Thanks for the comments. I’d like to respond to a few things:
Surveyor: “Instead of daydreaming about changing the tax code to fit your personal situation, maybe you should think about studying the tax code”
Alarmclock: I agree that learning more about the tax code as it stands now is a great idea. I did say: “there is no political will to make such a change” — this is code for “Let’s everyone put on your imagination hats”. I’m just playing a game of “SimUS” (like SimCity)… and I reserve the right to daydream about whatever I like!
Aecetia: “your assumptions are incorrect!”
Alarmclock: I’ll take this as ‘your facts are incorrect’ — I believe you are referring to my claim, parpahrased as ‘the wealthiest 10% currently pay 70%…’ — I believe this is perfectly in line with the data you provide.
Aecetia: “get it right AC, we need less tax, not more.”
Alarmclock: I can’t argue that point. If it were up to me the bottom of the tax return would have 2 fields: Your Capital Expenses share and Operating Expenses share. You would be required pay your Federal CapEx share (as you do now)… but you could write *whatever* dollar amount you wanted for Operating Expenses. Keep in mind that the Federal operating expense budget is many, many times larger than the capital budget.
The point seems largely missed here is that I propose that taxing the “change in wealth” (the derivative of wealth with respect to time) is less fair than taxing the wealth itself. I would like to plot and upload an income/wealth graph divided into two regions: those that would see their tax bill increase, and those that would see it decrease. I feel confident that nearly everyone here would be on the ‘decrease’ side.