Disagree / Critical
In general, rising levels of income deliver diminishing rewards for the individual. Someone bringing in $100 million/yr. is not meaningfully privileged in their access to opportunities for achieving happiness in life when compared to someone else who earns $100,000/yr., and the latter of them is not a whole lot better off than a guy brings in $50,000/yr. Yet when you start comparing folks of lower incomes - say $15,000/yr. and $30,000/yr. - the differences are quite significant.
If what we value is the happiness of our citizens and their empowerment to strive for that condition in life, in other words, the flat tax places the heaviest of its burdens on the poor and the lightest of them on the rich. It would only make sense to have if, say, the first $80,000/yr. of household income was exempt from taxation. Progressive taxation is much more reasonable than that - distributing tax burdens across all socioeconomic classes. It's just that the rates of it cannot climb too high for upper-income earners or else they will be strongly motivated to engage in tax avoidance.
Do you think anyone takes seriously the notion of equal protection, when the rates of taxation vary widely based upon arbitrarily assigned financial privileges, like marriage, mortgage interest (rates), and number of children? Furthermore, why should various income brackets have different marginal propensities to save, invest, and consume best upon the government's unrelated agenda of revenue requisition?
Flat tax is the only way. Not only does it eliminate the preposterous system of penalties and privileges inherent to graduated tax systems, it can still be progressive without using absurd exemptions. Flat tax does not encourage or discourage saving/spending based upon household income because the marginal rate of taxation is the same for everyone.
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