The CDC lost a lot of street cred with me once I found out how their SAMMEC algorithm determines "smoking-related deaths:" basically, if a person dies, and their medical history shows that they smoked at any point during life, the system calls it a "smoking death." Doesn't matter that the person was morbidly obese and died of a heart attack, he smoked when he was 18.
Repeal the 16th Amendment (or just admit it was never legally ratified), reset the legal meaning of "income" from "money given in exchange for labor" back to "capital gains as a result of business profits," and BOOM!
Problem solved.
The simple answer is to exclude necessity items from the flat tax.
Then it's technically not a 'flat' tax anymore.
I recognize this opens the door to loophole items into tax exemption, but while we're spitballing utopian tax systems, might as well start somewhere.
We've already started there with our existing graduated tax system - I fail to see how throwing the baby out with the bathwater, then replacing it with a brand new baby as we refill the tub, is somehow going to be a more workable solution.
Of course, I come from a long line of people who fix things when they break, rather than just throwing them out and buying new stuff, so that probably colors my view significantly.
Except that the government will just increase taxes on other common goods to make up for the shortfall.
So? Low income people still spend a lower percentage on their income on those "common goods" than the wealthy.
Actually, the opposite - low income people spend less dollars, but a larger portion of income, on those items than rich people. Plus, you really can't limit spending on "must-have" items like food, shelter, utilities, etc.
As OP stated, and I already repeated, a 20% tax on a $20,000/yr income is a much larger chunk of income than a 20% tax hit on a $200,000 income.
With a "flat tax," there isn't any way around that issue.
There are lots of ways around the issue.
You could tweak the system further.
Then it's not a "flat tax," it's a graduated tax system, like the one we already have.
I don't have any sense of how sales tax applies.
Yea, be glad for that. I recently started my own business doing contract work in no less than 4 states, and the differences in how sales tax applies in each is already a huge pain in my ass.
From my experience, CDC estimates should be taken with a grain of salt, as they often seem dubious at best.
Then again, I suppose that should apply to any estimate, especially when the estimator is using ceteris paribus in order to reach a certain conclusion...
The only exception would be if you were selling collectibles or some investment item that went up in price, and that's rarely sold at a yard sale.
You must not frequent yard sales, as in reality tons of incredibly valuable collectables are sold at them every weekend - but for far, far less than the item's actual value.
Of course, all that is unimportant (from a legal standpoint), because the fact remains that somebody is profiting, and nobody is paying taxes on those transactions.
Don't tax food or medicine. OK, the discrepancy just halved.
Except that the government will just increase taxes on other common goods to make up for the shortfall.
Your problem is that you missed the most important sentence in OP's post:
if you make $24,000 a year, a 20% tax that reduces your income to $18,000 a year is a much greater burden than it is to someone who makes $200,000 a year and has their income reduced to $150,000 a year.
With a "flat tax," there isn't any way around that issue.
End income tax.
Better idea: revert the legal definition of "income" to what it meant pre-1913.
Interestingly, before the oft-questioned "passage" of the 16th Amendment, "labor given in exchange for payment" was just that; income was what a business earned as a result of selling a product or service.
Yard sales.
Nobody remits taxes on yard sales.
Google will tell you all you need to know.
Well, sure, but "let me go Google that" isn't nearly as fun to say.
You know nothing about how cars operate. Educate yourself, please and thank you. A primer:
this car wants to creep when idling in drive. That must be burning some fuel.
How Torque Converters Work
How Automatic Transmissions Work
It also doesn't coast but instead engine brakes when I take my foot off the gas.. I've been kicking it into neutral to save but I shouldn't need to do that.
You don't need to do that at all; your car is smart enough to shut down the fuel injectors during engine braking.
In the future I would recommend actually looking stuff up before posting silly questions based on your misconceptions.
Do find a lot of examples of neo-Nazi idiots with hundreds of millions of stolen dollars and heavy weapons rounding up thousands of people and promising to slaughter them because of their religion, or marching cops and soldiers into trenches and machine gunning them down?
The "rounding up people" part might not be happening right now, but if you google phrases like "neo-nazi weapons stockpile" and "neo-nazis murder cop," you'll find plenty of examples. Don't the people of Europe have a right to use a pre-emptive strike to defend themselves against the inevitable escalation of violence from these barbaric individuals from reaching their shores*?
*In case it's not glaringly obvious, yes, I'm mocking the "fight them there so we don't fight them here" warhawks.
Neo-Nazis talk a lot. But they're just noisy idiots.
Neo-nazis kill people - Anders Breivik ring a bell?. That's not being "just noisy idiots." No, today they aren't killing people in the volumes that ISIL is, but that's today. Tomorrow could be completely different.
Actually, Breivik shows the point I'm making quite well: many would claim his style of extremism is an exclusively American export. If American neo-nazis can influence him, they can influence thousands of others, and by the "fight them there not here" mentality, that means other nations "have a duty" to bomb American neo-nazis into oblivion, sovereign borders be damned.
I'm really not sure why you mischaracterize neo-nazis as a non-violent group; ignorance is hard to believe... confluent opinions, perhaps?
Meh. I see that argument used frequently on
... and you've done nothing to prove the aforementioned argument wrong. Good job.
Exactly - Disagree, and we kill you for being an infidel; agree, and we'll kill you as a "martyr."
Being a royal douchenozzle does not require adherence to a specific ideology.
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn
