The problem is that ultimately, inefficient taxes that chase off capital create unfairness by killing the economy, even if they feel good in a populist sense. You have a lot more latitude for “fair” outcomes in a healthy, growing economy than in a shrinking one.

Is life more fair in Dallas or Detroit? Dallas has a typical Texan hard-edged attitude toward taxes, and a much smaller government. Detroit has been run by populists preaching fairness for generations, and has been destroyed by it as effectively as a WWII bombing campaign.

I don’t care if the taxes are done with income, consumption, or a wealth tax (that is just the vehicle for collection). In the end, though, it should be the person with the majority of the property/wealth/whatever that pay the majority of the taxes.

This is my mind is “flat/fair”. If the person with 95% of the wealth pays _less_than_ 95% of the taxes, then the poorer fellow is paying a larger share of the taxes (regressive taxation). The person least able to pay (the 5% person), is paying a larger (relative) share of the taxes.

If you don’t like this idea, then what do you propose? A flat-rate that every man, woman, and child pays exactly $10k no-matter their wealth? The homeless person pays $10k just like the billionaire?

Why should I pay more tax than you just because I have more money than you? If I don’t spend that money, I don’t get any advantage from it! If two people spend $50,000 a year, they should pay the same tax. If one person has 10 kids and the other person has an extra $10,000, does that mean their taxes should be different? NO! How people choose to spend their money or not is their business. Taxes must be based on spending, not on earning.

Fairness on such things as taxes only works in a vacuum – that is, it only works with an omnipotent global government if “fairness” means “various flavors of soak the rich”. Even there, massive taxes end up killing economic activity.

I’m sure someone will trot out the old story about the 90% tax rates in the Eisenhower administration or other times in the mid to late 20th century. The difference between now and then is much of the world was “offline”, either destroyed by war or under Communism (or both). (Also, those nominal tax rates were easily dodge-able by a tax lawyer with a pulse.)

Now, there are numerous other places to go if you want to do business. They are often better run than the US, and even western Europe doesn’t have the sense of entitlement to world money flows that the current crop of American leaders have.

Additionally, favorable treatment of long term capital gains and investment dividends promotes investment rather than day trading.

BG – life is not fair from many perspectives. Some people are born rich and some poor, some are luckier than others, some are more talented and some are smarter; some are able to do what they love and some can only dream and settle, some have children some aren’t able to have them, some are healthy and some get sick. We all need to learn to live with it and make the best of what we’ve got. You may feel you are poor, but there are people in the world who would consider you are rich. Some may consider you lucky for having never experienced hunger.

Taxes from net worth is simply a theft i.e. taking somebody’s savings. It’s likely to hit not the super rich who, as Foobarista said would simply hide their money, but older people who’ve worked for their whole life, saved some money so that they can have retirement. When you get older, and have some savings, let’s see if you still think the same. Plus, what you are advocating is redistribution. This has already been tried – in a country I grew up in, for example – and it didn’t work. All it got is everyone being equally poor except for government elite who could hide their wealth. Also, if you tax net worth, you remove incentive to save money.

Also, BG, you forget who sings your paycheck. When you tax the rich corporation or a “rich” business owner or a rich investor, you tax your employer or investor in your company. The company responds by cutting costs which includes 1) moving jobs elsewhere 2) cutting your salary 3) cutting benefits. A good exercise for anybody who works for a publically traded company is to read their employer quarterly report – regardless of your having the stock or not, at least the brief summary version on yahoo finance. You’d soon find out how a bad report reflects on your benefits and salary increase as well as job security. After you’ve done it for a while, you’d be less likely to want to tax either your employer or investors in your employer.

No one is saying that the rich don’t get benefits from the government. The question is: do they get benefits above and beyond the average American because they are rich? I would say other than having more property to protect, the answer is no.

If anything, I’d say the poor are much more dependant on the government.