Dear Tom, I hope I got your definition of "neutral" right in the last post. As I indicated, I'd support a poll tax (so long as I'm an armchair intellectual and not running for office, which with my abrasive personality would be a joke anyway). I also support a flatter income tax. In fact I'd like to see something along the lines of the Forbes flat tax with a single rate above the exemption. I've got a master's degree in taxation and used to work as a tax practioner, and so saw first-hand some of the heavy cost of complying with the complex income tax. A simpler system would reduce the compliance costs.
I don't really want to replace all the tax revenue generated by the current income tax; personally I'd like to see the federal government spend a fifth to a fourth of what it does now. I agree that much of the problem comes on the benefit side, with almost everyone (except Democratic politicians in the federal government--I wonder why they lost the Senate?) supporting some sort of tax cuts but nobody wanting their own benefits cut. I'd love to hear some good (or even some mediocre) suggestions on how to overcome the problem. Under Gramm-Rudman, which lasted basically covered Reagan's second term, discretionary federal non-defense spending grew at its slowest rate since the 1920s, so it may be that the threat of automatic across-the-board cuts have the most success by forcing competing interests to fight with each other rather than cooperate to raise federal spending in the aggregate. It didn't last very long and only happened under the threat of huge deficits and indeed broke down when the "automatic" cuts got large, so I'm not actually too optimistic about the success of such things. DBL In a message dated 1/16/03 5:20:18 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >Dan, > >even more than direct/indirect, you need to specify what is "neutral". > >Given democracy, one (adult) person, one vote, a strong case can be made > >for a "neutral" poll tax. > >Of course it is not "progressive" like most income taxes. Flat rate > >taxes, sales/VAT taxes, even land taxes, affect some more than others. > > > >My own preferences are more towards a flat(er) tax, with a large (poverty > >level) deduction, and rates tending down (to zero?); a land tax, split > > >between local, state, and federal (1/3 each? 50-25-25?); and ever increasing > >taxes on pollution. I am constantly annoyed at the greens wanting huge > >regulation but unwilling to support higher pollution taxes. > >Um, to get rid of the last 5% of income taxes, I'd even support deficit >spending > >printing money (inflation, another fairly "neutral" tax, > >of about 2-3% per year). > > > >But of the course the MAIN problem is on the benfit side -- so many voters > >want, claim, demand, and only-vote-for those politicos who offer their > >favorite benefits. The demand for benefits drives the demand for tax > >revenue. > > > >And the coming (2020) Social Security baby boomer elephant-sized funding >gap > >is gonna be a HUGE increase in benefit demand. > >Europe is even more vulnerable than the US or the UK. > >Sigh. "What is to be done?" (someone said that... I know, what's is name > >the commie!) > > > >Tom Grey
