roachboy

um..kma ...if you were to isolate the question of the relative percentages paid by the wealthy in taxes from the social functions the redistribution of wealth might serve, then your position might--might--seem reasonable. however the fact is that you cannot simply assume that this separation is itself reasonable.
for myself, i think splitting the conception of taxation/redistribution of wealth from its various functions is insane. untenable at any level.

so i reject the whole of conservative discourse on the matter--i understand that the accumulation of wealth is contingent upon a stable social order (not the "hard work" of horatio alger characters on their own) and that those who benefit from the accumulation of wealth are obliged (ethically, legally, politically) to contribute to the maintenance of the social system from which their profit comes. and at a higher rate than those who do not so benefit. period.

a flat tax is predicated on an entirely abstract--and untenable--illusion of fairness. your proposal presupposes an entire ideology--which you act as though is not operative. that you act in this way changes nothing. and that you would then accuse manx--or anyone else--of inflexibility seems to me absurd. simply because your proposal is not self-contained not self justifying--and that you try, in the name of common ground, to force others into pretending as you do that the situation (your flat tax proposal, the question of whether it is even logical apart from the ideology within which you operate) is otherwise seems to run against the idea you are advocating.

i think this is the kind of thing that those of us who have objected and still object to the parlor game being carried out here are complaining about.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite