Well, here's the thing: it is pretty much accurate. I am a lawyer working for a pretty high-profile IP firm. I don't spend most of my time doing patent law, but I do some. I can tell you unequivocally that when a big client like Apple (we don't represent them, but we represent companies like them) comes to us with an invention they want to patent, the first thing we do is search for prior art and give them a report. That is one of the major jobs of patent lawyers and one of the reasons why patent lawyers are all required to have science or engineering backgrounds before they can join the patent bar. We do it because our clients don't want to waste money filing (and then later defending in court) invalid patents. I speak from experience.
And this is exactly why federal law explicitly provides for the loser to pay both sides' expenses in egregious cases; to take some of the burden off of patent examiners by giving companies an incentive to not file frivolous patents.
I don't argue that the patent system is perfect (I think the obviousness test is weaker than it should be for example). There are problems. And, yes, sometimes companies will patent inventions in a predatory way. But I can tell you from direct experience that this is not at all the norm, and the system is definitely aware of, and tries to discourage that sort of behavior. But I do think that a lot of the "controversy" on/. and elsewhere about patents is largely a product of constant oversimplifications and misrepresentations like the ones on display in this article. There is far more controversy about patents on/. than anywhere in the legal profession or legal academia that I am aware of.
As is so often the case, Slashdot has mischaracterized the patent. (I'm only talking about "Portrait-landscape rotation heuristics for a portable multifunction device." I don't have time to read the others.)
The patent is on a touch-based mechanism to change and lock screen orientation IN CONJUNCTION with the use of accelerometers. Filing a patent requires a lot of expensive lawyer time; a company like Apple typically will not file one that it cannot defend. It knows that it's competitors have plenty of lawyers of their own to challenge invalid patents and, in egregious cases, they can find themselves on the hook for both sides' legal bills.
Here's the abstract of the actual patent; it's in the mind-numbing legalese that is the specialty of patent attorneys, but you can probably still see the problem with the/. description starting in the third sentence:
"In accordance with some embodiments, a computer-implemented method is performed at a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display and one or more accelerometers. The method includes displaying information on the touch screen display in a portrait view or a landscape view based on an analysis of data received from the one or more accelerometers. The method also includes detecting a predetermined finger gesture on or near the touch screen display while the information is displayed in a first view, and in response to detecting the predetermined finger gesture, displaying the information in a second view and locking the display of information in the second view. The method further includes unlocking the display of information in the second view when the device is placed in an orientation where the second view is displayed based on an analysis of data received from the one or more accelerometers."
Basically the answer is neither. In general, the federal courts do not have their own common law. What common law they have has developed to solve very narrow problems. The courts don't like recognizing federal common law, but sometimes they deem it necessary when congress hasn't legislated in an area but the courts still need some way to resolve legitimate disputes. Against this background, then, when congress does pass a law that purports to addresses the same issue as preexisting federal common law, the courts back off, scrap the federal common law, and rely on the new legislation, because Separation of Powers 101 says that congress gets to do the law-making. This is called "displacement." (Courts do something similar when federal law overlaps with state law; that's called "preemption.")
In this case, there is a federal common law of nuisance that exists to allow states to sue out-of-state polluters who harm "public rights" within their borders. The relatively recent case of Massachusetts v. EPA held that carbon emissions were within the scope of the EPA's mandate under the Clean Air Act. So the question arose: even in the absence of actual EPA regulations regarding greenhouse gases, does the Clean Air Act displace the federal law of nuisance when it comes to harms caused by greenhouse gases? The answer, evidently, is yes.
As others have pointed out, though, if the EPA never gets around to actually making rules to cover greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA itself could be sued.
This problem also occurred to the U.S Supreme Court in 1964. We now have an exception in defamation law for speech about public officials on matters of public concern. A public figure has to show that the speaker either knew what he was saying was false or spoke with reckless disregard for the truth. It's a very very tough standard to meet.
Either way actually. These are two different ways to lose a trademark: by allowing infringing uses OR by it's becoming generic. Whether you fought for it or not, you're probably screwed if your product name starts showing up in dictionaries. (Whether or not you've tried to stop your name from becoming generic can be evidence of whether it is, in fact, generic. But for the most part, as I understand it, this it mostly a factual inquiry about whether, in fact, consumers think that, say, "cellophane," refers to a specific product made by a particular company, or whether it just means "plastic wrap.")
