Flat Tax Proposal (Paul)

I think the basic divide on this premise is: do you even believe in the concept of a progressive income tax. That the wealthy pay a higher percentage of their income. The Conservatives think it's unfair and wealth shouldn't be penalized. They also have a lot of other good arguments which I don't agree with. But one thing many people can agree on. The current tax code and loopholes favor the rich.

 

The thing to remember is that no matter what tax plan we adopt the other side of the equation is what will make or break things. You can have a big government with high taxes or high borrowing. So whether or not the tax rate should be flat or progressive pales as an issue compared to what we are planning to spend in either case.

There's no political will anywhere to make painful cuts that might actually cost votes. That doesn't mean that people like Paul don't float ideas about cutting major government departments and other spending but the ideas they float are not backed by a large reservoir of political capital.

We can't afford the status quo to continue indefinitely but we also can't afford another Republican plan that offers tax cuts with matching spending cuts but then can't deliver the spending cuts. Ronald Reagan had huge tax cuts matched by minor spending cuts and then huge increases in defense spending and corporate welfare (S&L Bailout). George W. Bush had huge tax cuts matched by minor spending cuts and then huge new entitlements and a major war and then left us with the biggest corporate welfare package in history on the table. Rand Paul can't slash taxes and then only get minor spending cuts because we know he'll spend big on something we weren't expecting before he's done.

 

Well sign me up for the flat tax, even as high as 20%; no can do for the dreaded VAT. The problem is that in no way would progressives in this country go for it. How dare those making 300k a year pay the same tax rate as those making 50/40/30k.
We have had 6 years of wealth redistribution with minimal, if any, positive effect on the middle/lower income classes. Wages are stagnant, the number of part time jobs continues to rise, and labor participation is at a multi-decade low.
Its clear to see progressive taxation in a background of socialistic economic policies impede and delay growth. Me thinks the flat tax would kick start this thing big time.

 

The problem with a VAT is it over-taxes the poor because they have to spend every penny they make to live. The problem with a high flat tax is that it penalizes families that have more children, since there are no exemptions. You can make an argument that people should only have as many children as they can afford however that leads us to a world full of robots and while I'm not a believer in the inevitability of AI domination a world full of robots makes it more likely.

 

America's closest brush with full employment came during the 50's, with an extremely progressive tax system that pumped huge amounts of resources into the economy and then swallowed them back up again via taxation, to be released again in cycle after cycle.

 

Where's this wealth distribution coming from. I haven't seen it. All I know is that even the Repubs are talking about income inequality, are against all methods of fixing it including increasing the minimum wage and blaming everything on the guy who wants to improve it. Why so much loyalty to the wealthy. I'll never understand it.

 

So you want to give even mroe to the rich. Are you "wealthy"? Familiar with the term useful idiot?

The problem today is not that the rich have it too hard.

 

You always have to be careful to stand up for the poor little rich guys. A society that fails in that basic responsibility is un-American.

 

The GOP has an implicit deal with working and middle class white people. The deal is that the GOP will not give support to minorities, and in return will give breaks to the wealthy. Working and middle class white people are suspicious that so-called "big government" is really just a mechanism for "giveaways" to minorities. Which they don't want. In return for their votes the people running the GOP give support to policies that favor the rich.

Yet... on the face of it it is ridiculous to argue that the rich need even more help. The useful idiots who vote GOP need to be shamed into acknowledging they end up favoring policies that benefit people who are not the least bit in need of more coddling. They need less coddling.

