Against Flat Tax
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"It is an obvious mathematical law that lower taxes on the successful will have to made up by higher taxes on average people." Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka spoke these very intellectual words in their 1983 book. These two Stanford educators gave a simple yet excellent description of the new type of tax reform, flat tax. What flat tax does is that it replaces progressive income tax with a flat tax rate (not income-based), a 17% tax for everyone, regardless of income. But what this policy does is that it shifts the tax burden from the rich to that of the middle and lower classes.
The richest 1% of Americans currently pays a tax rate of 39.6%. A drop of more than 20% leaves an enormous shortflall in necessary tax revenues. This gap will either fall to those in the lower tax brackets, or in other words, the middle and lower classes, or it will not be made up at all, leaving the government unable in its ability to carry out vital programs initially funded by income tax. The people will suffer, and what it's worse, the economy will suffer...