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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (98635)	12/12/2008 8:05:03 PM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 541791

Something like a flat rate sales tax is regressive. The ability to pay it becomes easier and easier as you get richer. Ok, I buy my wife a $1MM necklace because she deserves it - I can probably afford the almost $85K in sales tax. If I'm poor and I'm buying a used toaster for $10 the $0.85 sales tax may be the cost of me having coffee with my toast. I may forgo the coffee today. Progressive taxation is a fair way to impose a reverse bias for those who have done disproportionately well. Long term capital gains makes investment income have a tax like that of a poor person's income taxes so it is regressive. I don't understand why a speculator pays one amount but a long term hold investor (who maybe doesn't NEED to aggressively trade) pays another, lower one. Okay, no tax system is "fair". People who don't have kids or go to college pay for schools. Is that Liberal? People who don't want war pay for bombers? Is that Conservative? IMO, there should at least be an attempt to make taxes level in their "Max Pain". The system has gotten so complicated that we built an NON-VALUE ADDED INDUSTRY around it. How stupid is that? A progressive tax system would throw away the tax code and make it so someone with 80 IQ could fill out thier taxes the same way another with 160 IQ fills it out. Right now, people of wealth and intellect pay lower taxes because they avail themselves of tricks in the complicated law. Is that "ultra-liberal" or simply rational to reverse that? I say it is rational and has NOTHING to do with Lib/Con dichotomies.

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (98635)	12/14/2008 3:24:14 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541791

can you be a libertarian and still agree to this progressive idea? of course! I never suggested otherwise. Libertarians, not being a player in the left-right continuum, typically have some things in common with both the left and the right. Social liberalism paired with fiscal conservatism, like mine, for example, is quite common. I imagine you have some progressive ideas. So have I. Right here on this thread I've advocated using marriage to create family arrangements along the lines of multiple mutual adoptions. I've also supported assisted suicide. Can't get much more progressive than that. But that doesn't make me "a progressive." You thinking yourself a progressive just didn't resonate with me. You are, of course, entitled to your own self-label. I respect people's right to self-assign. I accept non-church-goers who call themselves "Christians" as Christians, much to Kate's annoyance. <g> To take my mention of stem cells, which apparently you do agree is a progressive idea Not really. I just picked "energy independence" as my rebuttal because I found it the least progressive of your examples. I think stem cells is quite middle of the road. Hardly anyone opposes stem cell technology, just a few die-hard social conservatives and even then only the use of human embryos. I imagine they're probably storing their babies' umbilical stem cells just like the progressives. The other example you offered for your progressive label was green energy. Likewise, there's widespread support for that so I'd call it centrist. I remember when Bearcat Bob hung around. He was an advocate for that as was everyone else here, best I recall. there is no claim to one tax policy being able to raise more taxes than the other Claim? I think it's too obvious to be called merely a "claim." There is only so much money that poor people can give up. You can't take fifty percent of their income from them. It's not feasible. They'd die. Either that or you would have to give them back their money plus more in the form of poverty programs so that they did't die, so what's the point. You can, OTOH, take fifty percent from the well-to-do. They'll complain, but they can take it. So there's a natural limit on how much money you can raise taxing everyone's income at a flat rate. You have to go to a graduated/progressive tax to get more. Refute that "claim" if you can. Okay, why don't you list 5 progressive specific policies and we can see where I stand. I'm serious. Well, one sure wouldn't be the flat tax. Or replacing/supplementing the income tax with a federal sales tax. I don't think I'm able to do that. Other than nationalized health care, I haven't had my antennae out for progressive proposals. I prefer to constrain my itch scenarios to a minimum, which means avoiding thinking about them until and unless they are in my face. <g> I'm not aware of any other progressive proposals in that category.