within a budget, so can the government and everyone who relies on it.

You assume our population would still look, act, and be as large as it is now.

If that were the case, how would we decide how much to tax?

Without government, the only things one can "own" are those that he can personally carry on his person and/or defend. You couldn't "own" a house without government; some barbarian horde would just raid it, kill you, and maybe burn it down. Even if they didn't, how could the house have come into your possession in the first place? Did you build it yourself, using materials from lands no doubt claimed by people who were there before you? Would you trade it for something else that you obtained by stealing or harvested from lands which thousands have used before you?

Without government, the concept of property has no meaning. Government organizes what we own, creates the terms on which is exchanged, and defends it from those who would, in a state of nature, simply take it from you.

And now the barbarian hordes!

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I actually agree with this statement, and doing so doesn't mean that one is rah rah government IMHO!

I like the idea of a flat income tax. Of course the original post's facetious proposal goes about it the wrong way. Everyone gets taxed according to a fixed percentage of income utiliy rather than a fixed percentage of income. Anyone who's taken and understood econ 101 and therefore can understand the concept of declining marginal utility of wealth will understand exactly why this is a reasonable thing, and everyone else has no business discussing tax policy.

So, there are the people who buy into your contorted rationalizations, and those who are too stupid to have any right to an opinion, eh?

Go fuck yourself.

Since marginal utility declines at different rates for different people, and the government cannot possibly know or determine what that rate is for each person, you're implying that people should set their own tax rates. I like it.