Interview with Mart Laar, the pioneer of Europe’s flat tax revolution

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What "flat tax revolution"? Sorry to be blunt here but a couple of tin pot countries with unstable/imploded economies adopting it and a couple of ideological drones with no original ideas supporting it does not a revolution make.

It's just yet more fad-onomics... want to know why so much of Europe (particularly out East) is an economic basket case? It's because clueless politicians with less knowledge of *basic* economics than your average citizen listen to a bunch of economists who live in la-la land and haven't done an honest day's work in their lives and who following the latest fad with more loyality than some z-list "celebrity"... is anyone here old enough to remember "Shock Therapy" (extreme free-market measures adopted by Eastern European Governments in the early '90's)? If so, how much do you know about it's effects? Not a lot I suspect; it was an utter failure when looked at objectively... if *sane* economic measures had been introduced Eastern Europe would be in a much better shape than the complete mess it is now... and why were these measures introduced? Because it was the fashion at the time...

</rant>

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In the long term, however, economic liberalization would lead to better results than the continuance of communism.

True (and I still feel strongly that liberalization was very important) but the sort of stuff done in Eastern Europe then was amaturish, crazy and downright dangerous...

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I agree with that

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A flat tax is an absurdity.  Why not a poll tax or head tax?  After all isn't it unjust to have Bill Gates pay 10% of his income and some slob of a worker 10% as well?  Shouldn't they really both pay the same dollar amount?  After all they're both equal, right?

Do you know what happend when the Thatcher government imposed a poll tax on us to replace the old local government rates system?

There riots on the streets of London. Big, big riots.