I don't know! But I'm happy to take your word for it. My knowledge of Apple doesn't go much further back than the release of the iPod. But for TM law it doesn't actually matter...if it becomes generic, you lose it and in the case of "application" I think it clearly has.
Presumably the action will be on the question of whether "App" is a protectable term. I think that nobody would bother arguing that "Application Store" is trademarkable. It's clearly too generic. "App Store" may be less clear, though. Certainly Apple has done a lot to popularize the term but, at the end of the day, "App" really is just an abbreviation of "Application" that was already in pretty wide circulation before Apple starting using it.
So at the end of the day, don't worry, I think you will probably get your wish.
Heres a case: a friend of mine develops corporate intranets. He has a large client that he has been working with for nearly 10 years now and their intranet is truly huge and mission critical. Accordingly, they had their own collocated rack at a local ISP and a small IT staff to maintain it (on top of the dev team that works on the intranet itself). Last year, some key IT people announced that they would be leaving and the business took a little financial hit.
So they had the idea of moving the system wholesale onto EC2. Six months later, the IT staff is gone (or reassigned), the rack of servers is gone and both are replaced by a $700/mo EC2 bill (oh, and the infrastructure is far better).
One of your premises seems to be that non geeks do not often use and are not familiar with GUIs. This seems implausible to me, especially in the case of MS Office products. I'll bet the typical professional secretary, middle manager, etc. is quite well acquainted with the changes in MS Word over the years.
Anecdotal evidence seems to reveal, remarkably, that ability to learn and use a new UI (at least, without whining about it) is inversely proportional to geekiness. One of the great paradoxes of our time.
Perhaps your problem is in thinking that "In the USA all Internet traffic that travels through major NOCs is monitored by the NSA" is a trivial statement. Obviously you can post whatever you want...but it seems to me you'd want to support an assertion like that if you want people to believe it.
I'm all for pointing out that the popular translation is probably exaggerated, but it's probably misleading to refer to your literal translation as the "factually correct one." Anyone out there who is actually interested in this should look here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/weekinreview/11bronner.html?_r=1
Here's the New York Times' conclusion:
So did Iran's president call for Israel to be wiped off the map? It certainly seems so. Did that amount to a call for war? That remains an open question.
Well, I certainly don't dispute that Jefferson's debts exceeded his assets. You sound like you know much more about this than I do. And, reading back through this thread a bit, I agree with your underlying point that the US revolution was not [just] about the rich trying to wriggle out of paying taxes.
But I do think it's misleading to say that Jefferson was poor. Poverty is not just about totaling up your debts and assets and getting a small number, it's about your material comforts and social enfranchisement as well. That Jefferson carried a negative balance does not, it seems to me, outweigh the fact that he owned an estate, slaves, vineyards, mills, founded a major university, and was (of course) the President of the U.S. In the final analysis, the man was clearly a have, not a have not. Contrast Jefferson's life to, say, that of a mill worker at the time or, even better, one of his slaves.
I hear Donald Trump has filed for bankruptcy repeatedly. Does that mean he's poor too?
I don't say all this to attack Jefferson. I think he was a great man. In fact, I'm a graduate of his university. I just think that to say Jefferson was poor really misses most of what is meant by the word "poor."
And it seems like the orignal point goes to whether Jefferson would have had a lot of reason to resist high taxes. Certainly Jefferson's net assets don't have much to do with this question. The relevant questions, rather, are to what extent was he engaged in commerce (particularly overseas), how many assets did he have, and how large was his income stream? And the answers to all these questions paint a picture of someone with a LOT of potential tax liabilities. (Again, think of Donald Trump. He is notorious for carrying a lot of debt, and has filed for bankruptcy repeatedly. Does this mean he doesn't care about taxes?)
But, again, I agree with your underlying point that the revolution was not fought just to keep the rich from having to pay taxes to the British. I don't think anyone who knows much about Jefferson, regardless of what they think about his personal tax liabilities, would take seriously the idea that he was really only concerned about taxes.
That would make it a pretty redundant commandment, wouldn't it? Isn't the difference between killing and murder just that one is forbidden and the other isn't?
sounds like a pretty powerful incentive to start...saving and investing!
