This is in reply to a post by Fantomas made on the 311 thread:

I get the impression that you somehow think your opinions count for more than everyone else's. If it is because you somehow think you are a member of the "intellectual elite", it does not mean that the viewpoints and opinions expressed by us "lesser people" do not have merit. And yes, I said opinion. I realize that there are people on this board who will take one single word in a post and start yelling "prove it" like little children. That is why I try to keep my posts to include OPINIONS as much as possible.

Having said that I would like to refer you back to my post where I said that everyone SHOULD pay the same tax rate. I used capital letters because I knew that someone like you would come along and start saying "you have no facts".

My OPINION is this: Everyone should pay the same amount of income tax, proportionate to what they make.

That is a very simple statement. If you want to twist and turn it to include exemptions, loopholes or other things feel free.

But keep in mind I have a right to my opinion on this board. If you do not like it please present whatever argument you would like to counter it. But do not try to belittle me or my opinion. You do not know me, for all you know I could be a High School dropout or the CEO of a think tank. It does not matter. We are all equal.

Try this
written by a Republican

[ March 14, 2004, 10:25 AM: Message edited by: CnSEA ]

You know...

Certain folks rattle on about how the rick get tax breaks that others dont...

However, lower income folks get tax breaks that the rich dont get... EIC... 401k deductions (which fall as your income goes up).. college loan interest deductions... child care deductions... Shall i go on? All of these are not available to the rich... are they somehow better or ok because they benefit the poor rather than the rich?

Tax breaks are there for everyone, however when you are paying boat loads of money, rather than a few thousand each year... of course that is why it "looks" like they get a better deal.

Commie-pinko's always use the % arguement when saying this or that... then when it comes to actual money given back in a tax break... they switch to whole dollars. Why? to scare granny who doesnt know any better...

carry on...

But keep in mind I have a right to my opinion on this board.

Exactly where did he say you don't?

If you do not like it please present whatever argument you would like to counter it.

He already did. "Get a job and start paying taxes" ring a bell?

But do not try to belittle me or my opinion.

He didn't do that. But he's a smart guy, and he writes well. Sometimes, it's hard not to look like a fool in comparison.

You do not know me, for all you know I could be a High School dropout or the CEO of a think tank.

Think tanks have CEOs?

It does not matter. We are all equal.

Okay.

If you are going to try and make someone look stupid it's usually a good idea not to make yourself look like one first. I was the one that made the above comment, not the other guy.

Trust me, I know full well that it was you who came up with that quip and not fantomas.

fantomas would say something like, "that was so intellectually bankrupt, it's not even funny."

The "get a job and start paying taxes" line is something a blowhard who has run out of ammo would fall back on. Like my dad. Not fantomas.

Listen, we've all been on the receiving end of his withering replies. I realize I'm being a dick here. But there's something ugh about starting a separate thread to whine about hurt feelings.

I'm glad you have the ability to read my emotions over time and space. Nonetheless, if you don't like a thread simply ignore it and let it die, or are you the one with hurt feelings? I am not your dad.

must not...can't...must not...can't resist.

You could have just started a thread about flat tax. Something like, "I'm in favor of a flat tax based on...and this is why... What do you think?"

Which would mean none of the"you think you're so smart, you don't have to belittle me wah wah" stuff from another discussion.

So, why is a flat tax better for this country than the system we now have?

Apart from the obvious problem of all those freeloading poor people, who are drowning in entitlements and tax breaks, and the lazy, good for nothing lower middle class slobs who take, take, take and never give back, while the rich struggle to keep their heads above water and are practically taxed out of existence.

[ March 14, 2004, 04:10 PM: Message edited by: TomFord ]

Tom, truce! I started this thread because other members thought (rightly so) that it was not appropriate to be griping about taxes on the 311 thread (where this all started).

Please keep in mind this is my opinion! I am presenting this for discussion, and I would like to hear your opinion too.

I believe we should have a flat income tax rate. H&R Block would go out of business because it would be very simple. We would have no write offs, no tax breaks, no loop holes, no deductions, nothing except for a simple percentage of your gross income that goes to the government. That percentage would be the same for all people no matter how much or how little they make. It is fair. The more money you make the more money you would pay. There would be no need to file taxes because nobody would get a refund and nobody would owe money on April 15.

