[spence]

Originally Posted by detbuch

It took time to drift away from the Founders intent.

Here's an interesting read. This does paint a picture of our Founding Fathers behaving like thoughtful people and not strictly adhering to an absolute. While natural law still rules, we are a bit unique in that humans have the ability to temporarily distort it's fabric to suit our interests...for good or bad.

In a letter to James Madison in 1785, for instance, Thomas Jefferson suggested that taxes could be used to reduce “the enormous inequality” between rich and poor. He wrote that one way of “silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”

Madison later spoke in favor of using laws to “reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity (meaning the middle) and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.”

During the early days of the republic, the government relied mostly on tariffs to collect revenue, under the theory that since the rich bought most of the imports, they would pay most of the taxes.

“The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the general government are levied,” Jefferson wrote in 1811. “The poor man, who uses nothing but what is made in his own farm or family, will pay nothing. (With) our revenues applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.”

Source: SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Business > Dean Calbreath -- 'Spreading the wealth' is nothing new to U.S.

Where people seem to get all up in a froth is when someone uses the word "fair" around the word "taxation". I do think you can justify some progressive taxation under the guise of fairness for a simple reason.

Those with more wealth stand to benefit disproportionately from many factors of which there's a large government investment, historic influence or public interest such as economic strategy.

Was that sufficiently nebulous?

This could be items like infrastructure or public defense (i.e. without the US taxpayer subsidizing safe shipping lanes through defense appropriations we couldn't have maintained our economic might behind most of our wealth) or the argument of equal opportunity (i.e. those born with less means may never be able to gain an equal footing with those who do) that might leverage taxpayer money for education. Certainly this one is a slippery slope. (and then some).

So the logical counter argument would be that the same could be funded (if deemed desirable and/or Constitutional) via flat taxation vs a progressive system.

I might be inclined to think that we already have a flat tax on average. There are so many incentives available primarily to those who have wealth which acts as an offset to the progressive rates. I've read that under a flat tax most individuals would still pay about the same, and also that most flat tax proposals aren't really perfectly flat.

Ultimately, I do believe that a balance between trickle down and trickle up economics creates a natural convection and is sound economic policy.

So the answer might actually be fairness after all. Is this to open to be considered a guiding principal? Perhaps, but take anything to it's extreme and it breaks...even individual liberty.

-spence

Editors note: I didn't bother to catch up on this entire thread, but just picked a post at random to respond to. If any of these items have been discussed at length, you have my apologies in advance.