Greetings, Dave! > Good morning, Lowell... > > Lowell C. Savage wrote: > > > Dave Laird wrote, in part: > > >> Sure, if they make the tax *EQUAL* between rich and poor, it *MIGHT* be > a > >> better solution than the IRS. However, as proposed, the tax would > >> disproportionately penalize the rich and the poor, since they will > both, > >> in effect, be paying the same amount. The flat-tax theory is one of the > >> worst possible solutions, since a man who makes six million dollars per > >> year will be essentially paying the same amount of taxes as you or I. > Uh, > >> you didn't suddenly fall into some money, did you? 8-) > > > > Actually, the flat tax theory has the man who makes six million dollars > > per > > year paying the same RATE of taxes as you or I. So, for instance, last > > year, I paid "over 15%" of my income in federal taxes. Meanwhile, Sen. > > John F. Kerry and his wife paid about 12$ of their income in federal > > taxes. (That was NOT 12% on their wealth, it was 12% on the income on > > their > > wealth.) (Trust me, my income is only a small fraction of theirs.) A > flat > > tax would have us both pay the same percent, so if their income is 10 or > a > > 100 times mine, they would pay 10 or a 100 times as much in taxes as I > do. > > Most flat tax proposals actually have two rates. 0% up to a certain > > amount (they call it exemptions or some such) and then, say, 19% after > > that. > > ...and of course, the wealthy are in overwhelming favor of the flat tax, > because, it would cost them a lot of money, in theory, it's the right > thing to do, right? Isn't this more about who has the bigger and better > lobbyists in Washington, D.C.?
Well, the "high earners" are in favor. Note that "the wealthy" includes a lot of Democrat Senators--who just happen to be against it.... > >> Then we have the other pitfall to this ungainly proposal-- the > >> fixed-income families and retirees, who pay virtually no income tax > under > >> the existing system but who, under the quasi-new-and-improved system > >> would be obligated to pay taxes to the federal gummint. > > > > Actually, the answer to that question is to make it even more ungainly > by > > setting up some way to refund it or not require it be paid by those > > people. > > One would HOPE there would be such an exemption, but given my current > level of trust with the Bush administration, frankly I wouldn't be > surprised if he found a way to theoretically make the senior citizens of > this country pay for the Social Security deficit out of their own pockets. Actually, my understanding is that there are exactly such exemptions and some of the argument is over how much the tax rate needs to be raised to accommodate same. (Of course, this isn't exactly one of the things I'm "really interested in" so I'm not entirely up on it.) > >> No matter how you look at the flat tax, it's a sure-fire way for the > Bush > >> Administration to make dramatic claims that he has improved the federal > >> budget, all the while placing a MUCH bigger burden on the lower and > >> middle-class. Taxation without representation is tyranny, and my > friend, > >> it does appear to me that tyranny is the order of the day. Hell, we > >> re-elected the simpering slob, now we have to live with the stupidity > of > >> the majority of American voters. > > > > I'm not sure where this "taxation without representation" thing comes in > > here, since whether you happen to agree with the folks in charge or not, > > they DO represent us in the legal sense--they were elected by us. And > > certainly there are more votes in the "lower and middle-class" than > > anywhere else. > > Harumph. It is very, very early in the morning here in the Pacific > Northwest and I have barely crawled out of the rack, so I have a blanket > conditional allowance from which to make various errors in critical > thinking. Yes...it did seem a bit out of character. :-) > By self-definition, I am perhaps the last of my clan, a Berkeley > graduate with an advanced degree from the 60's who is unrepentant and > unswayed, and therefore not represented by George Bush even in the > slightest. The people voted for Bush were naive and easily misled (you can > note I did not say STUPID in self-defense), who took very little of > history into consideration while at the ballot box. The semantics of > taxation without representation probably does not apply, as I have used > it, but I am feeling very much unrepresented since George W. Bush took > office, and the feeling of disenfranchisement has only grown since that > time. Well, just so we understand each other. I grew up in Taiwan (I turned 12 in 1974) and saw and heard, perhaps a bit more graphically than some people here about the aftereffects of communist victory. I also saw a country with quite a different culture from ours go from having a right-wing authoritarian government to holding generally free and fair elections. So I firmly believe that the people of every culture want to be able to choose their leaders. All my life, I've seen "liberals" proclaim their hate for and the immorality of "right-wing regimes" on the basis that a few people are using those regimes to "oppress" the majority. In the last 4 years, I have seen "liberals" abandon that position for political gain. So, I believe that the people who didn't vote for Bush were not only naïve and easily misled, but also hypocritical since they wanted to punish Bush for taking down one of the "right-wing dictators" that they supposedly hated so much. They are also hypocritical since Bush has done more to dramatically improve women's rights for more women (in Afghanistan and Iraq) than any other politician alive (Reagan died a few months ago, remember), yet these same "liberals" claim that Bush has, in fact, constrained women's rights. I could go on, with homosexuals and perhaps a few other groups, and I could talk about how "liberals" used to claim that in order to have freedom here, people would have to have freedom in other countries, but you get the idea. That's not to say that I agree with everything he's done. Just that, on balance, there was no other candidate who appeared able to do a better job of increasing freedom around the world and (more importantly) at home. Lowell C. Savage It's the freedom, stupid! Gun control: tyrants' tool, fools' folly. _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
