[Vision2020] The tax solution!!!

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Saturday 23 August 2008 10:00:30 Kai Eiselein wrote:
> Since studies have proven that income is directly related to education
> level, taxes should be based ones education level. High school dropouts
> would pay the least percentage of taxes, while those with advanced/multiple
> degrees would pay the most. How's that for fair?

There may be a tertiary sense in which fair is applicable in that fair can 
suggest blond, which may imply, fairly or not, less than entirely brilliant. 
Otherwise, the suggestion is better characterized as unfocused and 
counterproductive.

Taxes, as usually calculated, are direct functions focused on the financial 
values of incremental sales or income, or, in the case of property, 
considered to be indirect functions. Taxes are not focused on the personal 
characteristics that may be necessary to create or catalyze the transactions. 
For example, taxes are not levied on the gift-of-gab and the closing skills a 
salesman uses to finalize a deal. Taxes are not levied on the brain-power a 
professional must bring to bear on a client's problem to solve it. Taxes are 
not levied on the quality of soil that produces a farmer's crops. Taxes are 
levied on the financial values of the transactions that result from those 
characteristics. So, taxing education level is inappropriate because that is 
focused on a characteristic, not a transaction value that results from it.

The suggestion is counterproductive in that it tends to encourage more 
unwanted behavior, and discourage wanted behavior. It encourages some sixteen 
year old kid to drop out of high school, and, for example, to learn a 
financial calculator, and to try to join the already over-crowded population 
of real estate workers. For the kid who is unable, or unwilling, to learn the 
calculator, and do the work necessary to complete transactions, it results in 
yet another individual not earning his or her share of the financial costs of 
the society within which he or she attempts to survive. It discourages 
continuing education in any format, which is counterproductive to the 
desirable goal of higher incomes, not to mention the higher qualities of life 
enjoyed by the better educated and the communities in which they reside.


Ken