Flat Taxes

I am all for them, but not the way that you think.

First of all, I am for flat taxes in the following manner:

1. Stop thinking about income tax, it is a stupid way of thinking about it.
2. Everyone in the country is taxed, no exceptions.  A newborn with a trust fund is fair game.  Grandma's nest egg is fair game.
3. Corporations are taxed, no exceptions and at the same flat tax rate on their both their revenues and capital.  No deductions.  And this will include anything made by a foreign subsidiary of a corporation who offshored American jobs to save money on US taxes.
4. All individual wealth is taxed, no exceptions.  This includes savings, capital gains, real estate values, dividends, bond incomes, every nickel earned, retirement savings.  Everything of value is in play
5. No exceptions.  No oil depletion allowance, no home interest deduction, nothing.
6. A complete freeze of capital flight.  Fuck you and send you to prison if you try to run away to another with our country's wealth.  You are keeping it for now, it isn't yours to take and go elsewhere.  On the converse anyone who brings wealth in keeps it here.

I think that it wouldn't change a damn thing for the bulk of the folks.  Most people don't really own that much and live paycheck to paycheck so the flat tax of around 5 % won't effect them.  The middle class will pay about the same.  The rich will get royally screwed and will actually start paying the piper for their lawyer-infested underpayment for the past.

But you have to couple this with a balanced budget amendment.  The money that you take in is all you get.

I think that the real problem is that folks think of taxes as a moral issue.  They are not.  Government provides services at a cost.  Those services can be debated endlessly, but they still exist.  I don't think that a privatized army is a good thing, think here Wallenstein.  Government inspection of the food supply is essential, think here Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle".  The FDA is corrupt on the pharmaceutical side, but it does a better job of policing than allowing the pharmaceuticals to police themselves.  And we have all had a great big dose of what happens when you deregulate banks.

All of these basic services cost money.  If you add what I feel are the worthy extras and you have a budget 2/3's of the current.

But this is a pipe dream.  The rich want their money and the poor want it as well.  The rest of us are just tools. It ain't gonna happen.  It is just what I want.