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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Orcastraiter who wrote (13806)	8/19/2004 7:48:29 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Respond to of 90947

Poor people pay less in taxes for roads than rich people. Actually, roads are funded primarily from excise taxes on gas, so people generally pay in proportion to their use of the roads. Poor people pay less for defense. Yes, but then rich people have more to defend. The best argument for progressive taxation is that those with higher incomes and greater wealth benefit disproportionately from the opportunities and protections our society has to offer, so they should pay more to protect and maintain that society. The unanswerable question, of course, is what degree of progressivity is most fair. But regardless of what that level is, in anyone's eyes, the reality is that our income tax structure has steadily become more and more progressive from 1947-2001. And interestingly, contrary to the rhetoric of the Dems and the media, the tax cuts since Bush came into office have actually made it MORE progressive, not less so. But more on that later. Back to health care, there is no evidence that higher income or greater wealth corresponds to greater need for health care. Except for the likelihood that lower incomes, poor diet and lack of preventative care may be highly correlated, I'd say health care needs, especially related to catastrophic accident or illness, tend to be more random in nature and not positively correlated to wealth or income at all. On that basis, if one wants to spread the cost of health care most "fairly", with the healthy subsidizing the sick as insurance is intended to do, then the dollar cost would be spread evenly on a per capita basis. In other words, a regressive tax if we are letting the government handle it instead of private insurance carriers.