How to Fix 30 Years of Redistribution: Tax the Rich

[conuly]

http://bit.ly/Zy8IkU

I have to confess, I've never understood people who claim that a flat income tax is somehow fairer than a strongly progressive one. I mean, I could understand it if only very wealthy people said that, or people with frankly terrible math skills, but regular people?

When I was a baby, and visited Belgium, my mother was confronted with her father's similar notion of fairness one day at lunch. There were four adults and two children at lunch, so he made 12 sausages and gave two to each of us, never mind that that meant the baby and the toddler had the same size portion as my hulking uncle who could easily inhale six all on his own! Of course, anybody who has ever dealt with children (except, of course, my grandfather) can tell you why that's not actually a fair way to divide the food, and it's not a fair way to divide taxes either.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Hey, we were just talking about that here (http://randomdiversion.livejournal.com/678377.html) on randomdiversion's Lj a little bit ago.

BTW, if you don't know randomdiversion,nancylebov, harvey_rrit or blairmacg, I think you'd like them, and they you; there have been some very interesting discussions on their Ljs recently.