I have a modest proposal I made this morning and I am repeating it tonight.
Starting with the notion popularized by President-Elect Obama in the recent campaign, I wish to propose a plan that taxes people according to the ability to pay so that we can distribute the tax money according to the need of others.
The plan would work as follows:
1. Each Zip Code would be assigned a cost of living index that establishes a baseline of cost of living including median home price, insurance cost, fuel and energy costs, state income and state and local sales taxes and cost of food. For instance, New York City would have a high index for cost of living and Flint, Michigan would have a low cost of living.
2. We would establish an index by age that recognizes that a young person needs less money and will have more years of earnings ahead of him/her whereas a person approaching retirement has higher costs and less years to earn.
3. The cost of living index would be cross-referenced to age and every person would have a tax rate based on where they live and how old they are.
When this is in place, we will know what people “need” and be able to determine what is excess to their need. Then we tax the excess amount at a higher tax rate. This tax would potentially include everyone including those earning more than $250,000.
Isn’t this the best way to disgorge excess income from people that are unfairly accumulating wealth at the expense of the poor and needy?
Why should people be excused from paying a high tax on their unneeded income just because it happens to fall below $250,000.
If you think it is not fair tax people on their excess, unneeded income, do you feel the same way about Obama’s tax plan which does the same thing in a less precise and efficient manner?
I realize there may be better tax plans such as the flat tax or the VAT tax, but what I am aking here is why shouldn’t we tax everyone who by reason of wealth, age or cost of living per region really does have extra money like those who earn $250,000.
Is This Tax Plan Consistent With The Goals Of The Obama Tax Plan?
July 27th, 2009 by admin Leave a reply »
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I don’t like it, the government shouldn’t be in the business of determining what people need and taking away what they don’t. Not everyone accumulating wealth is doing so at the expense of the poor and needy. Did Bill Gates do that, or did he come up with a very popular operating system? Did Warren Buffet do that, or was he a really wise investor? Casting such a wide net is not a wise policy. People need to be able to be rewarded or to have more for harder work. Otherwise, people won’t work harder, you deter progress when you punish hard work.
The main reason why Obama kept his tax plan simple, at least while he was explaining it during the campaign, is because people are generally stupid, what you are talking about is way over most people’s heads. If you tried to seriously pitch that to people, you would turn them off because of the complexity.