I'm sure both the rich and the poor would find reasons why this should not happen. But I think they balance out in the end.

Other opinions are welcome!

Be careful, timber, or JIP will come here with his rude and ignorant diatribes. Hateful, spiteful socialists like him ought to practice what they preach. Tolerance? Anti-discrimination? Yeah, right. His ilk spew venomous insults at folks like you only because they can't face facts or reality.

Let's have a discussion on taxes based on some intelligent ideas and not "F--- You" insults hurled by someone who thinks it's best to make things fairer by socking it to those with more money.

[ March 14, 2004, 05:25 PM: Message edited by: MIB ]

Timber07:

If you put forward an opinion, you should be willing to back it up. Just repeating something doesn't make it a fact. I have no idea who you are or what you do, but I do see that your politics are conservative, and that you agree often with conservative statements (and arguments). Many people on the right here--MIB, William1865, gmg, Ump when he was posting here, Hulaboy, etc.--put forward opinions, contradictory to my beliefs, that I have to admit are right on. I have to say, I agree with many on the right on immigration reform--and have been increasingly persuaded by arguments from the conservative side. TomFord and I went back and forth repeatedly on the Iraq II War. If you put your opinions here and people disagree with them, then be ready to accept that people will not simply agree with you. This is not an echo chamber. I say this because posters here are all over the political spectrum, and are not going to agree with everything you say, least of all something that's unsupported by something (rational argument, facts, etc.). There are many progressive and liberal posters here who disagree with me and have told me so, and I accept that.

I tried to point out that I personally pay a lot of taxes. I am not a fan of taxes, especially high taxes. I also am not a rich person, and I am not really benefitting from all these tax cuts that the pResident has passed. As far as I can tell, neither is the economy as a whole. I pointed out that this is not only *my* personal opinion, but the opinion of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Now, John Kerry and the other Democrats may agree with my opinion. And W and most Republicans (outside the ones from New England and John McCain in the U.S. Senate) may disagree. So I went to a non-partisan source to back up my opinion. You can do that as well. William, whom I often disagree with, does it quite often.

However, I also realize that we live in a huge country that has incredible and steadily growing (as opposed to decreasing) infrastructure needs, that there are numerous governmental programs that benefit everyone and that the vast majority of Americans want and need (from Social Security to Medicare to enforcement of immigration laws to federal air marshalls to inspection of our food, etc.), and that governmental revenues are the chief means to fund them.

I also realize that someone who earns 1/4th or 1/2 of what I earn, who is raising a family and trying to pay their bills (housing, utilities, transportation, etc.) may be in a more difficult place financially than I am, not least because their smaller income still doesn't mitigate the fact that they are required to pay sales taxes, property taxes (if they are able to own a home), and any number of fees that take a bite out of their pay.

In terms of the intellectual elite, let me just say, I know quite well that there are millions of people out there who are a hell of a lot smarter--A LOT SMARTER--than me, so I try to learn from them. Every day. I have not illusions about my intellect. I do find it telling that it is usually people on the right who rail against liberals in terms of elitism, when the liberal ideology by its very definition is against fixity and for openness (which is one of the reasons it is usually attacked, and why it is always the target of ultraconservatives throughout history). Moreover, many right-wing policies create the very kinds of sharp divergences in society, at every level, that define elitism. I mean, if you are for privatizing and de-regulating discrimination in terms of everything that has been public, certainly there are going to be people who can't afford to or won't be allowed to access these private institutions and organizations, right?

[ March 14, 2004, 05:48 PM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

Well said, fantomas.

i'll start because my brackets are all filled out and i'm bored, and the flat tax is an easy one.

the argument that a flat tax is an improvement over the current tax system due to its inherent fairness will fail because the flat tax is abritrary and inherently unfair.

nothing that is fair can be arbitrary; it must be uniform. and i'm making one assumption here, that being that the flat tax proponents wouldn't be so callous as to make someone pay taxes who works hard at a minimum wage job and manages to pull in an annual salary of 75% of the poverty rate.

if this assumption is false, my argument doesn't hold, but i would also need someone to explain to me the fairness of adding extra burden to someone in the circumstances i described.