I'm not talking about pople who live paycheck-to-paycheck voluntarily. Many people above the poverty line still have problems with stable housing and employment that make it very difficult to save effectively. And this is completely irrelevant to the question of whether the tax is regressive.
And yes, I forgot about the prebate. It probably will not come as a surprise that I don't think about Fair Tax policy quite as much as you. But the prebate does not keep the tax from being regressive. As to everyone who is above the poverty line, the richer you are, the smaller a portion of your income you spend and, thus, the smaller a percentage of your income you pay in taxes. It's as simple as that.
That it is a theory, but it is not and cannot be proven fact.
It is, actually, a proven fact. It turns out that this is really easy to prove experimentally. And it's also very obvious common sense. What I'll grant is that it's difficult to measure exactly how strong that effect is. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to approximate.
That is debatable.
Most tings are. But what is you account, then, of why it is acceptable for the government to spend money to promote policy goals, but not acceptable to achieve the same policy goal by simply not collecting the money in the first place?
You're right about prebates. And, as I've said elsewhere now, that seems like a fine way to avoid taxing the very poor. But the mere fact that there is a rebate for the poor doesn't make it progressive. It's still regressive (as least, as to everyone above the poverty line).
The prebate, as far as I know, is a workable idea for relieving the very poor. I'm fine with it. But that doesn't make the tax progressive. All it does is keep you from taxing the destitute. Congratulations?Neither does the fact that the rich buy more stuff than the poor. What is at issue in deciding whether a tax is progressive is the percentage of income paid as tax. While it is true that rich people buy more stuf than poor people, they don't spend more as a percentage of their income than the poor; they spend much less.
Also, take a look sometime at the USA's negative savings index. As a whole, the adult population is spending more money than they make and are not saving up for the future. We have had rich people and poor people for as long as we have had a country. We have not, however, had a negative savings index until rather recently. While it is not the cause of it, it's rather obvious that attaching a tax penalty to income and savings has an effect on this.
Living paycheck to paycheck is a big mistake; the slightest miscalculation, unanticipated expense, emergency, or disaster will break you if you do this. Cars break down, appliances break down, medical bills happen, and generally this is a problem waiting to happen. Like the negative savings index, it is only relatively recently in our history that so many people have chosen to do this. We should be educating people about why this is a mistake, not looking for ways to make it more comfortable to make this mistake.
You miss the point; it's true that people don't save as much as they should. But this doesn't change the fact that, the richer you are, the more money you will have to save. Always. And if it's true that the rich save a larger portion of their income than the poor, then the rich are, ipso facto, taxed at a lower rate than the poor, and the Fair Tax is regressive.
It doesn't matter that the money will eventually be spent by somebody. The question is: who is spending it? The rich grow their savings when their income is high, and only shrink it when their income has trailed off or when they die (then their heirs spend it). Either way, the person spending the money will always tend to have less money than the person who saved it.Thats why that person is spending it and not continuing to save it. (Even if it's just the same person 20 years later.)
Put another way, the problem with a regressive tax isn't that you can't capture revenue from the money the rich people are saving. It's true that the money will be spent eventually and you'll get your revenue. It's a social policy concern about who you're taxing, and when.
I agree, of course, that incentivizing investment and savings are both good ideas, but the Fair Tax is hardly the only way to do that.
Well, sure. Both systems are disproportionate. But the current system (or, at least an idealization of it) is disproportionate in a way that requires the poor to pay a lower percentage of their income than the rich. The flat tax is a disproportionate system that requires the opposite. If we're stuck with disproportionate systems, why should I prefer the latter?
And while we're at it, why do we care about equal percentages? It seems to me that the fair thing would be for each person to give up the same amount of value so that the actual economic burden of taxation on everyone is the same. Since a dollar is worth much less to a rich person than a poor person, that would seem to require that the rich be taxed at a higher percentage rate.
Well, I readily admit that I'm not a flat tax expert. (though I believe I described and criticized the flat tax approaches to poverty I'm familiar with; I didn't say there were none). What am I missing?
Slashdot Mirror
This. US patent laws provide for the loser to pay the winner's fees in "egregious cases" to address precisely this resource imbalance problem.
