By pushing the flat tax model, the conservatives are attempting to turn the USA into a country resembling an Eastern European country, as many of these countries currently have flat tax systems. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax) It is revealing that many pundits making the flat tax argument fail to point out that there is currently a model for the flat tax system. The high rates of poverty and social ills of Eastern European countries likely discourage proponents from making such a comparison. When asked, ¨Give me an example of a country where a flat tax has worked?¨ many simply pretend that these flat tax countries don´t exist. The argument that they front is that we shouldn´t be ¨socialist¨ like [western] Europe. The response should be that we shouldn´t be like Eastern Europe either.
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One of the countries in the link was Transnistria. I had never heard of it, but may have met a Transnistrite and never have known.
I am not sure about what the tax plan is, but Transdnistria was not so much a "country", but a region carved out of what was the former Soviet Republic of the Ukraine in WWII was awarded to the Romanians for being part of the Axis. For a brief period it was part of Romania, and Jews who lived in the parts of Romania that was not included in the pre-WWI borders were removed to live in ghettos that were built for them.
The difference between the Ghettos in Transdnistria and the German camps was that they were ostensibly "work camps", so there was none of the genocidal element. It was, as if, the Romanians preferred to "work them to . . ."
Chad used to have a "Head Tax". A flat tax per person. Everyone paid the same amount. I don't know if they still do that..
Chad vies with Haiti as being the most impoverished nation on the planet.
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
Sorry, I'm looking for the down side from your link. Fast, Exceptional GDP growth, Declining unemployment, rising standard of living, Decline in tax evasion, maybe I am not seeing it.
The link served to show that eastern European countries have flat tax systems. I didn´t read the shining ¨fast, exceptional GDP¨ growth that you did. In fact, Eastern Europe doesn´t really have much other direction to go, in terms of economics and standard of living, than up. Not much in the area of wages, jobs and infrastructure. The economy of Eastern Europe is improving for the same reason as the economy of China - cheap labor and trade with stronger economies.
Latvia has a flat tax. It's GDP is plunging...wages dropping, living standards declining. In the long-term, they don't seem to work out very well.
It just adds to the extractions of the money supply from the real economy....not much different than high interest rates or huge incomes that see the money supply plowed into financial paper rather than circulating within the economy.
Of course, Lativa is held hostage to the banksters...it's own economy has to suffer for the extractions they've made on the country. It's stuck with a lot of bankster debt..Taxation goes to pay it. The people who didn't create it....get to pay for it.
The great sucking sound you hear of money going from bottom to top isn't just happening here. The economic meltdown is being duplicated elsewhere...including flat tax Latvia..
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease'