Comment by tzs
1 month ago
> Liberals vehemently opposed the idea, calling it 'regressive', meaning it would be socially backwards, but the idea held appeal as a simple and fair way of "taxing everyone equally"
I'm not sure what you mean by "socially backwards".
"Regressive" and "progressive" are terms of art in tax law and theory. A tax is regressive if people with less income pay a higher percentage of their income toward that tax than do people with more income. Progressive is the opposite.
Sales taxes are regressive because most people with lower income necessarily spend a higher percent of their income than most people with higher income, and so even if a sales tax is the same percentage of the sale price of items lower income people end up spending a higher percentage of their income on sales tax.
Yes, that was very much my point, and thank you for making it clearer than I did. I confess to having attempted to couch the term (in single quotes) in order to lessen its potential to trigger reactionary righteousness.
By "socially backwards" I meant to allude to a reversal of social evolution. If you start with the premise that we evolve as a society (and as individuals, cells in our grand aggregate organism), then you might see an increased tax burden on the poor as moving backwards, de-evolving, regressing.
I apologise for obscuring my meaning, stepping so lightly through (what I perceive to be) the minefield of HN's perpetual potential political polarization (and for here, now, my abuse of alliteration) that I danced over the point I was trying to make.
A blanket tariff policy is effectively a national sales tax which is regressive (and bad, taxation without representation is bad, bass ackwards orange man bad).