rainman, I have confronted liberals with the question of what is "fair share", and received the same response from them. They haven't a clue. They just want more of whatever the "producers" produce. Moochers will be moochers, and they will continue to be what they are. Never satisfied as long as someone else is perceived as having more than them.

"Fair Share" is sorta like "equality" screech we hear all the time about everything the left thinks they should be entitled to.
I'm okay with both as long as it comes with "fair share" and "equality" of effort, not a theft of someone else's efforts and energy. Which seems to be sadly lacking with the moochers of today, and always has been absent. They just want whatever it is without having to do anything to get it.
A pox on them and their households. When they get their way and kill the goose, there will be a multitude of "Detroits" across the nation.

I agree.

It is more insidious than simply raising taxes.

It removes an existing constitutional cap to allow them to raise taxes again and again, as often as they want to.

I assumed everyone would know sarcasm when they saw it. I guess I assumed wrong.

So allow me to amend my earlier mesasage.

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I'm going to run for president on one platform only: Unless you can define it as something other than "more than you're currently paying", the use of the term "fair share" will be a jailable offense.
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Still waiting........

I was jesting, though it's probably not a laughing matter, in Nevada.

As you stated, a mining concern can't just simply move to another state. Like the silver mine in Idaho that wouldn't "bow" to the outrageous union demands. They simply closed their doors and left a large population unemployed, when it could have been so easily avoided with a few concessions from labor.

The manganese fiasco

Reminiscent of those ocean-bottom ore nodules that looked economically worthwhile until everyone in the world demanded their "fair share" of that "natural resource"?

That put a stop to THAT development and mining pretty quickly. The nodules sleep happily on the ocean bottom, still, helping no economy or company or country at all....
Well done, even back then, by the moochers!

I started gathering rebuttals back in '08...
http://www.plusaf.com/lessons/flattax.ht...

But facts or data or logic are all anecdotal to True-Believers for whom Higher Taxes Are THE Solution for Revenue Shortfalls.

It's kind of genetic, I think... or some kind of birth defect...

Dang! I just might have to go back and read about that one again...
The first time I heard about it, I read up on it and discovered that it had about as many, if not more, holes in it than The Flat Tax proposals. There were all kinds of potential 'unfairnesses,' future loopholes and unaccounted-for conditions in the somewhat detailed descriptions of the Fair Tax Proposal.

I've thought that a Flat Tax of about 7% on ALL EARNED INCOME, with NO deductions for ANYONE for ANY reason could work, but ONLY if the Flat Tax is applied ONLY ABOVE some agreed-upon "income floor."

You could combine such a Flat Tax with a 'prebate' concept, where actual cash is supplied to folks at some other 'below-poverty-level' of INCOME and see what happens, something like what was proposed in Switzerland but apparently voted down.

If you don't look for the unintended consequences and 'gee, we forgot about that part..' when such "solutions" are proposed, you're likely to just be uncanning more worms.

Not to be rude, but I expect a proponent to be able to give at least the briefest summary of a written work they value.

Peak my interest and maybe I'll read another book on the subject.

Oh, and BTW, it slays me, how flat taxes are regressive and unfair until it's time to raise State and Local Sales Taxes

Then it's always "just another penny".
Ha!

Haha! Being a northeast Nevada denizen (Elko County), I have always had a solution to propose for this dilemma. We would invite and encourage Northern California to secede from the rest of the State (how long have they wanted that?), and join Nevada in seceding from the rest of the nation. We would carve Clark County away from Nevada and provide that to Southern California as remuneration.

The new sovereign constitutional republic would then have seaports, the water and timber of Northern Cal, the geothermal renewable energy and the mineral resources of the Great Basin. The gold and silver produced in the new entity would be kept and minted into real coin of the realm at the revived Carson City mint.

And of course it makes way too much sense. The chances are as likely as the mountain of ice in Barstow. !!!

"Fair Share" and "Social Justice," That is always the standard mantra of the Progressive ilk, "Fair Share" ranks closely with "Social Justice" as an unexplained claim against those who are willing to work, who have worked, and who are now the vaunted One Percent.

The true reality is that there is no One Percent, only persons who are successful because they are or were willing to work.

Those persons who legitimately cannot work, or those who are retired, living on social security and their meager pensions, and military pensions, like I am, they have paid their dues.

The others, the takers, the users, the ne'er do well schemers, are creeping up on the rest of us. Currently I'd estimate them at nearly forty percent of the population. I would change the rules for them. Only twenty-five weeks of unemployment with no extensions would be paid. TANIF lasts for twenty-five weeks before becoming Workfare. Welfare becomes Workfare. This would be governed and enforced far more restrictively than pre Obummer programs, requiring that all employers hire directly from the state unemployment roles for management and non management positions, that veterans have 100 percent preference in all cases, regardless of age, with paid training from the VA if necessary. Filling all other management and non management positions, from these roles being required before being allowed to hire others or from off-shore.

