The basic progressive tax system treats everyone equally as regards to earned income. Pay this much tax on $10K, pay this much tax on $20K, pay this much tax on $400K.
The unfairness comes in with loopholes and treating different types of income differently. People that earn their incomes from investments pay a much lower rate than those that use their bodies to earn income.
If the point of the OP is to declare that every form of income should be treated the same I'll agree.
I disagree. Earned income is different from investment income. The reason tax rates are lower on investment income, is because the capital investment was already taxed once as earned income. These individuals are risking their capital, which they do not have to do. They could simply take their marbles and go home, which is what most of them would do, if taxed the same rate as earned income. Since it is desirable to have people investing capital, we do whatever we can to encourage more of it, which means lower tax rates on income from investments. Now, we can eliminate this or make the rate the same as earned income, but do we really want to stifle capital investment. Do you honestly think that would help create more jobs and opportunity economically?
"Loophole" is a buzzword thrown out by the lefties, which sounds like something unfair or unethical being done. Every single one of these so-called "loopholes" was debated and deliberated in Congress, and decided upon by our elected representatives. Most of them pertain to some fundamental problem we were experiencing, and seek to alleviate that problem through some kind of tax incentive. We weren't producing enough corn, so we offered tax breaks for farmers to grow it, that's not a loophole. Expensive homes were not being sold because people couldn't justify the property taxes, so we introduced mortgage deductions, that's not a loophole. And most of these so-called "loopholes" were the result of liberal initiatives in the first place, to address some liberal concern at the time.
The progressive tax system does NOT treat everyone the same. We take a larger slice of your pie, the more you make. How the hell is that fair? I get that the more you make, the more you should pay, but at the same percentage rate, you are paying more already. You're increasing the percentage rate, taking a larger piece of an already larger pie. When you go to the grocery store to purchase a gallon of milk, does it cost you more because you have more money in your wallet? When you go out to eat, is your customary 15% tip ballooned to 30% because you're at a 4-star restaurant?
