Grlygrl201@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 3/30/01 1:36:16 PM Eastern Standard Time, jbone@jump.net
> writes:
>
> << It's not analyzed in terms of income flow; rather, the definition of
> EQUITABLE-3 considers the relative accumulation of (the basis for,
> independent of performance) wealth between two parties making the same
> proportional allocation decisions across the buckets: >>
>
> if that's possible.
It's *always* possible. Any situation where it's "not possible" is actually just
an artifact of the cultural prejudice I mentioned earlier, our prideful notion
that each of us is somehow entitled to some minimum standard of living.
I once knew a programmer who lived for several months on about $8 / day while
earning around $50k / yr working for a computer manufacturer. (Hot tip: you can
eat a generally balanced meal at 7-11 for less than $2.00.) During this period,
he lived in a van, showered in the corporate gym, and had no expenses.
Seriously, folks: the heart of all the equations and so forth is the following
argument. A fair tax shouldn't favor any particular economic activity over
others, and shouldn't result in the accumulation of wealth *either* for lower
earners or higher earners. The former situation, which we've been imprecisely
calling "progressive," is unfair to higher earners; the latter situation, our
informal "regressive" notion, is unfair to lower earners. In choosing to balance
the situation, we either have to deal with the magnitudes of the dollars involved
in either situation, or we have to deal with the ratios of use-of-proceeds.
There is, I believe, a very justifiable argument for balancing of ratios.
jb
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:15:19 PDT