Reply #16: We already have 'flat tax' in the US, you don't want to make things worse [View All]

[EVDebs]

Do you ? Assuming you are a DC firefighter, who pays your salary ? The citizens of your district. Impoverishing them or making them subsidize the rich even more than they already are...that's not smart. I give you credit for investigating this though, most don't even bother.

Look into Warren Buffett's view on corporate taxation www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0306-01.htm

"Corporate income taxes in fiscal 2003 accounted for 7.4% of all federal tax receipts, down from a post-war peak of 32% in 1952. With one exception (1983), last year’s percentage is the lowest recorded since data was first published in 1934. Even so, tax breaks for corporations (and their investors, particularly large ones) were a major part of the Administration’s 2002 and 2003 initiatives. If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning"


As he says, if you ask me, his class has already 'won'.

Also look at the book Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich -- and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston. Pay particular attention to chapters 7 and 8. We already have a 'flat tax' system in the US when you add up state and local and federal taxes.

Capping property taxes, excepting new home sales, as with Prop 13 already taxes newcomers in CA, or better put, new 'growth' from whatever the source. From a fiscal standpoint the only way to get any more money out of us turnips here in CA to fund new government growth-- say, adding new firefighters to the payroll, for example-- is to NOT hit the property tax base any further.

The only source of new money for governmental services is raising corporate taxes. We already give bonds to the wealthiest, paid back on the property tax roll BTW. The wealthiest one and one-half percent of taxpayers and the corporations have reached the maximum that they can reasonably and sustainably hit the lower and middle class property owners.

The only way out, at least in CA, is to set a homeowner's income tax cap tied to the property values in areas where the median household incomes are low. If you don't do something like that soon you will have more riots at home openings as have happened here in CA.

In DC I guess the Congressmen just give out more pay raises, that the lower/middle classes foot the bill for, and make room for more wealthy speculators. The system is getting to 'top heavy' for people to put up with any longer.

Marxian ? LOL ! Tax revolt created this country. De-brainwashing is necessary and imperative now. Repubs are into regressive taxation of taxing wage earnings and not capital gains.

Re read the original post. LA's tax base of property owners, now more and more lower income, can't sustain highly paid firefighters and police officers whose unions control city hall. By placating Mello-Roos bondholders (read the 'rich') for years they've tied their fates to the Republican party. A bad political assessment of the situation is a bad political assessment of the situation.