Quote:
Originally Posted by JayJamJah
Why does (in your opinion) a government have the right to tax one person more then another?
|
I don't think any body (government or otherwise) has any inherent "rights," but semantics aside, I think it's just common sense that high earners should be taxed more than low earners. 1% (or 2, or 5) might make the difference between paying the bills to someone making $15,000 a year; it's not quite that important to a person making $200,000 a year. A flat rate would work the same way.
And as far as the education question goes, I don't think the problem is simply due to a lack of funding (which is certainly a contributing factor), but down to the faulty methods used (i.e., rote memorization instead of creative thought, passing tests emphasized over de facto application of knowledge, etc). Whether a private system would solve these problems is open to debate, but I have very little faith in it. I would suspect that the sorry state of our schools would continue and possibly worsen.
In my opinion, giving businesses free reign is possibly the worst solution to our problems. Would you like to see 18+ hour workdays? Child labor? Unsanitary workplaces (and unsanitary foods)? Even aside from those extremes, monopolies would become even more of a problem and the interests of actual human beings (a factor that's frequently ignored in many economic discussions) would be outweighed by the allure of profit, even moreso than now. Putting the economy in the hands of the government might not be the perfect solution, but at least we have the power to throw our elected officials out of office if need be. (That raises the issue of our hopelessly misguided voting system, but let's not get into that).