During the presidential election, many candidates in the Republican Party promised to enact a fair and such a simple tax system that it would fit on the back of a post card. Republicans, like many Libertarians, like to propose a flat-rate tax where everyone pays the same percentage of their income and that would be considered the “fairest way of taxation.”

The ideology of a flat-rate tax may seem perfect on the surface to many people, but when you look at it a little deeper and examine some statistics, you will find that a flat-rate tax is another scam that benefits the rich who will pay less taxes and will only hurts working-class people.

If you haven’t noticed already, America has the highest, and I mean highest, wealth inequality in the world. In 2007, the richest 1% of Americans owned about 35% of the nation wealth, and I can guarantee that in 2013, it is much higher. If you were to add the next richest 4% of Americans and take the wealth of the richest 5% of Americans, the amount of the nation’s wealth that they own climbs to about 62%.



From an ethical viewpoint, one must ask themselves, do the top 5% of Americans work so hard that they deserve 62% of the nation’s wealth? If all of the workers that they hired who created that wealth suddenly left, would those 5% of Americans be just as rich?

The reason why I explain this is that a flat-rate tax would work well if everyone made the same-amount or at least close to the same amount of income. However, since America has the highest wealth inequality in the world, our tax structure should reflect that.

We all hear about the deficit and ask what went wrong. What went wrong was this: We put in policies that allowed the wealthy to exploit the working-class and force so many into poverty. We cut taxes on the wealthy and as the working-class got poorer, we saw less taxable income from them as well.

The reason why a progressive tax structure works best is that it bases off someone’s ability to pay. For somebody that makes $25,000 dollars a year compared to someone that makes a million dollars, a tax rate at 10% is more damaging to their ability to survive off their income than someone who makes a million dollars. For example, after taxes (with a 10% tax rate), it is hard to survive on $22,500 compared to $900,000. (I created an example below)