so, we'll exclude those making less than the poverty level. but if the flat rate that we all pay is 10%, someone making 105% of the poverty level will be pushed below that level by the application of the flat tax. again, i fail to see the fairness in that.

okay, so if the flat tax rate is 10%, we could exclude everyone making up to 110% of the poverty level of income, so as not to tax anyone into poverty. but that 110% number is arbitrary. and nothing that is arbitrary is fair.

so, in summary, if we don't exclude anyone from the flat tax, we're literally asking people to pay money they don't have, or at best, have but need merely to subsist. and that doesn't seem fair, and fairness is the only attribute of the flat tax put forth so far.

but if in the name of fairness (and humanity)we exclude the very poorest from the flat tax, the tax really isn't flat is it? it is in fact graduated, albeit with only two strata, but graduated just the same -- like the current system. and further if we exclude some people from the flat tax, we would have to draw an arbitrary line delineating the payers from the non-payers. and nothing arbitrary is fair.

so, in summary, the flat tax is either flat, applicable to everyone, and unfair due to its harshness. or some are excluding and it is not really flat at all and unfair due to its arbitrariness.

a flat tax can't be fair, and a fair tax can't be flat.

Then why don't we just abolish income the income tax altogether? Would a national sales tax work? After all, if someone buys a boat or a $3 million house, that person's going to pay a lot more in taxes than someone who buys a KIA, small home, or just a simple televison.

I'm not claiming to have the answers, but a national sales tax with certain exceptions for food and medicine at least seems to be fairer.


Don't lump ME into "the right." I'm a registered independent and have voted for Democrats more than you'd believe.

BTW, I think Ump still posts on this board. I've seen some of his postings just recently, I believe. Unless you're referring to him not posting in certain sections. I wouldn't know about that mainly because I registered here well after Ump ever began posting.

[ March 14, 2004, 06:18 PM: Message edited by: MIB ]

If you disagree with something that I say present your argument. But the content of my posts are for me to decide. You may feel comfortable presenting an array of detail to your posts. That does not mean that my posts should meet your standards. If you feel that my arguments are weak so be it!

The important thing is that the arguments, weak or strong, are presented in the first place. Therefore I will almost surely continue to make posts that you may not deem acceptable.

If you choose to skip over them please do so. I will continue to read your posts though. My mind is open, and I may actually pick up on something. I feel it is sad that apparently you cannot say the same about my posts.

But, at least it appears we have an actual discussion of issues again. Time to move on...

I'll agree that you, nor I, have all the answers, but I don't see a sales tax as fair. A larger proportion of the income of the wealthy goes into savings rather than the purchasing of goods than does the income of the poor. So the poor will be paying a larger portion of their income in tax. This is referred to, I believe, as a regressive tax, putting a larger proportional burden upon the poor than the wealthy.

Any tax can be made progressive whether sales or income or inkind. What is necessary is the will to put that decision in the hands of the governmnent rather than the free market.

A sales tax is more awkward and complex to make just. Doing so would also be more limiting of the ability of individuals to make creative decisions about how they use their income.

A prgressive income tax fairly instituted in a monetary economy allows the lower income majority to stimulate the economy more. Part of that stimulation would come through the willingness of individuals to invest extra income in the growth of the economy through saving.

People have to trust the economy and they have to be trusted to do so. It can not be a one-way street that pits investor against investee in a dog eat dog economy. If I may state the obvious once again, we aren't dogs no matter how poor we are.

Truce timber. I don't know much about taxes. But I generally start from the position that it's the price you pay for civilization. From reading replies (such as the one by thersis), I'm not convinced that it would be more fair than our current system.

[ March 15, 2004, 07:04 AM: Message edited by: TomFord ]

A flat tax won't work, for the simple reason that it ignores how tax policy is made in this country.

The current gargantuan tax code wasn't the brainchild of a single group of greedy people who said "let's sit around adn dream up the most complex thing we can, so we can hide goodies in it for our friends."

It is the result of two processes. First, politics -- one at a time (or in bunches), diffrent interest group and the politicians they owned have proposed adding one more wrinkle to what's already there. Many of these provisions, on their own merits, are actually good ideas (although everyone will have their own list of which are good ideas, and which bad). Thus, what started as a relatively simple code in 1913 has grown slowly, in fits and starts.

