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

To: Win Smith who wrote (209580)	11/27/2012 7:39:38 AM
From: Metacomet	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540880

Taxes are a fraction of both income and GDP The question is how to fairly extract the fraction The notion of regressiveness is in tension with some notions of fairness This tension, as we have just witnessed winds up being used as a tool to influence elections The outcomes are too serious to allow this kind of overt manipulation Another method of funding the government needs to be defined A single rate income tax levy on income seems to me to be the most equitable, which is the feature that has to emphasized The symptoms caused as a result of the regressive effects could be addressed by safety net programs, such as food stamps which are already well defined The cost to administer them, as now, would need to be accounted for in establishing the base rate Consider if the electorate could be given the proposition that say, for a 2% increase in the base rate, we could provide Medicare type coverage for everybody...or not You choose, you know exactly what it will cost you, and probably more important, everybody else The operating budget requirements for all government programs would have to be determined and balanced against the uniform rate that would generate sufficient revenue to cover them I would see that exercise including enough to cover those items now funded by the payroll tax But again, the key to this approach would be trashing all of the special categories of income that now allow uneven application of the revenue generating tools