Romans only had 1 percent tax. This is what I agree with.

The Romans also had slavery, massive slavery. Is the OP endorsing slavery or just poorly educated in history?

I'd be happy paying anywhere between 5 and 10 percent tax... realistically. But in UK I feel like I'm paying 50% overall, based on all the different forms of TAX here.


It hurts thinking about how much my money is leaving me, and how much cost of living is increasing.

Make it fair again

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: Lab4Us

That’s why I support a consumption tax over a flat tax...then EVERYONE gets to help those in need and the wealthy can’t hide behind borderline fraudulent deductions.

The first thing we need to do is break away from the "rich are evil" agenda. If the tax code offers write-offs then so be it. I'm sure you didn't say hey I'm not going to deduct my house interest, or I'm going to send back child tax credit etc...lol


Simple code is best, all should pay too whether it is 1%, 2% 5% etc all should pay something.

I hold no ill will toward wealthy folk. However I hold much ill will toward those who try to get over while the average joe/joline can’t afford to pay a tax attorney thousands of dollars to find all the loop holes. Thus the consumption tax; one pays tax on what they buy, no deductions. Probably a flat tax for capital gains (I suppose you could apply some type of consumption tax on capital gains earnings).

originally posted by: Lab4Us

I hold no ill will toward wealthy folk. However I hold much ill will toward those who try to get over while the average joe/joline can’t afford to pay a tax attorney thousands of dollars to find all the loop holes. Thus the consumption tax; one pays tax on what they buy, no deductions. Probably a flat tax for capital gains (I suppose you could apply some type of consumption tax on capital gains earnings).

So about 50% of America pays little or no Federal taxes. You do not need 1000 dollar tax attorney...lol I pay about 40k per year, don't qualify for much of anything. There is no loop holes...bad wording, just deductions/credits. I still use Quicken, works great. Now if you own a business you might need a accountant, even in Trump's case he has an army of lawyers and still paid 35 million on the one return Maddow got her hands on.

I think your ill will is focused on either an extremely small number of people or nothing is really there for you to focus so much energy on. I for one would rather focus on the poor to become lower middle class, and middle move to upper and so on, much more tax returns for large % of the population who might have never paid any fed taxes their whole lives.

a reply to: allsee4eye

You haven't thought this trough at all. The early Roman army was a militia, citizen where called to arms when needed. They had to buy their own armor and weapons too... that's why it was so cheap. Powerful families also had their own private armies, so that helped too.

So yeah, 1% can support a national army, as long as the soldiers don't get paid, buy their own guns and armor (a complete logistical nightmare, since modern weapons need specific ammunition and spare parts) and... I guess a jeep or something, unless they want to be walking around all the time.

originally posted by: allsee4eye
Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, these all have flat tax.

These are all poor countries with low incomes. You are trying to compare apples and oranges. We have graduated tax systems in the richer West because people have incomes high enough to allow it.

1% tax and the Romans. They also had a slave economy and high mortality.

Anyway, the last time I visited the States I noticed the roads were falling apart. You need to raise taxes to fix the roads.

originally posted by: paraphi

originally posted by: allsee4eye
Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, these all have flat tax.

These are all poor countries with low incomes. You are trying to compare apples and oranges. We have graduated tax systems in the richer West because people have incomes high enough to allow it.

1% tax and the Romans. They also had a slave economy and high mortality.

Anyway, the last time I visited the States I noticed the roads were falling apart. You need to raise taxes to fix the roads.

No we don't. We need to reduce spending and move spending towards infrastructure. Taxes are too high now the way it is.

a reply to: allsee4eye

It would be nice! However, I doubt the Romans had a secret space programme to pay for. A 1% tax rate isn't going to get you out of orbit unfortunately.

Evertime I read one of these libertarian or republican wishlists, I see the mandatory poor who pay no taxes vs. "Me who pays too much". If humanity, civilization and morality, heck....even Christianity..were to be nurished and cherished, it wouldn't be the Military we should pay for with our 1 to 100% taxes...it should be cradle to grave healthcare.....period. Everything else is secondary to life and liberty. Paying for weapons of destruction should be strived against with all our wills should we ever consider ourselves anything more than brutal killer apes.

To make that low tax rate work though we need to nationalize the major natural resources like the Romans did. Right now resources are privately owned and the gov't merely regulates their administration, distribution, and use.

We also need to loot nations when we conquer them, and unlike popular belief, our gov't doesn't actually loot them directly.

War is profitable for private contractors and the industry but it's incredibly costly to the taxpayers.

The incentive to go to war would not increase in my opinion because as it is now industry controls our gov't and already pushes for new wars constantly. Being able to loot their treasuries and resources directly wouldn't really increase the constant flow of new warfronts.

a reply to: KeithCooper

I disagree about healthcare.

Right now 90% + of healthcare costs are severely inflated and most operations or prescriptions are unnecessary "fake medicine".

Why should I pay for someone to go to the doctor everytime they cough or anytime someone is depressed then pay for pills that don't do any good (and actually can be shown to cause even more real damage to the body thus creating more future healthcare costs)?

Take the profit out of medicine first then we'll consider nationalizing all costs. This conversion could take decades to transition properly though.

