wealth tax let's get rid of all federal taxes. no more income tax. yay! no more corporate taxes. yay! no more gas social security medicare nose taxes. yay yay and yay! okay so now the soldiers show up at my door in their snazzy uniforms and their shiny guns full of deadly ammunition asking, politely, how they're going to get paid. hee hee. okay. wealth tax. here's how it works. calculate your net worth. take a $1 million deduction. your tax bill is 5% of that. make check payable to timmer, president of new america. thanks! and yeah this is the simple version of the plan. in reality, it'd be a progressive wealth tax that starts at say 1% and climbs to 20% at say $10 billion. the average would be 5%. government should be in favor cause they get more than they get now. businesses should be all in favor. cause their employees just got a 20% raise. woo hooty! and their operating costs just went down by some 10%. and they don't need such a huge accounting department. we can redirect those folks to doing something more productive. some activity that actually makes money. the poor won't care. the middle class should say, yay! pay raise. BIG pay raise. the rich say oh shit. the game just changed from hide the income to hide the wealth. heh. new game. new way to game the system for all its worth. erp, so to speak. would we have more millionaires? nope. probably not. most folks would be more interested in spending money than accumulating it. and they'll have a great time doing it. happy? you bet. no taxes. more beer. i figure, under this system, my wife and i would have accumulated what we have in about half the time. even accounting for a reduced salary. life would be good at least until the higher tax rates kick in and we start paying more than we would have under the old system. a LOT more. i'm sure that'd make me mad. aaargh! just so mad i'd have to take the family someplace tropical in our private jet just to get over it. grump grump.  ¶ 8:00 AM