Quote Originally Posted by Gregg View Post
Even under a flat tax you would be paying exponentially more for all those services than I would. If the flat tax was 15% I would be paying $15,000 per year and you would be paying $15,000,000. Do you think you would be deriving 1,000 time the benefits I would or could it be that you are, in effect, subsidizing the benefits I get? At what point do you guess you would get tired of doing that?





Those that have the wherewithal to take advantage of it owe something for the opportunity...What I can not stomach is the Robin Hood approach of forcibly taking ever larger slices of someone else's pie as they become successful.
Gregg: Please realize I totally undersand your logic. I just don't agree with it.

Yes, you would be paying more of your income toward income taxes but you would but you wouldn't be paying exponentially more. For it to be exponentially more your percentage of income paid would have to increase at an exponential rate--as I understand math. Right? With your flat tax system, you'd be paying the same percentage as me, not exponentially more. And with my system, you'd only be paying exponentially more if the marginal tax brackets were set up in an exponential manner. We're not talking that here, we're talking just a few percentage points higher.

I was going to agree with you and say, "yes, I'd grumble and complain because nobody likes to pay more taxes, right? But I'd pay it because I'd believe the system would be set up fairly." But the more I think about it, I know I don't actually feel that way. Actually, I have no problem paying taxes because I like the benefits I (and all other Americans and our country in general) get from the government by paying taxes. I'm ok with it and I would be ok paying more taxes even knowing that the benefit wouldn't only be enjoyed by me personally.

I think your "wherewithal" point pretty much sums up the difference between our positions on this issue and illustrates my point about how useless it is for us to try to convince the other side that our respective position is the correct one. You believe people who don't make $100M per year only do so because they don't have the wherewithal to buckle down and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get to work. I believe that's a small part of the reason people do well. I also KNOW the playing field is absolutely unequal and that it's naive and actually kind of a cop out to claim it is. The reality is that some people have many more advantages (intelligence, stable childhood, education, contacts) that pretty much set them up for success. From the very beginning some are set up for success and so because the likelihood they're going to succeed is greater, the should pay a higher percentage of their income.