 

I definitely know what you are saying. But its not necessarily about minorities, although in some instances I'm sure thats true. racists in alabama or something

The biggest myth the GOP has placed into the minds of the working and middle class people is that the only way to fix the economy is to take away help for the poor and help the rich. Its an easy myth to promote to these people because they don't see the rich everyday... .yet they see and know poor people who rely on government support daily.

on your way work at your 3rd middle/working class job you see your neighbor at home on unemployment and it pisses you off everyday.
You don't see the elites of your company behind closed doors grabbing a tax break or cutting corners with their employees to add to their millions everyday enough to piss you off.

in reality your neighbor at home is just a drop in the bucket

 

Basically the Conservatives are against any kind of regulation. They think it smacks of big government. The thing is have the big entities proven they can self regulate themselves. In a perfect world the answer would be YES. Who wants to tell anyone what to do. But what do we see: an economic crash because of irresponsibility and greed, oil spills of enormous proportions when Big Oil is in charge of everything, chemical plants polluting rivers in states like West Virginia and not just a little a lot. Why should we allow them to take down this country.

 

It's true though. The modern GOP is rooted in race-baiting politics going back to the 60's. Everybody says that Reagan was the guy who transformed American politics by bringing white Southern Democrats into the Republican Party, however he was just the guy who sealed the deal.

White Southern Democrats began voting for Republican candidates for President with Richard Nixon in 1968. They were already Republican voters at the national level in 1968 and race was the primary reason. Jimmy Carter won because he was a Southern moderate that kept enough white Southerners to win in 1976.

Go back and read some of the stuff that Republican strategists were writing in the 80's and it's clear that the GOP made a decision to race-bait and divide the white electorate with that strategy.

The reason the GOP is so relentlessly hostile to President Obama is that they were afraid he would undo the race-baiting dynamic and leave them demographically outnumbered by a significant amount.

 

The first day he took office the Repubs blamed Obama for the state of the economy (which he had nothing to do with). Instead of trying to work with him and compromise they planned opposition to almost everything he was trying to do. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/26/democrats-gop-plot-obstruct-obama And of course they shut down the gov over Obamacare which cost us 24 billion dollars. And these are the guys supposedly against needless waste. And now when the economy has improved and unemployment is in the low 5's they say well what about income inequality (blaming it on him). Even Walmart a company not known for being worker friendly had to increase wages to workers. When some of their workers were short on food. Of course they've cut billions of dollars from food stamps. $8.7 billion in 2014. (the GOP wanted up to 39 billion but compromised on the 8.7) A lot of it going to people who work full time but get minimum wage salaries. So low that they are working and still below the poverty line. These are mostly adults and the prime wage earners in their families not teenagers working after school. They can't afford to feed their families but the Repubs just don't give a shit. So when you're talking about cutting spending it's also about what you're cutting in spending.

 

If somebody has a plausible reason why poor white people supported Ronald Reagan I'd love to hear it.

 

Exactly. I work in midtown Manhattan. I walk around at lunchtime. People from other parts of the country, if they think about New York and politics, think New York is a very liberal town, because that's the way it votes. And of course there is truth to that.

But midtown Mahattan is not just where tourists of all stripes and levels, from all different countries, visit. It is also and increasingly so the playground for the super rich. And not only Americans, but from all over. I see these people every day. They are doing quite well, and there's more of them than ever.

It's not that I envy them. It's that, really and truly, they do not need any help. They have it quite well, in fact. Too much so, in my well informed opinion. And they have too much influence and control over our society and government.

Right wingers from Nebraska don't have that experience. But I do, every damn day.

As for the racism part, that's a whole discussion in itself. To be clear I don't think there's something implicitly racist about saying that you question whether a certain level of support for the poor can become counter-productive. But anyone who misses the sense of "the Other" in arguments made by right wingers to cut the size of government is not being honest with themselves.

 

Again, I do not want to overstate the case here. There is nothing inherently racist about being conservative.

But the reality of what has happened in American politics is as you describe.

 

I'll just give you my take on this subject. Obama won both elections because he got over 90% of the African American vote. Some of the GOP thinks this is unfair. And that minorities esp in the future will have more power and vote Democratic. So they've decided to fight this with redistricting and gerrymandering plus tough voter ID laws (despite no proof there is any significant voter fraud) which mostly affects minority voters. In other words the are activally trying to keep minorities from voting or to marginalize their vote. Last week one Supreme Court decision disallowed the Repub Legislature in Arizona from having control in terms of drawing up voting districts. Was it racism? You bet it is.