[somerfrost]

Originally Posted by joeydb

Any talk of "need" with regard to income and what can keep due to government confiscation is, often unintentionally, socialistic.

If I am to "earn" a large paycheck, and 62% of it is forcibly taken from me, why the hell would I work hard enough to do that again? I'd work enough to earn a figure in a lower bracket - which I can do, due to the ludicrous progressive tax system. So then it is not just I who lost the income, but also the government. This is one of the mechanisms by which higher tax rates often yield lower revenues.

Another mechanism is that I simply move my business out of the country and avoid this confiscatory tax.

You cannot define what is "fair", especially, as you point out, when the costs are assigned to one group and the benefits are assigned to another non-overlapping group. This is why we need a flat tax: everyone paying the same rate. Earn twice as much, pay twice as much. Earn half as much, pay half as much. Put in a poverty exclusion - like not taxing the first $50,000 or something. Because we can define what is proportional, and that often syncs up with what most people would agree is fair.

By the way, on a more frivolous note:

I am a huge Star Trek fan. When Spock said that statement it was in reference to whether he or Kirk should command the ship since Spock was acting captain, Kirk was an admiral and normally would not interfere, but of course, as always, a critical mission came up. I don't think it was a wholesale endorsement of redistributing wealth.

Actually, I thought Spock made that statement regarding his "suicide mission" exposing himself to fatal levels of radiation in the warp drive...perhaps I am mistaken but that's what I recall. Anyway, it obviously wasn't regarding distribution of wealth but applies to life in general. I also support a flat tax with a poverty exclusion so we have a point of agreement there. Socialism is a term that many run from, I have no trouble embracing many so-called Socialist concepts, the problem being avoiding a central government that denies freedoms to the people in the name of same.