What a Fair Tax System Would Look Like

In a recent Prager University video, historian Amity Shlaes articulates a pretty straightforward position for many of us on the right end of the political spectrum: In taxation, percentages are implicitly fair and inherently progressive.

Unfortunately, she also correctly points out the difficulty facing those who would return the tax code to fairness:

… reversing a century of progressivity won’t be easy. For when you cut taxes for all in a progressive rate structure, the rich necessarily get a larger tax break. That is so because they pay a greater share to begin with, and advocating “larger breaks for the rich” is not a popular political move, to put it mildly.

She then goes on to touch on a theme that’s popping up in a variety of contexts.  We need to stop attempting reform by addition and make it, well, reform.  In other words, adding more and more tax credits for this group or that group in an effort to get back to what’s fair, we should intelligently assess what we have and simply revise it.

Of course, talking about intelligence in policy and politics has become just about a sign of insanity in modern America.

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