Rut-rooow George

[Okeefenokee]

If you abolish confiscatory taxes, switch your nation over to a strict consumption tax, then your tax rate will always mirror the GDP, which means your tax rate is automatically adjusted for inflation. If you experience inflation, then the prices of goods go up, and therefore the consumption tax takes a higher amount in proportion to the increase in price.

My problem with this is it's massively regressive, since the poor spend 100% of their income and the rich invest the majority of theirs and accelerate the concentration of wealth into their hands. Unless you're proposing taxing financial trades as consumption, that would be fun. 20% tax on house purchases? That would shake the economy, I recently read the average house before 2008 was being held only 4 years.

You rent in NJ right? Do you not take a penalty on selling homes before so many years?

[SuburbanFarmer]

If you abolish confiscatory taxes, switch your nation over to a strict consumption tax, then your tax rate will always mirror the GDP, which means your tax rate is automatically adjusted for inflation. If you experience inflation, then the prices of goods go up, and therefore the consumption tax takes a higher amount in proportion to the increase in price.

My problem with this is it's massively regressive, since the poor spend 100% of their income and the rich invest the majority of theirs and accelerate the concentration of wealth into their hands. Unless you're proposing taxing financial trades as consumption, that would be fun. 20% tax on house purchases? That would shake the economy, I recently read the average house before 2008 was being held only 4 years.

We should absolutely tax trades, to rein in the HFT gangsters.

[brewster]

We should absolutely tax trades, to rein in the HFT gangsters.

It would only take a fraction of a cent on the dollar to rein in HFT. I think we're talking about 10-20%, which would turn the financial world upside down.

If we all agree wealth inequality is a bad thing, insomuch as it's largely a function of those "with" gaming the system to gain more, any tax system needs to address it rather than turn a blind eye with a "flat" tax.