The other process, which has given us many of the most complex provisions, is the attempt to fix real or perceived loopholes in the Code. Some of these loopholes were created by the political process, but many of them were built in to the Code at the beginning -- not out of evil motives on the part of legislators, but because legislators cannot possible foresee the creative ways that people will try to do business, and try, quite legally, to minimize their taxes.


Everyone who supports a flat tax argues that this process of give-and-take will end witha two line tax code that says, in effect, "give the government x percent of what you make."

Not so. Within five years, it will become apparent that this group or that group is suffering unjustly, and their will be move to exempt this or that class of income from taxation altogether, or subject it to a different tax rate. Once that happens, bye-bye flat tax.

In no more than 10 or 15 years, you'll have a flat tax in name only. Different rates will come in for different classes of income. This income will be exempt, or that income will be exempt. Deductions will come and go (they'll never get rid of the home nortgage interest deduction, for example; that'll come right off the top of your income before it's subjected to tax).

This is the simple reality of politics in a representative democracy. It makes fairness discussions irrelevant, although for the record I think those issues can be addressed -- set the threshold for taxation high enough, and fairness concerns can be addressed.

[ March 15, 2004, 09:34 AM: Message edited by: Skiguy ]

I have an annual seasonal gig as a tax preparer for Jackson-Hewitt, so naturally I've got a vested interest in the present system. That pointed out, I still think the "flat tax" scheme is unworkable in the current political climate, no matter how the issues may sort themselves out. Anyone in Congress who would try to remove homeowner-interest and charitable-contribution deductions would probably be tarred & feathered on the spot. As several previous posters have already pointed out, with the flat tax we would have a tradeoff between fairness and flatness. We can't have it both ways. Personally, my vote would be for fairness.

Back to the "get a job and pay taxes" issue--if you worry that your tax burden is unfair (and you think a flat tax would make it fair), shouldn't you just get a better accountant? (Flat, flat tax being unworkable.)

Part of my problem is that I automatically assume the taxes I pay will go to needy people and libraries and stuff. I never think of it as benefitting Comanche stealth helicopters or other blackholes. Which is why I'd never complain about paying too much. And the more I make, the more I know I'll have to pay, and would do it gladly.

I suppose if I had a better understanding of what the govt does with our money, I'd be outraged...on second thought, not. I've lived in enough places where the govt does jack shit for the poor, and it's not pretty.

Well, we could live without the overspending you sometimes hear about; i.e. $1000 toilet seats.

We could also do without farm subsidies or the continuation of Ronnie Raygun's Star Wars missle defense shield (about $1.1 billion a year, I believe, for that corporate pork). It's a give and take.

I'm a socialist so I believe in taxation. But to use one example that's local for me, Prop. 13, passed in 1978, has been by most objective accounts, a disaster for this state as a whole. Here's a pretty good article that was written during the recall when Warren Buffett was advising the Gropenfuhrer: There was an article in the Los Angeles Times about this and IIRC, his neighbors in Laguna Beach, who bought before him, pay something akin to what Buffett pays in Nebraska. I'm not a homeowner and I have no desire to be one, but I'd agree with that. The real problem with Prop. 13 is twofold: it made a 2/3 majority vote needed to pass tax-related legislation (which Prop. 56 this past election tried to overturn but it got trounced), instead of a simple majority and the cap on businesses being annually reassessed means that, say, Disney, is paying taxes based on what their property was worth in the 70's, not the astronomical values today. The hit to the tax base has been enormous.

Changing the voting % and removing the reassessment exemption are things I'd love to see fixed, but any politician that dares suggesting tampering with Prop. 13 is committing political suicide, end of story. What a freakin' mess.

[ March 18, 2004, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: Jim Allen ]

TomFord, I totally agree with you. I'm not sure whether the government is paying for $1,000 toilet seats, which was a problem 20 years ago, but Halliburton provides a real-time, real-world example of abuse of our tax dollars ($27.4 million in overbilling in Kuwait alone). And Cheney's still getting money from these people!

CNN: Kuwait MPs start Halliburton probe