Well, here's the thing: it is pretty much accurate. I am a lawyer working for a pretty high-profile IP firm. I don't spend most of my time doing patent law, but I do some. I can tell you unequivocally that when a big client like Apple (we don't represent them, but we represent companies like them) comes to us with an invention they want to patent, the first thing we do is search for prior art and give them a report. That is one of the major jobs of patent lawyers and one of the reasons why patent lawyers are all required to have science or engineering backgrounds before they can join the patent bar. We do it because our clients don't want to waste money filing (and then later defending in court) invalid patents. I speak from experience.
And this is exactly why federal law explicitly provides for the loser to pay both sides' expenses in egregious cases; to take some of the burden off of patent examiners by giving companies an incentive to not file frivolous patents.
I don't argue that the patent system is perfect (I think the obviousness test is weaker than it should be for example). There are problems. And, yes, sometimes companies will patent inventions in a predatory way. But I can tell you from direct experience that this is not at all the norm, and the system is definitely aware of, and tries to discourage that sort of behavior. But I do think that a lot of the "controversy" on /. and elsewhere about patents is largely a product of constant oversimplifications and misrepresentations like the ones on display in this article. There is far more controversy about patents on /. than anywhere in the legal profession or legal academia that I am aware of.
As is so often the case, Slashdot has mischaracterized the patent. (I'm only talking about "Portrait-landscape rotation heuristics for a portable multifunction device." I don't have time to read the others.)
The patent is on a touch-based mechanism to change and lock screen orientation IN CONJUNCTION with the use of accelerometers. Filing a patent requires a lot of expensive lawyer time; a company like Apple typically will not file one that it cannot defend. It knows that it's competitors have plenty of lawyers of their own to challenge invalid patents and, in egregious cases, they can find themselves on the hook for both sides' legal bills.
Here's the abstract of the actual patent; it's in the mind-numbing legalese that is the specialty of patent attorneys, but you can probably still see the problem with the /. description starting in the third sentence:
"In accordance with some embodiments, a computer-implemented method is performed at a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display and one or more accelerometers. The method includes displaying information on the touch screen display in a portrait view or a landscape view based on an analysis of data received from the one or more accelerometers. The method also includes detecting a predetermined finger gesture on or near the touch screen display while the information is displayed in a first view, and in response to detecting the predetermined finger gesture, displaying the information in a second view and locking the display of information in the second view. The method further includes unlocking the display of information in the second view when the device is placed in an orientation where the second view is displayed based on an analysis of data received from the one or more accelerometers."
Basically the answer is neither. In general, the federal courts do not have their own common law. What common law they have has developed to solve very narrow problems. The courts don't like recognizing federal common law, but sometimes they deem it necessary when congress hasn't legislated in an area but the courts still need some way to resolve legitimate disputes. Against this background, then, when congress does pass a law that purports to addresses the same issue as preexisting federal common law, the courts back off, scrap the federal common law, and rely on the new legislation, because Separation of Powers 101 says that congress gets to do the law-making. This is called "displacement." (Courts do something similar when federal law overlaps with state law; that's called "preemption.")
In this case, there is a federal common law of nuisance that exists to allow states to sue out-of-state polluters who harm "public rights" within their borders. The relatively recent case of Massachusetts v. EPA held that carbon emissions were within the scope of the EPA's mandate under the Clean Air Act. So the question arose: even in the absence of actual EPA regulations regarding greenhouse gases, does the Clean Air Act displace the federal law of nuisance when it comes to harms caused by greenhouse gases? The answer, evidently, is yes.
As others have pointed out, though, if the EPA never gets around to actually making rules to cover greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA itself could be sued.
This problem also occurred to the U.S Supreme Court in 1964. We now have an exception in defamation law for speech about public officials on matters of public concern. A public figure has to show that the speaker either knew what he was saying was false or spoke with reckless disregard for the truth. It's a very very tough standard to meet.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan
Yes. It is called the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA).
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Tort_Claims_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Unocal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosa_v._Alvarez-Machain
Apparently that doesn't take as long as the U.S. localization and translation into English required for mine, which has still not materialized.
Either way actually. These are two different ways to lose a trademark: by allowing infringing uses OR by it's becoming generic. Whether you fought for it or not, you're probably screwed if your product name starts showing up in dictionaries. (Whether or not you've tried to stop your name from becoming generic can be evidence of whether it is, in fact, generic. But for the most part, as I understand it, this it mostly a factual inquiry about whether, in fact, consumers think that, say, "cellophane," refers to a specific product made by a particular company, or whether it just means "plastic wrap.")
