Great idea!! Maybe the government can first get back the BILLIONS it gave Verizon and AT&T to lay all that infrastructure in the first place?!?

Go back to the capitalism alter and pray for intervention from the Koch brothers.

"Natalie Portman hot grits T-shirt eventually."

Before, after, or during the pregnancy? It matters...

just curious...

Why bother tracking by individual? The tax is collected at time of purchase. There is no need to track beyond that. There would be no 1040ez anymore... get it?

As for discounts on bulk purchases, so what? Its absolutely irrelevant.

As for Amazon and collection of taxes... puhhleezz. They can keep some of their accounting department that would otherwise be laid off for the reduced complexity of the tax system.

A graduated system is still in play, just at the back end, after collection and stated income are known. I think I spelled that out quite clearly in my prior post.

Too many assumptions... there are no ideal competitive markets anymore. Prices are fixed (and when I say fixed I mean rigged) everywhere you look, in every market from food to advertising.

And you're not looking at the entirety of the income statement and balance sheet for manipulation opportunities, and there are currently way too many of those.

You set the sales tax rate flatly, and then settle the disproportional tax levy on the annual filing where you can have a simple, clean, discount rate based on reported income.

This is clean, simple, and inevitably fair. It is NOT perfect, but a hell of a lot better than the mess we've got right now.

Poorer folks will pay more in real terms over the course of the year, but they'll get a check back each year from the government to reimburse them. That check could include an inflation calculation, etc... to offset the initial outlay.

You can toy with the idea of setting up sales tax exempt items (such as food), but then you start to make the whole thing more complicated, and prone to manipulation.

I conduct my personal and professional life by the KISS model. I think our government can learn from it.

Both you and PP need mod points for insightfulness.

They should do away with the gas tax (and any other tax at any level of government meant to repaire roads) and put in place a tax on any vehicle, payable at time of registration (annually) based on the Gross Vehicle Weight and mileage change from previous registration, which is known of EVERY vehicle type, including big trucks. This is fair in every respect I can think of, without the intrusiveness of GPS, etc...

Do I have to be taxed for something until the pirates stop plundering my tax dollars for their own purposes?

Seriously, we have a plethora of taxes on the books already to facilitate this, at the federal, state, and/or local level.

Fine, you want another tax specifically for road maintenance? Then reduce my state and local taxes by an equivalent percentage as they are already supposed to include money for this.

The rate (change) in productivity increases is far out-stripping the rate of deflation (actually by many orders of magnitude now as you point out that deflation is being actively discouraged).

The problem is, even under ideal conditions, the rate of productivity increases far outpaces the rate of deflation even if deflation were allowed to occur. While perhaps in a macro-sense (centuries) this would be OK, in the short term this is NOT a good thing.

Even if the rates were equal, this is still a problem as productivity increases means employment elimination. Even a 20% decrease in a product price is out of the reach of someone with $0 income.

Yes. The Utopia of the part-time job being called for is here!! The problem is that no one realized that the pay scale and lifestyle would also have to adjust.

This is NOT some phenomenon that occurred without warning or thoughtful consideration. The powers that be knew this long ago. It is well documented throughout history, with many acknowledgments. People just never seemed to understand...

Don't be silly! We wouldn't do that to ourselves, just the rest of you!

You, for one, should welcome your new, snarky, nerdy, overly rational, and socially inept overloads.

Resources are not finite, at least not to any scale which should concern us for many millenia. There is an entire universe out there.

Thanks. I was going to argue this point until I saw your post.

Statistics will tell you whatever you want them to. I should know, its what I do. How about considering within your statistics the average income of each group? That might paint things in a new light as to the reasons why such a situation might occur, if its even true as I do not recall seeing such studies and you've provided no substantive links.