Originally posted by Zampanó
And this is the heart of the reason that I dislike your tax plan. Excise taxes are inherently regressive, since low-income households spend a higher percentage of their income on consumable goods than do high-income earners.
That's kind of misleading because low-income people spend a higher percentage of their income on everything that they spend money on compared to higher income earners. My point does not necessarily translate, directly, into them spending more of their income on taxes via goods. In fact, some models (probably most) could lower the tax burden on the poor and increase the tax burden on the rich. That is how the tax system worked before income taxes, to be exact. It was mostly tarriffs and taxes on specific goods: unless you consumed large quantities of alcohol, you weren't really directly taxed.
Originally posted by Zampanó
I won't insult you by linking to basic economic terms, but I've always considered ability-to-pay to be much more important than who benefits, in terms of tax fairness.
I think you think of excise taxes as being something that they aren't. The tax burden would likely decrease on the poor in most systems I have seen: the poor just won't be able to spend enough money on goods to show a significant burden.
Also, your link doesn't address a counter to excise taxes. It talks more about maximum efficacy for high taxes and how trickle-down economics do not work...or are shown to not work. Did I read the wrong link or at least did I quit reading before I got to the good stuff?
Edit - There was a list out there for the "effective tax rate." I want to find that list again. It shows that even though, on paper, the tax rate for the rich may be 30%+, they effectively do not pay that tax rate.
Edit 2 - I skipped something you stated before. The US, and most of the modern world, was already in a "world economy" when income taxes started. In fact, the US was already part of a global economy when it was born and it could not have come into existence had it been born into a system of isolated, island, economies. Granted, the global nature of the world's economies are tied into each other even more than 1913 (when income taxes officially started), but the massive stock market crash was definitely felt around the world...despite it happening only a few short years later (1929). The second Industrial Revolution occurred partly due to the awesome landscape of no income (or direct corporate) taxes. I feel, based on facts, that our income taxes are stifling.