AMosely

Except that everyone is not fed, clothed and housed in this country, and those numbers are growing as the costs involved with doing them increase (gas, food prices, health care costs) without subsequent increases in wages. That's why people care about the gap - well, except for some people.

Guardianx11x

Not to put too fine a point on it. But "closing the gap" means exactly what you (leejo) said...everyone fed, clothed, sheltered and so on. Closing the gap loosely means a proportionatly larger middle class as opposed to talking strictly about the poorest SOB vs. Bill Gates.

Basically, the idea is not to "close the gap" so much as "fill the gap....with a larger middle class".

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leejo

I think then that "the gap" is a bs abstraction of anything anyone would actually care about. If your concern is that the poor are receiving adequate support, we could fix that and do nothing about "the gap." If your concern is that the middle class is shrinking, again that has nothing to do with "the gap."

The gap has a lot more to do with the difference between people who invest and those who do not than with anything else. It's more that the number of super-rich has grown than with anything else. Look at the archytipical "middle class" America. It's a man working, a stay-at-home mom. An easy-bake oven. Two-cars, modest house, in a modest suburb. You know, the sorts of 'burban homes that everyone and their cat owns today.

Middle Class did not mean a high definition telelvision in every room, premium cable, cell phone 100 text a month packages, etc., etc., etc.

IMO the middle class is doing quite well today. Every time I watch a show in which some "middle class" couple talks about how hard it is, I look at the house they're living in. It's HUGE compared to the homes their parents lived in. Fact is that middle class today is in much better shape than it was 50 years ago.

What seems to chap some asses is that the super rich are more numerous and more super-duper rich than they were 50 years ago. So you want a cut of that. Understandable.

So anyway, I am all for helping the poor. And I am all for a strong middle class. I do not support any effort to "close the gap" by fleecing "the rich", and I would be shocked it much of that money filtered through the government to the poor and the middle class.

Elwenil

What are you an idiot? If you tax people by a standard percentage of income, the tax would be based on your income. If you make the least amount of money, you would pay the least amount in taxes, if you make the most amount of money, you would pay the most. It would be completely based on what you make and the percentage you would pay from your income would be the same for everyone. There would be no more "tax brackets", you would just pay a flat 10% (just an example) of your income. How in the hell do you figure that would tax the rich less? We already do that, and it's amazingly unfair. Go back to school kid, you didn't pay attention in math class.

Also, by my comment on "the gap" I meant the apparent differences between the lower class and the middle class, and the middle class and the upper class. I don't mean the lower class to the upper. The middle class is doing pretty well, but the lower class is doing horribly and needs help.

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|TG|Elwenil

Steeler

In order to maintain the same level of income tax revenue when shifting from a progressive tax to a flat tax, you would have to raise the tax rate on the lower brackets while lowering the tax rates on the higher brackets. So the rich would be paying a smaller percentage of their personal income than before, and everyone else would be paying a higher percentage than before.

Unless of course the entire point of the enterprise was to reduce government revenue overall, which would require a massive restructuring of how this nation operates.

Obligatory fair tax link in 3...2...1...

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leejo

I think the flat tax is one of those simple, easy-to-understand, and completely boneheaded ideas that people like Ron Paul float from time to time.

Elwenil

The problem with the idea of a flat tax is that everyone thinks in terms of how our economy is now. With a flat tax, yeah, we would have to restructure a lot of how our financial system works, such as the minimum wage requirement, but I believe it would work in the long run and some restructuring is sorely needed in the economy right now. I for one would just be satisfied if we would get rid of the tax breaks for all this huge corporations and people who seem to skirt around paying their share. But whatever, I'm sure I'll be bombarded with various statistics, some supported, some not, for voicing my OPINION. Have at it.

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|TG|Elwenil

Steeler

I think most people would agree with that.

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leejo

My problem with this thinking is that getting from point A to point B (in terms of how our economy is now) is exactly the issue. If you're impressed with how patient and calm and resolute the American people are with a project like stabilizing Iraq, imagine how much they'll support any serious economic turbulence as we undertake this massive change and suffer the inevitable massive jolts.

Would I support a gradual shift toward a fast tax plan? Well like everyone else I suppose my answer is "sure". But the details kill that approach, since any gradual change means that certain concessions will have to be made by someone in exchange for the promise that things will work out later. Right there is where the bill dies in the Senate, because they're not idiots. It just seems irresponsible to me, and an inexperienced thing to suggest, to consider tossing that system and replacing it with something totally new. You cannot expect to replace any complex system with something totally new without some major bumps.

Another flaw is not recognizing that the tax code exists in its current state as the result of literally thousands of compromises. It's a long way from perfect, but it came to exist in its current state for many reasons, not all of which are nefarious or obvious.

All of this is to say that my main objection to the flat tax that it's just not that simple. My little life is complex enough that I don't want to just hand over someone many thousands of dollars without going through my accounts with a fine toothed comb to make sure that I'm paying what I owe - no more and no less. I'm willing to put some effort into that, and it seems lazy on many levels that someone wouldn't want to do that. We're talking about real money here!

Guardianx11x

I don't think I'm and idiot...but would an idiot know if he/she is an idiot. I suppose not and this might be a good example ALSO!! good news! I'm still in school so I don't have to go back! In fact I'll even use my high priced education to learn you some math for free!!! Pay attention.

Right now we are not on a flat tax:

If you make $350,000+ you are taxed about 35% of your income
If you make $50,000 you are taxed 25%
If you make $8,000 or less you pay 10%

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_..._United_States just a quick wiki link]

So lets go with your method...tax everyone 15%. Anyways, the rich would be taxed considerably less than they already are, and the poor would be paying more. It's obviously impossible to tax the poor as much as we do the rich right now because...well...they would starve to death if we took more than a quarter of their income.

Ok, what I said before still seems to stand. Looks like I'm not the one who needed to pay attention in class "kid". Class dismissed.

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xTYBALTx

In the typical flat tax proposal, your first $15,000 is exempted. So, with a flat tax rate of 25% (not 15%), it would look like this:

Income : Tax Rate

$8000 : 0%
$50,000 : 17.5%
$350,000 : 23.9%

The reason we are able to lower everyones' taxes is because there are NO exemptions of any kind - aside from exempting the first $15,000 of income, of course. Additionally, the money saved from requiring fewer tax industry employees to plumb the depths of our existing Byzantine system is all "free money."

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Current Tybalt theme song: Mason v. Princess - Perfect

Kerostasis

In the current system, about the first $9000 is exempted. So the $8000-income person pays $0 under both systems.

But those mazes of complex deductions and rules aren't all useless, you know. A lot of them were added for perfectly understandable and still relevant reasons. Simply clearing everything out with the phrase "no exemptions of any kind" is a bad plan -- what about business expense deductions? If you can't deduct expenses, running a business very quickly becomes a bad idea.

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Rincewind

I was always under the impression that Ron Paul's version of the flat tax was an easy-to-understand zero percent.

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~~ Veritas simplex oratio est ~~
No matter how far a wizard goes, he will always come back for his hat. --T. Pratchett

<---- You know you're getting old when you rely on your forum meta-data to remind you how old you are.

Required Reading for all TG sandboxers

ScratchMonkey

Richard Cook writes on the subject:

The Crashing U.S. Economy Held Hostage
Our Economy is on an Artificial Life-support System
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6239

Cook's website:
http://www.richardccook.com/

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Sig