In order to do this we will have to generate a tremendous number of jobs. Therefore I would direct US Customs to immediately create a mirror acceptance policy, country by country, the regulations of countries shipping items to the US for sale would apply to their shipments to the US. Further I would direct our numerous national intelligence assets to discover every farthing of state aid, subsidy and tax relief paid by foreign governments to their manufacturers to produce products, unless said plants were in the US and goods produced contained at least 60 percent US domestic product.

Then effective immediately the authority and powers of the Unconstitutional Departments of Interior, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Education, Environmental Protection, Health & Human Services (with CDC being transferred to Department of Homeland Security, and Defense being transferred to State) and Transportation being transferred to the states in accordance with the 9th and 10th Amendments. Further all Federal Agencies, Bureaus and Boards be similarly transferred.

The vastly reduced governance would allow the immediate closure of the Internal Revenue Service with working Americans paying a flat five percent tax on gross revenue, regardless of the form taken by that revenue, with no allowable adjustments. This would allow rapid settlement of the national debt, i.e. Exxon-Mobile grossed 516.22 billion dollars in 2013; five percent of that would be 25.81 billion in taxes (25.81=516.22 x .05 [Billions of USD]), a hell of a lot more than the 300K they’ll pay under the current rules.

Once the U-8 Total unemployment is reduced to less than five percent America will truly drive forward dancing a happy dance.

Please add me to the chorus of people asking for an explanation of how a flat tax would be regressive.

I already gave several details. And tithing is a religious concept - voluntarily giving 10% to a church or other place of worship is not at all comparable to having 10% forcibly extracted from you by whichever politicians happen to be in power at the time.

Hey, Radio; I do believe you are speaking in jest. But it opens the way for a further exploration of the topic. Indeed the gold and silver is in the ground. Hence, the mining companies cannot just pick up and go to a more amenable area - after all, how much gold (real gold, not black gold) is in the ground in Texas?

But further, the gold is not public property as the 1872 mining law on federally "administered" public lands provides for the private right of ownership of the mineral value. Despite the gutting of the law that occurred in 1992 where the Congressional jackals put a moratorium on the patenting process of the surface ownership, the private right to the minerals is intact.

The looters of the world decry this private ownership and the rights to profits after all the hard work and costs of exploration, discovery, development, and production of the mineral value is invested. So they chip away, chip away from every angle and this taxation issue in Nevada is another attempt of the looters/moochers to out vote the producers.

There is NOTHING regressive about a flat tax. I personally would prefer a straight consumption tax, where you are taxed ONLY on what you purchase, provided there are NO other income taxes of any sort.

Ok, I want you to explain in DETAIL why me paying 10% and you paying 10% is not equitable and totally fair? Even GOD expected only 10% from EVERYONE, regardless of overall income. What is done with the proceeds is up to the government provided they are not just distributing those proceeds in the form of income to others.

Yep.

Here's a list of the problems I have with anything other than a flat tax:
1) disincentives to progression. Our current progressive tax system creates a stepped tax system of traps where people jump up into higher brackets, often being forced to make substantially more just to break even. Why should one be forced to decline a $.50/hr raise because it ends up costing them more money in taxes than the raise is worth? This effect forces people into looking for quantum leaps at certain points instead of steady, measured progression. (The welfare system only exacerbates these problems.)

2) Everyone uses the roads, EMS, fire, police, and basic government. In my book, everyone should have to contribute towards these ongoing costs in order to avoid getting something for nothing (mooching) or running into the third-party payer problems of cost distortion (see healthcare).

3) Complexity. Our tax code is currently over one million pages long - precisely because of all the hidden privileges. Get rid of all of them and establish a low flat rate that is simple to understand and tough to cheat.

4) Disparate economic treatment. I object to the idea that we must punish the successful because of their success with a higher tax rate. Those are the investors and job-creators - the capitalists (owners of capital).

5) No taxation without representation - and vice-versa. Why should the successful be punished with a higher tax rate when that doesn't get them more voting power? One of the biggest problems with our current system is that the politicians can promise to reward those who make little that they will take from those who make much. And they can get away with it because they outnumber them in voting power. When everyone pays the same rate, this disparity disappears and takes with it much of the opportunity for special treatment.

When they started implementing the same smog check system in Washoe and Clark counties as the one run by CARB, it spoke volumes...