Pfffft. Yeah, that's right...

Show me where I said that. Time to nut up or shut up.



Good lord, aren't you getting kind of tired of having the crap beat out of you like that?

I meant alias. And please get a new saying, you constantly saying "nut up or shut up" is getting kind of annoying.

Well said!

Nut up or shut up.

I actually do not remember hearing anyone blame the rich for something. Could you (or someone else) clarify who is blaming the rich and what they are blaming them for?

Mathematically, if we switched to a flat tax, the middle and lower class would pay significantly higher taxes, lowering their standard of living a sizable amount. Because of this, I do not find a flat tax to be a good idea.

You may argue that the current taxation system is unfair to the wealthy, however I argue in return that our current economic system favors the wealthy, and that our current tax system is a method of evening out that imbalance. This is a more complicated discussion than I make it sound.

Simplifying the tax system is another story. I do feel the tax system should be simplified.

This is actually very true.

There are MANY lower-middle class and lower-income families who get more money back from the IRS than they paid in. Through Earned Income Credit, and other avenues, you can actually MAKE money on the American tax system.

Truth be known, most lower-income families would NOT want the current tax system re-structured.

I know. Don't worry, I understand about the oversimplification. I might end up doing the same, so I apologize in advance.

How would they be paying more taxes then they already all? I think that people who are too poor to pay taxes under the system we already have would still be exempt. It would be a flat 20% for everyone else. The current system penalizes people for having more money. Of course capitalism favors the wealthy. In a capitalist system, not everyone is equal, and frankly, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's not like the money is going to help the poor that much anyway. Most of it goes to buying tanks.

Well, it would be nice be able to reduce taxes to 20% for everyone, however that simply isn't likely to happen soon. Heck, I pay about 33% of my salary in taxes, and I'm quite middle class. If a flat tax were implemented, I imagine everyone would be paying somewhere around 45% of his salary in taxes. This is a very large drop in income for most Americans. If we simply implemented the flat tax without cutting anything from the government budget, most Americans would see a huge decrease in their standard of living.

Now it's easy to say, "Then let's cut things from the budget", and it would be nice if it were that simple; I do support budget cuts where they make sense. But even if we cut the budget down to almost nothing, it still makes sense to have the wealthy pay more in taxes.

The concepts of property and capitalism provide lots of money to certain people. But these wealthy people are no more deserving of wealth than anyone else. They aren't smarter, more kind, more generous, or harder workers. They are simply the people who are in a lucky position to benefit from our economic system. Why have we chosen such an economic system? Well, it's because if we had a different system, people wouldn't have incentive to produce anything, and we'd fall apart economically.

So I don't think it's a bad thing to even out the inequality of capitalism by taxing the wealthy more, so long as we keep the economy in mind.

45%!?! Clearly, we aren't reading the same literature.

One of the ideas that is invariably connected to a flat tax is that whole "small government" spiel that the Republicans go on about, but never actually do. 20% would be just fine, if the government cut down a lot of programs, and reduced spending drastically.Obviously, this move would have to be made before a flat tax would be implimented.

No, it really doesn't, and it isn't easy to say that we're going to cut things for the budget, because it means that people get fewer services and handouts from the government which they might enjoy.

Right... But the people who have more money are the producers, or those who are clever enough to use what they've been given. Granted, their are exceptions like Paris Hilton or what have you, but the vast majority of wealthy people are captains of industry, or professionals of some kind, and it doesn't really matter whether they deserve to have their money or not, because it's their money, and not those other people who don't deserve it any more than anyone else's money.

It is bad, because it removes the incentives that Capitalism provides. It makes them false, or at least half-assed. There is nothing wrong with having money, and no one else is entitled to a rich person's money but that person. If that person feels generous, good for him, but just because someone is poor, it doesn't mean that they deserve to have the money more.