> Well its % based so its already progressive as in you pay far more if you are richer. So if you want to also pay higher % if you are richer.
This is just flat out wrong. With a flat tax you don't pay a higher % if you are richer, you pay a higher amount.
It stings just as much to lose 10% if you make 1k/month as when you make 100k/month. Whereas with the latter you're left with 90k, arguably much more than needed for a comfortable life, so you could easily pay 30% without a noticeable change in your life quality (or future business endeavors).
Of course if you have a shitty government then subjectively any tax is gonna go to waste and this is a pointless discussion. We're talking about an imaginary society here where we're making things better through a simpler system and the government can actually get things done fairly efficiently.
I simply believe the answers lie somewhere in the middle. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Redistributing the taxes sounds like a good idea whenever we're talking "punishment taxes", but... you also need to consider who has to take care of and pay for the mess created (if someone pollutes a river). So from that perspective the opposite makes sense, that the "punishment taxes" goes to the state, to fix things.
Ultimately I think it's a question of size of society/government. A small enough society is self-organizing. The larger it becomes the more structure/regulation it needs to not break apart, and at some point it becomes inefficient. We just need to watch out for increasing complexity, and make active efforts to reduce it (that's something few world governments are doing right now).
> With a flat tax you don't pay a higher % if you are richer, you pay a higher amount.
That's literally what I wrote.
The Flat tax is not fixed. Its incremental up to a a limit. So you only pay the full amount once you reach a certain level. Below that you pay increasingly less.
And as I suggested, if you want higher % you can make that slightly slanted as well.
This is just flat out wrong. With a flat tax you don't pay a higher % if you are richer, you pay a higher amount.
It stings just as much to lose 10% if you make 1k/month as when you make 100k/month. Whereas with the latter you're left with 90k, arguably much more than needed for a comfortable life, so you could easily pay 30% without a noticeable change in your life quality (or future business endeavors).
Of course if you have a shitty government then subjectively any tax is gonna go to waste and this is a pointless discussion. We're talking about an imaginary society here where we're making things better through a simpler system and the government can actually get things done fairly efficiently.
I simply believe the answers lie somewhere in the middle. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Redistributing the taxes sounds like a good idea whenever we're talking "punishment taxes", but... you also need to consider who has to take care of and pay for the mess created (if someone pollutes a river). So from that perspective the opposite makes sense, that the "punishment taxes" goes to the state, to fix things.
Ultimately I think it's a question of size of society/government. A small enough society is self-organizing. The larger it becomes the more structure/regulation it needs to not break apart, and at some point it becomes inefficient. We just need to watch out for increasing complexity, and make active efforts to reduce it (that's something few world governments are doing right now).