Romans only had 1 percent tax. This is what I agree with.

Who cares what the Romans did ?

How bout doing what Thomas Jefferson did. You know that slave owner.

He abolished the income tax.

flat tax rates might sound nice but the fact that the rich put less into the consumer market than everyone else all it would do is keep more money out of the market, out of the federal budget and crash our economy beyond recovery.

capitalism is all about the consumer and while a flat tax would allow people to put more into the market, it would negate any benefit gained because the rich who profit from that market would spend the same amount as they already do, the government would not earn enough to even function properly.

i'm quite sure the corporations would love a flat tax as it would quickly elevate their financial power beyond what any government is able to match.

imagine a nation divided by a few corporate entities or a union of corporations run by a council of the biggest corporations with no government having the power to stop them.

sure it will progress humanity for a few decades without too much trouble but eventually it would regress society back to the days of feuding kingdoms and empires on a grand scale.

a reply to: muzzleflash

Why should I pay for someone to go to the doctor everytime they cough or anytime someone is depressed then pay for pills that don't do any good (and actually can be shown to cause even more real damage to the body thus creating more future healthcare costs)?

Because if everyone pays into a healthcare system at the same rate, then everyone is covered. That means you too, say if you have a car crash that wasn't your fault or some other catastrophe that can't be ascribed to 'bad choices' or whatever.

In real terms, your hypothetical hypochondriac who visits the doctor "everytime they cough" will have zero impact on your bank balance, because the cost is spread out so thinly. Unless the banks start measuring outgoings in terms of millionths of a penny, which I am fairly sure they won't, you won't feel a thing.

Also, some of those people who visit the doctor "everytime they cough" will turn out to be experiencing the early warning signs of lung cancer or some other respiratory disease. I don't think you or I have the expertise to pass judgement in such cases, so I am quite happy to let the doctors decide on who deserves treating and who simply needs a quick chat, a pat on the back, and sending on their merry way.

I read a newspaper article about US healthcare last week (I'll see if I can find it, if you're interested), in which medics recounted conversations that they had with people who had died and been resuscitated. They all had stories in which the patient told them bitterly that they wished they had stayed dead, because now they would have to deal with huge bills and probable bankruptcy, whereas if they had died their families might have got an insurance payout.

When your own life is undesirable because of the financial punishment awaiting you if you survive, something is so utterly wrong that it's hard to put it into words.

originally posted by: daskakik
a reply to: allsee4eye


It is cheaper to pay-off state officials than federals.

Not true.

There would be far more representatives to have to buy. This also increases the odds that the buyers get caught, because the odds of running into a straight edge only in it for the people representative go up.

With the federal system having so much power, they can ensure, from a central platform, that only those in on the game get elected to DC. If one is not in on the game with the DC corrupted, one never holds position in DC. Remove the unbalanced centralized DC power structure and you now have to try to managed 50 distributed power paradigms...which is 50 times harder than just doing it in DC.

Mussolini wrote all about that, it's why he advocated for centralized power structure and disagreed with the idea of a republic with out an over seeing and ruling central authority - which goes against every tenet of what it means to be a republic...

a reply to: allsee4eye

FFS - do you even read and or comprehend your own sources ????

roman taxes [ on its own citizens it italy ] - was only 1% for a reason

they were pillaging wealth from thier conquests to fund the " home economy "

roman taxation @ 1% would not fund the empire

it was bribe to the citizens

originally posted by: GenerationGap
There would be far more representatives to have to buy. This also increases the odds that the buyers get caught, because the odds of running into a straight edge only in it for the people representative go up.

More representatives? If you bribe a cop you only have to pay one person not the entire police force.

Paying off one state official means paying off one state official.

With the federal system having so much power, they can ensure, from a central platform, that only those in on the game get elected to DC. If one is not in on the game with the DC corrupted, one never holds position in DC. Remove the unbalanced centralized DC power structure and you now have to try to managed 50 distributed power paradigms...which is 50 times harder than just doing it in DC.

Mussolini wrote all about that, it's why he advocated for centralized power structure and disagreed with the idea of a republic with out an over seeing and ruling central authority - which goes against every tenet of what it means to be a republic...

None of that has anything to do with what I posted.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

Yeah, the Roman Empire didn't really have an economy as such. The term 'Ponzi scheme' is overused these days, but that's pretty much what the Roman Empire was. Except no-one paid into the scheme voluntarily, they had to be invaded and pillaged. The causes of the fall of the Roman Empire are still the subject of intense debate, but one key element has to be the fact that pretty much the only Roman export was cartloads of dung.

originally posted by: allsee4eye
In the early days of the Roman Republic, public taxes consisted of modest assessments on owned wealth and property. The tax rate under normal circumstances was 1% and sometimes would climb as high as 3% in situations such as war.

Now, hold on there, fella. Not so fast.

The Romans had "Slaves".

And we're not talking about African Slaves that were bought who could only pick cotton.

These were highly skilled slaves with various professions.

When you don't have to "pay coin" for your labor, you don't need "taxes."

the only way for a flat tax to work would be to operate the government like a corporation that profits from the markets and make every adult citizen an employee, a shareholder or an investor.

no taxes, just profits for everyone...