numbers are static, unfeeling, unbiased, neutral... fuck no.

 a new thought about flat taxes.

a big fat glaring misconception about flat taxes is that its "fair". to be honest its hard to debate this logic if you have shit for brains. yet I, like my brethren, know we have far more to consider when discussing the intimate details that make up fair.
what is fair? is it an arbitrary number? is it a slice of pie? is it birth order? heredity? life chances? purchasing power? leverage? POWER? the answer is yes.
to a person with perhaps high intellect but limited wisdom will jump to numbers. numbers are static, unfeeling, unbiased, neutral. a flat tax, 15% maybe 25% and no deductions. it has a ring to it that would sound like what fair could sound like. ok 15%. 15% what? how about 15% dry cleaning for everybody in the world? yeah, thats pretty cool. I'd like to dress sharp. a car. wow! only 15%? thats fuckin cool. an apple... 15%? oh wait... now were not really making sense anymore. we are just throwing numbers at a dartboard and pretending that everything that lands is 15%. that is not how the world works. 15% of one thing to me is very likely a different 15% to you.

the prices we pay can vary. a wealthy person can afford to splurge on certified organic robin's eggs for breakfast. a non-wealthy person can afford chicken's eggs. but the only people to be able to afford either or both are the wealthy. that is not fair.

lets try another number. a traffic ticket of $300 to me is 0.85% of my annual pay. to a millionaire its 0.03%. by that factor alone it affects me orders of magnitude more than it affects a millionaire. that means a traffic ticket for a millionaire, to be fair, should be $8540. now I will ask you; does a millionaire actually get a traffic ticket at the rate of 0.85% or at 0.03%?

that was the easy one...

life.

lets say you need medication that costs $10,000 in order to live 1 year. apply that same factor of fair and you can see where I'm getting. a millionaire doesnt question living at an extra $10,000. my grandmother has to. 15% to a millionaire is NOT 15% to my grandmother. is it fair that one lives in terror and the other can ignore a fraction as inconsequential?
fuck no.

now we ask: can it, should it be more fair than a flat tax?

Rant - 2011/08/01

I usually try to keep to a normal volume about hypocrisy. albeit I have no intention to ignore said hypocrisy(s). that being said I find myself fuming whenever I hear someone call for a flat tax and in the same breath say that the lowest earners would be granted exemptions from that tax burden; so 0%. So lets recap... I know I threw a lot of —or very few— big and complex —or brain dead simple— social engineering ideas out there. the flat tax that they want is applied progressively —or we could call it a progressive-flat tax. well, not to sound as stupid as flat taxers, isnt that what we have? we have a flat tax for people who make between 8,500 and 34,500; they pay a flat tax of 15%. and we have a flat tax for people who make below poverty; they pay a flat tax of 0%. and we have a flat tax for people who make 379,150 and above; they pay a flat tax of 35%.
oh, the flat taxer would say, we meant that we want to get rid of all those exemptions...
but didnt you just say that low earners would be getting an exemption? no one else merits any exemptions at all? what about the military? what about first responders? what about the people who work in less hospitable environments where as a condition of their employment they are unable to buy insurances at the rates that a normal person would pay? what about the disabled? what about the un-employable elderly?

so, thank you to all who have vomited out nonsense about flat taxes all these years. you are officially stupider than 4th grader logic.