Taxable Unfairness

A few weeks ago, I was trying to explain about taxes to my son.  He’s 9.  My daughter, who is 6, hangs on every word I tell him – probably as a way to get out of doing her own books in homeschool.    So when I explain things, I try to find the simplest explanation possible.  Add to that I like to explain things and I love metaphors, and well, you can imagine that sometimes our school day runs a bit on the long side.  Ahem!

Anyway, I was trying to explain the progressive tax system that is used in the US.  On the surface, sure, higher taxes on those who make more seems fair.  But as I explained it to him, suddenly the gross unfairness of it all became clear.

This is how I explained it:

Imagine, if you will, that everyone has 10 fingers and that fingers represent a paycheck.  Now, some people like football and basketball players have huge fingers!  They can hold a basketball or a football in 1 hand and make it look small! 

Then, there are people who are undersized, like dwarves and midgets, who have small fingers and can wear kid clothes even though they’re grown ups. 

But everyone has 10 fingers.

Because the football players have bigger fingers, we’re going to take 6 of their fingers for our tax, but not take any from the dwarves since their fingers are so much smaller.  So the people with the big fingers will be paying the taxes for the people with small fingers.

The big finger people will get to keep 4 of their fingers, but the little finger people will get to keep all 10 of their fingers.

Does it still sound so fair?

As fair as taking 1 finger from everyone, no matter how big or small the finger is?  Wouldn’t 1 finger from everyone be more fair?

This is why the progressive tax system is wrong.  It’s NOT fair to take more money from some people and give it to others.  Setting aside that income tax was abhorrent to our Founding Fathers and considered unconstitutional (see Article 1 sec. 8 ) until 1913, if we’re all going to have our incomes taxed now, then that tax should be the same proportion to all.  Whether you’re making 16k a year or 1.6M, the tax should be the same.  The more you make, the more you’ll be paying by default, because 5% of a million is more than 5% of a dollar, but it’s all 5%.  THAT is fair. 

Demanding that other people pay your share is stealing, whether you hold the gun to someone else’s head or have the government do it for you, it’s still theft. 

Blog: Why everyone should pay income taxes

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