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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: halfscot who wrote (9029)	11/16/1998 8:08:00 AM
From: Axxel	Respond to of 13994

The poor, if they cannot pay the flat tax, could become slaves. Probably an idea whose time has not come.

To: halfscot who wrote (9029)	11/16/1998 11:58:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 13994

halfscot, what was under discussion was a flat tax on consumption -- i.e., a national sales tax -- not a flat income tax. However, I gather the leading proposals for a national sales tax do provide for rebates for low-income people. Even then, critics of such proposals claim that the most tax relief would go to the very wealthy: If households are classified by annual income, the sales tax is sharply regressive. Under the AFT proposal, taxes would rise for households in the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution, while households in the top 1 percent would receive an average tax cut of over $75,000. If households are classified by consumption level, a somewhat different pattern emerges. Households in the bottom two-thirds of the distribution would pay less than currently, households in the top third would pay more. Still, households at the very top would pay much less, again receiving a tax cut of about $75,000. There appears to be little sound motivation for heaping huge tax cuts on precisely the groups whose income and wealth have benefitted the most from recent events, and raising burdens significantly on others. brook.edu