More About Flat/Fair Taxes

I'm glad to see y'all are willing to look over some of this economic stuff. I'm hoping that y'all will begin to look to these blogs as a starting point for forming your own opinions and gaining a better understanding of what we have traditionally been made to feel was not accessible.

The question from two folks was, "but there is a difference between flat taxes and "the fair tax." There ain't. Both are simply euphemisms for regressive taxation. What we have now is a progressive tax, where the more you make the more you get taxed. In theory. As you will read in Angry Bear's Experiment here, to understand better what is at stake in all this tax talk is this:

"If you don't believe a flat tax (or "fair tax") on the books is really regressive in practice, ask yourself these two questions:

a) Who gets a greater percentage of her income from tax free munis - Paris Hilton or a maid who works at the Hilton?

and b) Who is more likely to retain the services of a high powered tax services company which knows all the loopholes that can be used to shield income or inflate costs, and who is more likely to get a W-2 - Paris Hilton or a maid who works at the Hilton?

As to a consumption tax like the flat tax, all you need is one question: who has to spend a greater percentage of his income just to keep body and soul together each and every year of his life - Steve Forbes or a janitor at the magazine that Forbes inherited?"

What I really appreciate about this posting is that the attempt to make the neocon argument is there. Read it through and I think you will see that the what is actually being argued for by these ideologues is not fairness.

I particularly like how he ends it:

these are, to the best of my ability, honest arguments for something that a lot of people really want to see happen. But they don't have the decency to make the honest argument for it. And you can't have a debate with a grifter.

Amen.