FairTaxation

What is fair taxation? In the table below are shown three classes of citizens, wealthy, middle income and the poor.

In the above sample economy, there are 100 people in total and their total income is $100. If income were shared fairly -- if everyone had the same income, people would have an income of $1.00. The overall tax burden borne by this group is $87.02. If everyone were taxed equally, everyone would pay $0.87 in tax and have a net income of $0.23.

In the above example, incomes are not equal. The top group (1 person) has an income nearly a thousand times that of the bottom group -- $89.00 vs $0.10. The bottom group could not possibly pay their 1% share of the tax burden because it exceeds their income by nearly ten-fold. They can't pay their share of tax because they did not get their share of the income. The top group, the '1%' in this example, pays more tax than all the others combined. They pay a much higher rate and a much higher amount.

The group that gets to put messages into the media, the one that controls the narrative we all see, features the hard-working people at the top and their 'crushing' 96% tax rate and disproportionate share of the tax burden. They highlight how the 'lazy' people at the bottom pay only a 10% rate and an overall share of only about 1% of the total tax burden while the hard-working people at the top shoulder greater than 90% of the total tax burden.

The group that controls the narrative puts things this way: They (the wealthy 1%) fund most of the tax burden with 'their' money while the poor are net recipients of wealth -- getting 87 cents worth of tax funded value while paying only a penny for it.

There is another way to look at this state of affairs, though. Were things fair, everyone would have a net income of $0.23 to enjoy as they please. Instead, nearly everyone has less than half that -- $0.09. One has more than their fair share -- $0.60 and one has much more than their fair share -- $3.56.

What is really fair? In our part of the world there is a custom that when sharing between two people, one cuts to create the two shares and to ensure that the distribution is a fair one, the other gets to choose which share he takes. In the above example, the one at top has the power and chooses to carve things up where one share is more than thirty times as much as the other. They then get to choose the share they take and not surprisingly they choose the largest for themselves.

The one controlling the narrative, cutting up the pie and choosing their portion first would like to convince you that not only is the system not unfair to the 'have nots', it is actually unfair to the 'haves'. According to them, in a fair world they would have even more and the poor even less.

Fair would be that one group divides and the other chooses.

As long as the wealthy minority controls the game, the poor majority will remain poor and unfairly treated. The only way to gain fair treatment is to exercise the one thing the poorer and weaker group has: their numbers. One place where those numbers make a decisive difference is at the polls during election time.