In the midst of the frenzy of name calling, poll crunching and meaningless chants that is the U.S. presidential race, the issues that affect the American people sometimes get lost. But central to nearly every debate within this circus is taxes.

Everyone has an opinion: lower them so businesses have more money to hire people, raise them to fund national health care, make the cuts permanent, abolish the IRS, allocate them here, allocate them there, simplify the system, etc.

Well, here’s my plan to rid our country of those dreadfully complicated tax codes and the annoying IRS: a flat tax.

No, not the traditional theory of the flat tax where the government claims a percentage of everyone’s earnings; a real flat tax where every citizen pays a flat amount.

It costs just as much to build a road for a Lexus as it does a beat-up old Metro, eh? It costs just as much for a millionaire’s child to be educated in a public school as it does a poor child. Do the wealthy get a proportional amount of enjoyment out of parks to coincide with the higher amounts they must pay, or should all bear equal responsibility?

Let’s say the value of having access to federally-funded projects is around $1,000 per year. If one cannot afford the approximate $20 per week, they do not enjoy the benefits of U.S. citizenship. Those who don’t pay in cannot use the public infrastructure, education systems, national parks and other benefits tax dollars provide.

Why not bring the concept to a local level? Why should someone pay out the wazoo if they own valuable property when the real cost of someone checking out a book from a public library is exactly the same as anyone else borrowing it?

And I don’t want to hear someone claiming to be conservative talking about a war on the middle class. Without redistribution of wealth, the middle class would disappear.

The flat amount tax, how’s that for the land of equality?

Peace,

Bracken Mayo, Editor in Chief