Quote Originally Posted by DuncanONeil View Post
The point is that you think that paying a greater share of the tax burden is FAIR if you have more money and paying the same rate is somehow unfair. That implies the only way you would be happy is if Mr Rich Person after paying his tax bill had $14550 left. I on the other hand believe that paying the same rate is fair.
That's not my point at all. The government requires a certain amount of money to function. Naturally, the first priority should be to trim down that necessity to the bare minimums. But once that is done a certain amount of needed money will remain. Obviously that money will have to be brought in by taxes, of one sort or another.

Now according to you, it's only fair to make everyone pay the same percentage. So let's assume for simplicity's sake that the government determines that, in order to balance their budget, everyone will have to pay 15% of their earnings in taxes. What does this mean? Well, the man making $1 million will pay $150K in taxes. Wow! A lot of money. But that still leaves him with $850K of discretionary income. Of course, having to pay $100 K for the mortgage on his 12 bedroom mansion, and another $100K for his brand new Rolls, will eat into that somewhat, too. He might have to cut his Hawaiian vacation down to only two weeks! And he and his family can't afford to eat out ... more than 4 or 5 times a week. Such hardship!

Meanwhile, we have our other man making $20K, working 2 jobs. He'll be left with a whopping $17,500 dollars. Hell, anybody can get by on that! So what if his kids can't go to private schools? So what if they have to cram a family of 6 into a two-bedroom, 1½ bath flat? So what if they can only buy a used car every five or six years, at best? As long as he's paying the same rate, everything will be fine!

No, my point is that the wealthier man can afford to pay a larger share of the tax burden, and because of his wealth will reap more benefits from the infrastructure those taxes pay for. The poor don't much care about maintaining the interstate, or building better airports, or keeping the harbors running properly. They can't afford to use those facilities anyway.

If you drop our poor working man's taxes down to only, say, 2% he'll end up paying only $400 in taxes. While still painful for him, he can probably handle that. His family might not eat steak, but it won't hurt them too badly. How much must our rich man pay to make up for that? An extra $2100, or 15.2% TOTAL. Holy cow! That just might break the bank!

Yes, I realize it's not quite that simple, there being so many more poor people than rich. But the point is the same. The more money you make the more you tend to benefit from the money the government spends, either directly or indirectly, so you pay more taxes. And there is less of a burden on the poor.