I am not sure about the flat tax. As IL says, I'd have to see what it means in real life. But I still go Biblical on this one "To whom much is given, much is expected," and I really don't think that a flat tax would be fair, or pay the bills. Not fair because if you have someone with an annual income of $100,000 at 10% they pay 10,000. That would impact their daily choices. If you have someone making 1,000,000, that's $100,000 in tax. I do not believe that they would have as much of a challenge achieving prosperity with $900,000 as someone making $90,000. And then what about the multi-millionaires and billionaires... I have to believe that some form of progressive tax is the most fair way.

In my post above where I deleted stuff, what I deleted was an analogy between a family and a country. I prefer to think of the country as a famly unit. If you have a couple of family members who are living large and having a great time but other members under the same roof are suffering, that doesn't bode well for the family in general. That is how I feel about the cuts to Medicaid. I feel that we are going to have a lot of family members dying and suffering and the other members of the family are turning a blind eye.

Paul Krugman has a great piece on Substack today. He is also calling the "Big Beautiful Bill" cruel and sure to cause death. But, as an economist, he has some suggestions for where to cut the waste other than cutting money going to the states for healthcare:
  1. Recoup unpaid taxes, which will require restoring some IRS jobs. There is 600B out there in unpaid taxes. A good chunk of that from the wealthy (remember Leona Helmsley's famous quote?)
  2. Crack down on Medicare Advantage overpayments. Insurers are gaming the system and costing the taxpayers between $1.3-2 trillion dollars.
  3. Go after corporate tax avoidance. That would bring in $70B.
  4. Eliminate Trump's 2017 tax cut. It didn't do the economy any good. All it did was line pockets. It didn't serve any real economic need.


So I'll try not to sink into despair for the all the people who are likely going to take one for Team Red with their health and their lives. But I'm not optimistic, and I'll put a thousand $Melanias on that bet.