I don't know! But I'm happy to take your word for it. My knowledge of Apple doesn't go much further back than the release of the iPod. But for TM law it doesn't actually matter...if it becomes generic, you lose it and in the case of "application" I think it clearly has.
Presumably the action will be on the question of whether "App" is a protectable term. I think that nobody would bother arguing that "Application Store" is trademarkable. It's clearly too generic. "App Store" may be less clear, though. Certainly Apple has done a lot to popularize the term but, at the end of the day, "App" really is just an abbreviation of "Application" that was already in pretty wide circulation before Apple starting using it.
So at the end of the day, don't worry, I think you will probably get your wish.
(IAAL, but IANA IP L.)
Heres a case: a friend of mine develops corporate intranets. He has a large client that he has been working with for nearly 10 years now and their intranet is truly huge and mission critical. Accordingly, they had their own collocated rack at a local ISP and a small IT staff to maintain it (on top of the dev team that works on the intranet itself). Last year, some key IT people announced that they would be leaving and the business took a little financial hit.
So they had the idea of moving the system wholesale onto EC2. Six months later, the IT staff is gone (or reassigned), the rack of servers is gone and both are replaced by a $700/mo EC2 bill (oh, and the infrastructure is far better).
One of your premises seems to be that non geeks do not often use and are not familiar with GUIs. This seems implausible to me, especially in the case of MS Office products. I'll bet the typical professional secretary, middle manager, etc. is quite well acquainted with the changes in MS Word over the years.
Anecdotal evidence seems to reveal, remarkably, that ability to learn and use a new UI (at least, without whining about it) is inversely proportional to geekiness. One of the great paradoxes of our time.
Perhaps your problem is in thinking that "In the USA all Internet traffic that travels through major NOCs is monitored by the NSA" is a trivial statement. Obviously you can post whatever you want...but it seems to me you'd want to support an assertion like that if you want people to believe it.
Or maybe a citation to substantiate the allegation itself?
I'm all for pointing out that the popular translation is probably exaggerated, but it's probably misleading to refer to your literal translation as the "factually correct one." Anyone out there who is actually interested in this should look here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/weekinreview/11bronner.html?_r=1
Here's the New York Times' conclusion:
So did Iran's president call for Israel to be wiped off the map? It certainly seems so. Did that amount to a call for war? That remains an open question.
Well, I certainly don't dispute that Jefferson's debts exceeded his assets. You sound like you know much more about this than I do. And, reading back through this thread a bit, I agree with your underlying point that the US revolution was not [just] about the rich trying to wriggle out of paying taxes.
But I do think it's misleading to say that Jefferson was poor. Poverty is not just about totaling up your debts and assets and getting a small number, it's about your material comforts and social enfranchisement as well. That Jefferson carried a negative balance does not, it seems to me, outweigh the fact that he owned an estate, slaves, vineyards, mills, founded a major university, and was (of course) the President of the U.S. In the final analysis, the man was clearly a have, not a have not. Contrast Jefferson's life to, say, that of a mill worker at the time or, even better, one of his slaves.
I hear Donald Trump has filed for bankruptcy repeatedly. Does that mean he's poor too?
I don't say all this to attack Jefferson. I think he was a great man. In fact, I'm a graduate of his university. I just think that to say Jefferson was poor really misses most of what is meant by the word "poor."
And it seems like the orignal point goes to whether Jefferson would have had a lot of reason to resist high taxes. Certainly Jefferson's net assets don't have much to do with this question. The relevant questions, rather, are to what extent was he engaged in commerce (particularly overseas), how many assets did he have, and how large was his income stream? And the answers to all these questions paint a picture of someone with a LOT of potential tax liabilities. (Again, think of Donald Trump. He is notorious for carrying a lot of debt, and has filed for bankruptcy repeatedly. Does this mean he doesn't care about taxes?)
But, again, I agree with your underlying point that the revolution was not fought just to keep the rich from having to pay taxes to the British. I don't think anyone who knows much about Jefferson, regardless of what they think about his personal tax liabilities, would take seriously the idea that he was really only concerned about taxes.
I've never visited the home of a poor person from the early nineteenth century but I'm pretty sure it would not much resemble Monticello.
