re: #186 freetoken

Over the decades there have been many ideas floated, on tax policy.

The problem I see is that we don’t lack for brains, but for vision.

Since such a large fragment of the population of this country are stuck on, really stuck on, the idea that they have a good chance of being “rich” they see any tax on the rich as a tax on their future idyllic life.

Reality is most individuals don’t become part of the beautiful people crowd.

With the American belief in rugged individualism an excuse to deny the concept social responsibility, fighting for greater social cost sharing has been fraught with futility.

So, sorry, I can’t come up with any purely tax policy idea. I think we need to work on the fundamental challenge of what it means to be a “society”.

To do will require, at least, convincing more people that they have their identity as being part of something, rather than having their identity wrapped up in personal differentiation from their fellow humans (e.g., better house than family A, bigger car than family B, and so forth.)

This is a moral issue. Perhaps even a religious one?

America: land of religion, land of the ultimate ego.

I agree with you there. This issue is as much spiritual and cultural as it is economic. I don’t think you can really disentangle the two.

The path we are on now, however, is insane. It simply has to change, or there will be much bigger problems than nutty teabaggers and unhinged libertarians.