How is a tax 'fair' when rates are equal but sacrifice is not?

Dear rich people,

you've gotten all the real tax breaks for the past 30 years. You've gotten 90% of the benefits of increased productivity as well as the increased profit via the jobs you shipped overseas to sweatshops. You pay the same taxes that anyone else does (money is taxed at differing rates, people aren't).

As such, let me sum up my opinion regarding your concern that tax rates on income above $250k or so might be raised:

CALL THE WAAAAAAAAMMMMMMBUULANCE!!!!! WWWWWAAAAAAAAANNNNNNHHHH.

Take your crybaby butt and go home and see if your mommy can put down her crystal glass of scotch long enough to care, because I don't.

Oh, and GDIAF.

The US has a "progressive" tax system where a "poor" person supposedly pays 10% income tax and the highest earners pay over 30%, As it is now the rich pay the lions share of running the government and get little if anything in return, they do not use "social" programs which account for 13% of the US budget. So please tell me what is fair about a person paying little or nothing in taxes and receiving benefits from the government and a person paying 30% and not getting a thing from the government.

Until every person in the country pays into the system you will continue to have support for programs that drain the budget and contribute little or nothing to the economy and or jobs. It is fine and dandy to want to help the poor (one reason Conservatives statistically give more to charity than liberals) but the system is broken, it is filled with fraud as well as filled with people that are undeserving.

Demand that the government find and eliminate the fraud and abuse in the many social programs out there and once that is done and there still is not enough money for the government to function, I will then support an increased tax. Until then you are peeing into the wind.

Jehen, I am so glad you asked this question. When tax rates were at 90% levels, tax revenues to the government were not substantially higher as a percentage of GDP than they have been in recent years. The 90% tax rate environment included so many deductions and loopholes that higher income earners (not always the same as "the rich") ended up paying no more than they do now.

Good tax reform plans get rid of most loopholes and deductions (often leaving charitable deductions in place). Many also do not levy taxes until a certain income is reached. After that, everyone pays the same tax rate.

Can't we build a better nation is we all have a little "skin in the game?"

Why is it we always want to tax somebody else to get the things we want?

Try a little history. The "rich" NEVER paid 90%. Deductions and non-qualifying income made paying at the 90% level VERy rare.

That said, are you implying that the only way that taxes can be "fair" is if everyone ends up with the same? That's pretty stupid, both from an ideological AND a practical perspective.

Most people would agree with you that a flat rate taxation system is completely unfair, but, the problem is they simply are not educated enough to understand the implications. The biggest problem I can forsee with this is that the rich believe that if they paid less it would leave more to invest in production, more production equals more jobs, more jobs means more opportunity for the poor to become self sustaining. It just doesnt work like this when the jobs head oversees which they inevitably do. Gotta love the ideology of trickle down economics, sadly it simply doesnt work.

The word Fair according to dictionary.com means the following:

Fair implies the treating of all sides alike, justly and equitably: a fair compromise

So if 47% of american pay 0% in income taxes after all deductions are taken and the other 53% pay 100% of the taxes. Does that sound like all sides are being treated alike, justly and equitably?

Lets break it down even further. If the top 1% pay 40% of all income taxes collected and the bottom 50% pay 0%. Is that fair and equitable treatment for all?

You white lefties that love the term "sacrifice" should enlist in the military

and not allow the burden and danger of defending America

to fall totally on rednecks and poor blacks.

But since things have changed over time you don't even have to run off to Canada anymore.

Great to live in the land of the free when it doesn't cost you anything.

The middle class doesn't pay 90% do they?

So you want a tax that punishes people for being successful. Doesn't that sound like class envy?

10% of the wage earners are paying 70% of the tax bill. Do you not think you should pay anything for the services you receive?

you don't think the rich buy things? So you want to lay off the people who build yachts and custom made houses? you just want a ugly land like Communist Russia where all the apartment buildings looked the same, I say Rich people create markets which otherwise woudlln't be there, do you think the Bahamas would have much Tourism if people like Richard Branson couldn't buy an island and pay the locals to staff it? WHERE IS YOUR COMPASSION?