mike huckabee says steve forbes was right about the flat tax.

well, yes and no. forbes was right in principal, but he flunked the math. the same is true of dick armey.

if we're crediting flat tax pioneers, let's not forget jerry brown, who proposed one 4 years before forbes and armey. from the little i've read about it, it was even dumber than the gop plans. in any case, it fell by the wayside when brown lost the dem nomination to clinton.

both forbes' and armey's plans would've shot the federal deficit out of the solar system, because both picked their rates out of thin air for political purposes instead of computing one that made sense, but a flat (i.e., single-rate) tax could simplify the federal income tax structure and balance the budget if the rate were set high enough, and it would be truly progressive if most loopholes were eliminated and the standard deduction were made big enough. (the same principle applies to estate taxes.)

anyone who's given sufficient thought to the idea knows that's true. it's really no mystery.

what's mysterious is that neither major party has backed such a plan: a standard deduction high enough to exempt more than half the population would win a lot of votes.

then again, rich people would oppose it. you know who i mean, right? they're the ones who never say "rich." they say "wealthy." they have more money than everybody else. way more. over 70% of US personal income goes to 40% of families. that leaves less than 30% to be divided among 60% of us.

most of that 60% are hard-working folk who will never get an equal share because their ancestors didn't make a timely investment in an eventually successful venture.

riches therefore appear to result from chance in most cases. any seeming unfairness in that gets compounded when government shows favoritism to the rich.

the lower your income, the bigger the fraction you spend on the necessities of life. any tax you pay leaves you less to spend. any tax everyone pays at the same rate disproportionally lowers the spending ability of many who can least afford it.

that's called a regressive tax, and it's why we have progressive income taxes.

progressive taxes take less from those with less and more from those with more. there are at least two possible types: graduated and single-rate.

a graduated progressive tax applies higher rates to higher groupings of income. for example, the first $15k might be taxed at a 10% rate, the next $45k at 15%, the next $60k at 25%, &c. the US tax code combines that sort of formula with deductions and exemptions, partly to augment progressivity, partly to alleviate hardship, partly to encourage socially desirable behavior, partly so politicians can gain popularity.

a flat tax uses one rate, but it can be made progressive by exempting a portion. it's a continuous sliding scale.

for example, if the tax rate is 40% and $50k is exempt, no one pays any tax on the first $50k of income, and the government takes 40 cents of each additional dollar. the actual tax percent of gross income for $60k is 6.67%, for $100k 20%, $200k 30%, $500k 36%, &c. the 40% of gross income limit is never actually reached, because the increments keep shrinking.

the US government analyzes economic data and looks for trends. if we had a progressive flat tax law that required setting a standard deduction at a level that exempts families that earn the lowest 30% of aggregate income, it would be fairly simple for congress to make small annual rate adjustments to balance the budget or stimulate the economy as needed.

most gops won't go for that, because it would take more from the rich. gops favor the rich because they've got it firmly entrenched in their brains that everyone gets paid what they deserve, plus the rich do the investing that stimulates the economy, so keeping their taxes low lets them keep what they earn and keeps the economy healthy.

unfortunately, tax cuts for the rich mainly stimulate only financial investment. they don't stimulate investment in the capital assets needed to produce goods and services. rising sales stimulate that kind of investment, and sales rise when consumers have more money to spend.

tax cuts that go mostly to the rich are great for stockbrokers and the dow jones average, but at best they give a minor boost to the economy. that's why the recovery from the 2001 recession has been so gradual as compared, say, to the recovery of the '90s, which followed a hike on the top tax bracket.

the idea that the rich deserve their riches because they work hard is absurd. manual laborers work harder, especially those with two or more jobs. why does bill gates deserve to have so much more than mauchly and eckert, who invented the computers that made gates rich?

tho there are exceptions, the rich really do get richer. that's because the economic and political systems provide a climate that helps wealth expand. rich people have benefitted disproportionally, so why shouldn't they give back to society disproportionally, both thru charity and taxes?

as to why dems haven't supported a progressive flat tax, well, maybe they hesitate because they can't imagine what they'd do for an encore.