I'm willing to tolerate that if they pay (only a little!) more tax, and the ones at the bottom get taken care of humanely. So: that's a step up from what we have today, a big one.
> Maybe the first piece of a reformed tax system would
> have to be a ban or limit on inherited wealth.
That breaks my first rule: one tax system. If you can't get all the money you need from the first tax system, adding a second one just makes things worse. Isn't that really the problem? You have things you want; you don't have enough revenue to pay for them.
My solution: raise taxes. The only other alternative is to lower your expectations of what you want.
Now, that being said, it's my guess that if we didn't have so many other regressive taxes out there (gas taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes) that the actual percentages involved would probably go down. It's criminal that, as Warren Buffett says, a secretary pays more (percentage-wise, which is what counts!) into SS than a bond salesman.
> If you use progressive taxation to control the
> accumulation of wealth, then you might take away the
> incentive to work.
Rubbish.
> Also, to make the whole system really
> fair, you'd have to be sure there were no advantages
> of education given to one group or another.
All you have to do is make the baseline package "enough" and you're done: housing, medical care, food. The rest can stay the same. Note: this is not a package to make everyone equal, it's a package that gives everyone a realistic mimimum. Right now the minimum is practically zero (yes Max, I know about things like the EITC).
At that point, the only way to lower taxes is to make the machine that spits out the baseline benefit more efficient. And by more efficient I mean getting rid of fraud, waste, and abuse; I don't mean by cutting benefits :-)
I'd say that would incent some of the bigger companies and individuals to find ways to help the government do its job for cheaper. Right now it's far easier to spend that kind of effort on avoiding taxation rather than bringing down the cost of what it is we're buying.
/jordan