The Republican flat and sales tax cures are worse than the disease. They seek to enact the largest redistribution of wealth in our history and all in the wrong direction. And they seek to create a system which either explodes the deficit or forces deep cuts in education, the environment, and health care. Progressivity is not designed to punish the wealthy for their economic success. The idea behind it is to lighten the tax burden on those who are working hard to move into and stay in the middle- class.
Republican plans gut progressivity under the guise of fairness.
They shift the tax burden down the scale, lightening the load on the wealthy. This is the cruelest kind of class warfare by the wealthy, for the wealthy, paid for on the backs of working people. By Republicans who are constantly accusing others of class warfare. A true flat tax doubles taxes for those in the middle, and cuts them in half for the rich. The national sales tax is just as regressive.