Quote:
Originally Posted by Warpath";p="
A flat tax rate across the board would be much better. But the best of all would be user fees. Everyone pays for what they use. If you don't pay you don't use. If you don't use you don't pay. That would be the "fairest" possible system of all, wouldn't it? I mean why pay for someone else to use something.... that's not very "fair" at all. Its also not "fair" to take one person's money and give it to another person, just because they have less of it. Why work at all if you can't even prosper from the benefits of your labor, from your own property?
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A couple of practical points from all the posts above:
1. Flat tax with government giving a base salary to everyone might work, except there are a lot more poor people than there are rich people. I'd be very curious if the math works out.
2. The "tax on success": While true in an absolute sense, there's no evidence I've ever seen that our tax system actually discourages work. That's because your MARGINAL rate goes up, not your overall rate. If you make $200,000, you pay the same amount on your first $30,000 in earnings as someone who earns $30,000 total. Very few people stop working because their NEXT dollar will have a bigger tax bite taken out of it.
3. Flat tax in general. The only thing that makes a flat tax attractive to me is the elimination of loopholes. Otherwise it's simply a transfer of the tax burden from those most able to pay to those least able to pay. And if you take steps to avoid that, what's the point of changing the system?
4. User fees. This won't work for two main reasons. One, broad programs such as defense where the benefit to all of us is clear, but none of us actually "use" it. So you'd need taxes to pay for that.
Two, there's a broad category of stuff that benefits society by being available to some even if you don't use it directly. Bus service is a great example. You don't ride the bus, so why should you subsidize bus service with your tax dollars? Simple. More buses mean fewer cars on the road and less pollution, for starters, as well as less need for expensive new roads. Also, you benefit from the work performed by people too poor to own a car who ride the bus to work every day. Such people wouldn't necessarily be able to afford the full cost if they had to pay user fees. Also, you benefit by the bus being there in case your car's in the shop — and it wouldn't necessarily be there if it had to rely on user fees, because you're not a regular rider.
Essentially, society benefits by creating various transportation options that allow goods and people to move efficiently from one place to another.
Finally, one way or another we'd have to help the poor and those unable to care for themselves. That's a pure cost that cannot be addressed by user fees.