[initially posted Friday May 4, 2007 - 11:46am (EDT) on 360.yahoo.com by me, but they are soon closing the 360 site]
Of the systems of sales tax, income tax and property tax, my favorite is property, and the one I hate the most is sales tax. See why below...
[content is dated but I believe the message is timeless]
Oh my God! I watched the Republican debate last night and I was aghast to hear all but one republican candidate endorse the idea of a flat tax. (It was only Romney that stayed clear of the flat tax idea; he even suggested a waiver of capital gains taxes for middle class and down.)
The flat tax can only be bad for the lower end of wage earners and good for the upper end of wage earners. I never realized it more clearly than during a Q&A session with the renowned Warren Buffet, and the infamous Bill Gates. Buffet was asked about a flat tax, and he responded that the current tax system is way to flat. His point was that the vast majority of his increasing wealth comes from capital gains, and his salary at Berkshire Hathaway, though size able, pales in comparison to the stream of income from his personal investments. Because the tax on capital gains is "flat" for any value of income, and job income is not a flat tax, at the end of a year a low earning middle-class family with small investments in securities pays a higher percentage of tax on their income than he does. He (one of the richest men on earth) said he feels he doesn't pay enough taxes.
I believe we should oppose any idea of a flat tax, and instead have an increasing tax on capital gains so that the more a person makes the higher percentage they pay. After all, how much money does one parson need? Once you have enough income for satiety, the rest is unnecessary, and should not be difficult to share; well that is unless you suffer from greed and gluttony. I'm not against people that work hard or produce great ideas that improve efficiency and make the world better for it taking their just desserts, but it is the narrow world view that is most often the case that rejects the idea of more successful people paying a higher rate of tax. Typically the argument against is, "why would you punish achievement with higher taxes?" Which in itself is a selfish statement that assumes the successful people in the world were all on their own without the help of anybody. Yea, like a person is born in the wilderness without any caregiver, raises themselves on the land and comes to a society talks to nobody has no start up capital, and becomes a self made person on their own; HOGWASH! Nobody, NOBODY! becomes successful on their own. Their is always a bunch of people and institutions that supported a successful person in some way that do not equally or equitably share in the spoils of that success. Success comes from luck, opportunity, good decisions, hard work, support of others, and an array of other things. Many good ideas fail, and some bad ideas succeed, so luck is unquestionably a factor in any success.
Insurance is a way of spreading out risk to accommodate for bad luck, and similarly a tax system that has higher rates for higher incomes spreads out the success to accommodate for excessively good luck.
Please fight against any flat tax at every chance you get.
