Quote:
Originally posted by ghuinness
Flat -tax: many countries are going that route and benefiting from the change.
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The problem with a flat-tax and the removal of the estate tax is that it will create an aristocracy in the Republic, the likes of which we have not seen since Newport was the playground for the Barons of Industry.
I fully understand the reasoning behind people not liking the tax system and the systemic pains it causes many people. The inherent fact is that almost every sentence of code in the tax law is there for a reason. There is a reason for the Estate Tax. It is supposed to ensure that people can't simply hand down wealth, in totality, from generation to generation so that certain families control entire empires of our country.
I'm sorry if people disagree, but our nation is supposed to be about free-will, determination, and free enterprise. How is that possible if a few dozen familes are able to consolidate their wealth and holdings to the point where we can name the familes that control whole regions and those that seek to enter free-enterprise are crushed by said familes because they control entire regions?
I know it intimately. We have a corporation locally, that is family based, that controls almost 30% of our area. The way they structure their business, if the Estate Tax was not in place they would probably control 80-90% of the region. I am not saying that is bad, perhaps they would run things well, but in a free-market system how can we say that we have such a system if one family controls the entire market.
The elimination of the estate tax would simply be a step in the direction we moved away from in the early part of the last century. It's named the "Death Tax" by many who fail to understand it's full consequence.
I have to say I can understand why some people are so against such a system. People feel if they earned their money they have every right to pass it down in a way they see fit. I have a hard time disagreeing with that, yet all I have to do is look over my shoulder and see the product of such a system. We have a system that is Socialist/Captialist. It has worked for the better part of a century. We do not allow families or corporations to have undue influence on our system because we have learned from history that it is very dangerous.
We do not want any one man to control the press, well we did, from the lessons learned by Luce. Nor do we want to allow wealth to accumulate in a family in such a way that allows such undue influence that causes a lack of innovation or entrepreneurialship.
If we impose either the Flat-Tax or we eliminate the Estate-Tax we will revist the era of Robber-Barons and an era that saw a few familes controlling the destiny of our Nation by their power and wealth accumulated over generations.
There is a reason we moved away from this type of system and have the tax-system we have, it did not work for the greater society. This may seem like socialism, yet I would beg to ask anyone to point out how we have been worse off since these introduced policies have been in action have hurt our economy. Because, under such a system we have become the greatest economic model in the known world.
We have social systems in place, many disagree with them, we have a fairly even tax system in place, many will disagree, we have a system in place that ensures that we all at least are supposed to pay an even amount into the system for the Nation we inhabit.
I will conceed that the governmental agencies have been allowed to baloon out of control and that some form of control needs to be enacted, cut-backs, and even re-thinking of policy. What I will not conceed is the fact that many of these laws are in place for a reason. Whether people want to admit it or not we have a Socialist/Capitalist system in this country. It has seen us to the heights we are at now. The greatest economic power in the world. I simply question how people seem to think that going back to a system that was proven a failure is supposed to cure the ills that do not even exist.
Our system works. Why change it?