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Super curious why you support a flat tax over our current progressive system.
by harryh 8y ago
Super curious why you support a flat tax over our current progressive system.
- rayiner 8y agoI think the “tax the rich to pay for services for the middle class” trend in our politics is not conducive to unity and stability. A flat tax would lessen the desire to increase taxes since everyone would have to bear an increase.
- geofft 8y agoWouldn't that only work if there were some difficult-to-overcome mechanism (like a constitutional amendment) mandating a flat tax but letting the percentage vary easily? If you don't have that, a flat tax is going to lessen the desire to increase the flat tax rate, but it isn't going to do a thing to the desire to re-implement a progressive tax.
- rayiner 8y agoWe’ll never get a flat tax, so this is kind of under the assumption that we somehow get and maintain one.
- tptacek 8y agoWait, isn't that sort of empirically untrue? We were less polarized when our tax code was much more complex and onerous than it is now.
- rayiner 8y agoWasn’t the reason for higher taxes at that time to pay for the war effort and defense? Not to get rich people to pay for healthcare and education for middle class people?
- pcwalton 8y agoMaybe for health care, but tuition at, for example, the University of California used to be entirely funded by rich people's tax dollars. This ended with the tax revolts of the late '70s.