(November 10, 2014 at 9:35 pm)Heywood Wrote: What do you guys and gals think about a consumption tax instead of an income tax?With a reasonable deduction and perhaps an expansion of which items are exempt from sales tax, it could have a positive effect over time. Probably not much of an impact on the poorest Americans, but it could encourage the middle class to save money and pay down debt instead of continuing to live one or two steps above our means. I am wondering how this impacts capital gains... is it an attempt to protect those?
A 'diagonal tax' might do the job better: tax all income above X threshold at Y percent. The poorest Americans pay no tax at all, and the wealthiest can't shelter so much of their income that they pay a lower effective rate than the middle class. Adjust X and Y as needed. Or add a Z modifier for all income above a second threshold, which might start us down the road to the same system we have now, but could be fairer in the short run.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
