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Setting taxation for all at a percentage of income isn't actually "fair", because some arbitrary percentage like 30% will be different by orders of magnitude for different people. One man might pay $10,000 in a year and another might pay $10,000,000. No matter how you slice it, we STILL have the rich subsidizing the poor in this case.
One fair option would be to have each individual pay the same amount to the government. However, this would not work, and I can explain why with some very rough figures: $2,469,000,000,000 taken in by the federal government divided by 311,591,917 people equals $7924 per person in the United States (source:Wikipedia). Even before noting that this is ONLY for expenditures at the federal level and does not take into account state and local taxes, this is far beyond an amount that low-income families can conceivably afford.
This is why the only fair option in reality is pay-as-you-go. Dissolve all or most functions of the US and state governments and leave them in the hands of the people. If you want things like schools, roads, or a police force, and you've worked hard your whole life and can afford them for your community, you are free to pay for them. If you want to help others who can't, it's completely up to you. Every penny you earn from hard work or self-investment is yours to use. There would no longer be any legal mechanism for the poor to tap into the wealth created by others.
Setting taxation for all at a percentage of income isn't actually "fair", because some arbitrary percentage like 30% will be different by orders of magnitude for different people. One man might pay $10,000 in a year and another might pay $10,000,000. No matter how you slice it, we STILL have the rich subsidizing the poor in this case.
One fair option would be to have each individual pay the same amount to the government. However, this would not work, and I can explain why with some very rough figures: $2,469,000,000,000 taken in by the federal government divided by 311,591,917 people equals $7924 per person in the United States (source:Wikipedia). Even before noting that this is ONLY for expenditures at the federal level and does not take into account state and local taxes, this is far beyond an amount that low-income families can conceivably afford.
This is why the only fair option in reality is pay-as-you-go. Dissolve all or most functions of the US and state governments and leave them in the hands of the people. If you want things like schools, roads, or a police force, and you've worked hard your whole life and can afford them for your community, you are free to pay for them. If you want to help others who can't, it's completely up to you. Every penny you earn from hard work or self-investment is yours to use. There would no longer be any legal mechanism for the poor to tap into the wealth created by others.
What do you think?
I think this would never work, nor will it ever be tried. The reason is simple: corporate America would never allow it.
Contrary to myth, it is the rich, not the poor, who are primarily sucking at the public tit. There is not a single major industry in this country, from agribusiness to aerospace, that can survive without massive public subsidies. Some these are direct, such as farm subsidies. More of them are indirect, and come in the form of government contracts. Take the case of Boeing, one of the US's largest aircraft manufacturers. Boeing wouldn't even exist without government contracts, mostly funneled through the Pentagon, NASA, etc. There are thousands of examples like this.
In short, while most corporate representative are smart enough to say they believe in the free enterprise system, none of them are dumb enough to actually behave like they believe in it. They know better.
One fair option would be to have each individual pay the same amount to the government. However, this would not work, and I can explain why with some very rough figures: $2,469,000,000,000 taken in by the federal government divided by 311,591,917 people equals $7924 per person in the United States (source:Wikipedia). Even before noting that this is ONLY for expenditures at the federal level and does not take into account state and local taxes, this is far beyond an amount that low-income families can conceivably afford.
That is why the progressive tax system has always been a scam, a means to promote class wars. The result allowed government to far exceed any reasonable acquisition of tax revenue.
Imagine if we had the old head tax system and we never moved to the system we have now. The reality would be that the government would be heavily accountable to the people and raising that head tax would have been met with a large amount of resistance for the very reason you explain above as to why we can't simply apply a head tax to our current system. The problem is not that a head tax isn't viable, it is that government has grown far too large and costly to currently implement one as it stands.
What this should do is wake people up to the demand that government shrink greatly to the point where a simple head tax would be reasonable for everyone. Good luck on that one though as we are already past the point of no return. With our current class war tax system, the politicians will pander to the poor to buy votes, so there is no incentive to seek change. The rich have the money to be able to evade the system (ultimately by leaving the country) and so the middle class will carry the brunt.
There is no way the middle class can carry the burden that the rich were paying and since they lack the money to easily escape, they will be driven to poverty. That leaves only a select amount of rich who are protected by politicians through money and power and the poor (ie the peasant class) who will be ruled over.
That is why the progressive tax system has always been a scam, a means to promote class wars. The result allowed government to far exceed any reasonable acquisition of tax revenue.
Imagine if we had the old head tax system and we never moved to the system we have now. The reality would be that the government would be heavily accountable to the people and raising that head tax would have been met with a large amount of resistance for the very reason you explain above as to why we can't simply apply a head tax to our current system. The problem is not that a head tax isn't viable, it is that government has grown far too large and costly to currently implement one as it stands.
What this should do is wake people up to the demand that government shrink greatly to the point where a simple head tax would be reasonable for everyone. Good luck on that one though as we are already past the point of no return. With our current class war tax system, the politicians will pander to the poor to buy votes, so there is no incentive to seek change. The rich have the money to be able to evade the system (ultimately by leaving the country) and so the middle class will carry the brunt.
There is no way the middle class can carry the burden that the rich were paying and since they lack the money to easily escape, they will be driven to poverty. That leaves only a select amount of rich who are protected by politicians through money and power and the poor (ie the peasant class) who will be ruled over.
You're dead wrong to think that the rich don't benefit from the current system. Here's one example: Rich companies generally require labor from the poor and middle class for the business to function. They'd have a very hard time getting these people to job locations if there were no roads or government-subsidized trains. People need general knowledge and language skills to efficiently do anything above the most mundane tasks, and this is provided by government-run schools. Rich people also benefit from entitlements. The money for food stamps, for instance, is removed from everyone's paychecks and then quickly reinserted into the economy, where it eventually trickles upward back into the pockets of the executives of grocery stores and food companies.
You also say that the government has grown too large, as though it is its own entity that does what it wants despite the wishes of the people, which is not true in this country. You can't see that people want a large government??
If we stopped forcing taxes upon people, we could return to a feudal system where responsibility for comfort comes from family and not from the government. It would be completely fair, allow most wealth and power to collect within perhaps a thousand families, and eliminate the fading illusion in this country that hard work and dedication can raise one's social and economic status.
It's funny because you and I see the same outcome from completely opposite taxation schemes. Actual historic facts are on my side, though. Countries with effective, taxing governments are the ones that have seen strong economic growth over the last few centuries, and I have not yet heard of a single wealthy person fleeing the USA or Europe to a state with zero effective taxation like Haiti or Somalia to protect their wealth, have you?
I think this would never work, nor will it ever be tried. The reason is simple: corporate America would never allow it.
Contrary to myth, it is the rich, not the poor, who are primarily sucking at the public tit. There is not a single major industry in this country, from agribusiness to aerospace, that can survive without massive public subsidies. Some these are direct, such as farm subsidies. More of them are indirect, and come in the form of government contracts. Take the case of Boeing, one of the US's largest aircraft manufacturers. Boeing wouldn't even exist without government contracts, mostly funneled through the Pentagon, NASA, etc. There are thousands of examples like this.
In short, while most corporate representative are smart enough to say they believe in the free enterprise system, none of them are dumb enough to actually behave like they believe in it. They know better.
Those businesses would survive without the subsidies.
However, the goods and services would end up costing a lot more for the consumer, who, by and large, and the ones paying for the subsidy so it all sort of works out anyway.
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