[Rhodes22-list] Flat Tax Semi-Rant

[Bill Effros]

David,

According to Brad's definition of the "flat tax" there's nothing in that 
proposal that prevents government at any level from enacting "social 
engineering" taxes -- or any other additional taxes.

Do you have a different definition for the "flat tax"?

Bill Effros



David A. Culp wrote:
> The flat tax is a great idea that will never see the light of day.
>
> The reason is simple... power.  Both political parties and most other politicians will never give up the power that our present taxation system gives them.
>
> Anybody ever hear the term "social engineering" before?  As an example, if the government really wants you to quit smoking, they impose taxes to make it so financially unattractive that you quit, same for rum drinkers.  In fact, it's best if they threaten to do so from time to time so that the rich tobacco and distiller's lobbies will go nuts and shower them with money and trips.  That's power.
>
> Just recently in Texas, we added $1.00 to the tobacco tax on January 1st.  The tobacco lobby worked very hard behind the scenes (read-spread a lot of $$ around) but came up short because our legislators had made too many promises to taxpayers over the past years to lower property taxes.  My brother who has smoked for years and we had been trying to get him to quit... finally did because he can no longer afford it.  So, our state legislators got my brother to quit smoking, collected lobby money from big tobacco trying to buy their votes and now will have even bigger tax revenues to waste in the next session.  A win, win, win for government by tinkering with the tax system.  To top it off, they will get even more property taxes long term because the rate reduction is a mere pittance and valuations have been going up dramatically with no legal cap.  Anyway, at least my brother quit smoking.
>
> Another example, if the US government wants or needs us all to go "green", they give us income tax incentives to do so.  Just think if the government wanted a wind generator in every well-to-do yard in America; they could do it in short order with the right tax incentives and we would all get into the wind energy business and sell those KW's back to the electric companies.  You can apply this model to just about any subject you can think of except sailboats.  I don't think the government will ever give me a tax credit for owning a sailboat, but they should because I'm saving fossil fuel and not polluting the air as much!  Unfortunately, the sailboat lobby in this country just doesn't have enough wealth to push this through.  But it could be done with a large excise tax on fuel at boat docks, a huge luxury tax on power boats and huge tax breaks for sailboats.  I can just see it now, a chicken in every pot and a sailboat in every driveway or farmer's pond in America.
>
> And no matter what they say, no career politician will ever truly support a flat tax.  Steve Forbes is not a career politician with an agenda and already has plenty of money; so he can afford to support a flat tax.  Remember, democrats want to social engineer the whole of society by redistributing wealth-can't do that as quickly or easily under a flat-tax system.  Republicans would like to social engineer our morality but that's nearly impossible; so they are content to get their life-blood from businesses and lobbies whom they protect with tax breaks ala Exxon Mobil or threaten to put out of business, like tobacco for instance.  Either way, the money just rolls in and as we know, always follow the money.
>
> David Culp
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