Close. Actually, in Utah, only one has a blank, all the others have real bullets. See, e.g., http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100618/ap_on_re_us/us_utah_firing_squad
That would make it a pretty redundant commandment, wouldn't it? Isn't the difference between killing and murder just that one is forbidden and the other isn't?
sounds like a pretty powerful incentive to start...saving and investing!
I'm not talking about pople who live paycheck-to-paycheck voluntarily. Many people above the poverty line still have problems with stable housing and employment that make it very difficult to save effectively. And this is completely irrelevant to the question of whether the tax is regressive.
And yes, I forgot about the prebate. It probably will not come as a surprise that I don't think about Fair Tax policy quite as much as you. But the prebate does not keep the tax from being regressive. As to everyone who is above the poverty line, the richer you are, the smaller a portion of your income you spend and, thus, the smaller a percentage of your income you pay in taxes. It's as simple as that.
That it is a theory, but it is not and cannot be proven fact.
It is, actually, a proven fact. It turns out that this is really easy to prove experimentally. And it's also very obvious common sense. What I'll grant is that it's difficult to measure exactly how strong that effect is. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to approximate.
That is debatable.
Most tings are. But what is you account, then, of why it is acceptable for the government to spend money to promote policy goals, but not acceptable to achieve the same policy goal by simply not collecting the money in the first place?
You're right about prebates. And, as I've said elsewhere now, that seems like a fine way to avoid taxing the very poor. But the mere fact that there is a rebate for the poor doesn't make it progressive. It's still regressive (as least, as to everyone above the poverty line).
The prebate, as far as I know, is a workable idea for relieving the very poor. I'm fine with it. But that doesn't make the tax progressive. All it does is keep you from taxing the destitute. Congratulations?Neither does the fact that the rich buy more stuff than the poor. What is at issue in deciding whether a tax is progressive is the percentage of income paid as tax. While it is true that rich people buy more stuf than poor people, they don't spend more as a percentage of their income than the poor; they spend much less.
Also, take a look sometime at the USA's negative savings index. As a whole, the adult population is spending more money than they make and are not saving up for the future. We have had rich people and poor people for as long as we have had a country. We have not, however, had a negative savings index until rather recently. While it is not the cause of it, it's rather obvious that attaching a tax penalty to income and savings has an effect on this.
Living paycheck to paycheck is a big mistake; the slightest miscalculation, unanticipated expense, emergency, or disaster will break you if you do this. Cars break down, appliances break down, medical bills happen, and generally this is a problem waiting to happen. Like the negative savings index, it is only relatively recently in our history that so many people have chosen to do this. We should be educating people about why this is a mistake, not looking for ways to make it more comfortable to make this mistake.
You miss the point; it's true that people don't save as much as they should. But this doesn't change the fact that, the richer you are, the more money you will have to save. Always. And if it's true that the rich save a larger portion of their income than the poor, then the rich are, ipso facto, taxed at a lower rate than the poor, and the Fair Tax is regressive.
It doesn't matter that the money will eventually be spent by somebody. The question is: who is spending it? The rich grow their savings when their income is high, and only shrink it when their income has trailed off or when they die (then their heirs spend it). Either way, the person spending the money will always tend to have less money than the person who saved it.Thats why that person is spending it and not continuing to save it. (Even if it's just the same person 20 years later.)
Put another way, the problem with a regressive tax isn't that you can't capture revenue from the money the rich people are saving. It's true that the money will be spent eventually and you'll get your revenue. It's a social policy concern about who you're taxing, and when.
I agree, of course, that incentivizing investment and savings are both good ideas, but the Fair Tax is hardly the only way to do that.
Well, sure. Both systems are disproportionate. But the current system (or, at least an idealization of it) is disproportionate in a way that requires the poor to pay a lower percentage of their income than the rich. The flat tax is a disproportionate system that requires the opposite. If we're stuck with disproportionate systems, why should I prefer the latter?
And while we're at it, why do we care about equal percentages? It seems to me that the fair thing would be for each person to give up the same amount of value so that the actual economic burden of taxation on everyone is the same. Since a dollar is worth much less to a rich person than a poor person, that would seem to require that the rich be taxed at a higher percentage rate.
Well, I readily admit that I'm not a flat tax expert. (though I believe I described and criticized the flat tax approaches to poverty I'm familiar with; I didn't say there were none). What am I missing?