gluttony and the good life

What you say is exactly right on, John. 

The problem is that we've been conditioned not to listen.  Somehow we have been led by the Pied Piper of Lust, gluttony  and Greed into believing that if we just try harder or buy the lucky lottery ticket, we can rise into that Promised Land of Excessive Luxury. 

This must be the underlying answer.  Otherwise why would we close our minds to a system that allows some of our members to receive so much more for their efforts than the rest of us? 

The professional athlete who signs a ten million dollar contract.  "Hey!" we say, "If he can get it, what's wrong with that?"  The billionaire who takes a natural resource such as oil, and sells it back to us at huge profit and then cons us into taxing ourselves to build a stadium named after his corporation, in order to allow that athlete and his team to play.  And we get to pay big bucks to attend the game!  And we act as if this is just fine and dandy. 

Okay, President Sarah Palin it is. 

 

Curious Carl

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: John Heim

To: acb-l@acb.org

Sent: Friday, December 03, 2010 6:47 AM

Subject: Re: [acb-l] Flat Tax? [WAS] Re: Social Security

Yeah, this is the point I like to make when people talk about the flat tax
rate. People tend to think a flat tax would be fair if only we could really
get everyone to pay the same rate. But that's just not true. Rich people
benefit disproportionately from society.

A guy making $20 million a year lives pretty much the same lifestyle as one
making $40 million. But a guy making $20 thousand a year does not live the
same lifestyle as a guy making $40 thousand. The benefits you get from
living in this great country of ours just don't go up in a straight line.
They taper off considerably at the low end. There is nothing fair about a
guy making $40 thousand a year and a guy making $40 million a year paying
the same percentage of tax on their income. Even if you could manage it, it
wouldn't be fair.

You could tax a guy making $40 million a year at 50% and it wouldn't really
change his life at all. But if you take half the income of a guy making $40
thousand, he's poor.  Now he can't pay his mortgage or pay for his kid's to
go to college, not even the state college.

Social benefits aren't flat and taxes shouldn't be either.