Progessive Tax

Again, you're basing this on your conception of "fair". There's nothing inherently unfair about progressive taxation. It's based on the concept of ability to pay. Lets say there was a flat tax with 25% tax rate across the board. After that tax, a person making $1 million would have $750,000 after taxes and a person making $10,000 (below the poverty line already) would make $7500 after taxes. Some people would consider it more fair to make the person who earns $1 million to pay 50% and the person making $10,000 to only pay 5%. The person making $1 million will still have $500,000, quite a bit of money, and the person making $10,000 will have $9,500 left. The poor person needs that extra $2,000 far more than the rich person needs that extra $250,000. That is fair in some peoples' minds. Now, the purpose of that was to demonstrate that people have different conceptions of what is fair and what is not fair and it's not an absolute. I am, however, not arguing that your system is unfair, I'm arguing that it is completely impractical. Progressive taxation has been around pretty much since the 16th amendment was passed. The first time the rates were raised to very high levels on the rich, was to finance our involvement in World War I. This was done again during the depression and World War II. After the war, tax rates on the rich remained high. This additional revenue was used to finance New Deal Programs and programs like the GI Bill that sent our soldiers to college when they returned home from World War II. Programs like this are what allow people who are poor to become successful and in some cases become rich. Ask almost anybody from the Greatest Generation that didn't come from a wealthy family where they would be without the New Deal and without the GI Bill. They would be nowhere because those programs created the opportunities that they needed to be successful. These programs can't be financed through a flat tax. Financial assistance for college is much less effective when it's being financed equally by the people who are receiving the assistance. The reason that we give the assistance in the first place is that people can't afford to pay for college by themselves. Furthermore, there's absolutely nothing about a progressive income tax that keeps people from becoming wealthy. Again we've had a progressive income tax since the 1910's and it certainly has not led us to this "communist" society that you speak of. A progressive income tax allows people to acquire great wealth. All it does is tax a higher percentage of that wealth than a flat tax would and places less of the tax burden on people who can barely afford to pay their bills as it is. Shifting more of the tax burden to the lower 50%, as you propose, means that more of them won't be able to send their kids to college, won't be able to afford health care, and in some cases won't be able to afford to pay their mortgages. Progressive taxation is efficient in preventing these things from happening. If you want more uninsured people, more uneducated people, and more homeless people then a flat tax is certainly more efficient. If you want to see less of these things, then progressive taxation is the most efficient means to do so.