Flat Tax

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

A flat tax would be very good for our economy. If we raise taxes, the rich keep losing money however with this no one is losing money.

I'm not certain if you're stupid or trolling. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're trolling.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

A flat tax would be very good for our economy. If we raise taxes, the rich keep losing money however with this no one is losing money.

I'm not certain if you're stupid or trolling. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're trolling.

A flat tax has been proven several times to help.

Help the rich. Every flat tax proposal I've ever seen either raises taxes on the poor, reduces tax revenue, or both.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Saying that the Russian experience with flat taxes shows that they work wonders is akin to saying that Stalin's Five-Year Plans showed off the wonders of central planning.  In both cases you have to ignore the relevant history and how might have worked alternatives that could have been implemented instead.  There is no denying that coming out of the Communist era, the Russian economy needed a fairly simple system of taxation and it needed to avoid the idea that the rich needed to have their wealth confiscated (or alternatively completely shielded).  The flat tax achieved that, and perhaps it was the only tax scheme that would have both done that and been politically possible at the time.  But that doesn't mean that the flat tax is the best tax.

This is a U.S.-centric forum, so discussing economics primarily in the economic context of America makes sense. Progressive tax rates that don't reach so high as to be confiscatory are definitely possible here.  That isn't to be said that there isn't room for improvement.  (For instance the old C corporation rate schedule was a poster child for how to not do progressive tax rates as in two separate places, it had higher catch-up rates.)

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Could a flat tax be more palatable with a generous exemption or like what has been suggested more, a tax credit/deduction to make it more progressive. That said, while it may sound painful, isn't the premise of a flat tax to encourage all taxpayers to be sensitive to government spending as well as reducing the influence of special interests who seek carve outs in the tax code? To be honest, I don't think it's so bad in theory to make sure everyone has a stake in something (such as having everyone pay for the safety net or etc). I understand the practical realities can be more painful though.

The idea that people generally make rational economic decisions is one of the most irrational ones economists have ever toyed with.  For one thing, it assumes there are such things as objectively best economic policies.  But more importantly, there's little evidence that the idea reflects how people actually make decisions.  So the idea that a flat tax would be good because it efficiently conveys the cost of government to voters and thus can make rational decisions on government spending strikes me as completely ludicrous.