Flat-tax proposals: Too simple to work? [Most commented]

The flat-tax proposals by Republican presidential candidates Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry may seem appealing in their simplicity, but the editorial board warns against them. The board writes:

    The simplicity of a single rate might be the most appealing aspect of the flat tax to taxpayers, but the majority of its benefits would come from broadening the tax base, lowering rates and removing disincentives to save and invest. The biggest downside is that by sharply reducing the rates collected from the highest earners, it would force the lower and middle classes to cover more of the cost of government than under the current system of graduated rates.

    Making the flat tax an option, as Gingrich and Perry favor, is a worst-of-both-worlds approach. It wouldn't reduce taxpayers' paperwork and expenses; they'd still need to calculate how much they'd owe under the current system to see whether they would pay less with the flat tax. Instead, it would let lower-income taxpayers and the elderly hold onto the valuable tax breaks that the flat tax would eliminate, while letting higher incomes take advantage of the flat tax's lower rates. In other words, it's status quo for those with lower incomes, but a boon to the wealthy.

    Lawmakers can achieve the legitimate economic goals of the flat tax without abandoning graduated rates. One example is the tax overhaul that President Reagan signed into law in 1986, which eliminated enough tax breaks to allow brackets to be consolidated and the top rate lowered significantly. Flat-tax advocates are right to call for a radically simpler code, but they're focusing on the wrong problem.



This argument instantly sparked a debate, which has had editorial writer Jon Healey replying to reader comments with further insight. You can find the full discussion here. Till then, here’s a sampling of comments that express the variety of ways readers think our country’s tax system should work.

A not-so-flat flat tax

As a Republican, I endorse the idea of a flat tax, but I also support brackets to avoid putting too much weight on the lower levels, as low earners know well that 9% of $20,000 is a far greater personal burdern than 9% of $200,000.  We should not punish wealthy and successful people, but we have to strike a balance.

--TimBowman

The best way to level the playing field?

Getting rid of deduction and subsidies, killing crony capitalism, reducing the influence of lobbyist would all be the result of a flat tax. It could also be done with a graduated income tax, but a flat tax, starting at 20,000 dollars for singles and 30,000 dollars for families is more fair. Treat everybody the same regardless of income, color, or creed.

--HenryC

Tax wealth

If you want to tax wealth, then tax wealth.

Wealth is assets.  Assets are property, whether real or personal.

So if you want to tax wealth, you need an asset tax and sales tax and can do away with the income tax.

It's really simple, if it has a record title showing ownership, it gets taxed.

Just like your car tax or your home property tax.

No deductions, no anything.  A measly 3% national asset and sales tax would balance the books and begin paying down the debt.

--SoCal_Bozo

Our "progressive” tax systems are "fascist charities"

Social welfare ultimately comes from the rich giving to the poor under our current progressive tax system. However, the problem with this "fascist charity" is that the receivers of aid are not grateful at all to the people who are paying extra taxes for them. They call them names, protest them, hate them, and call them greedy.

It also creates a false economy of tax lawyers who's only contribution to society is to make sure that some rich who are willing to fight the taxes don't pay taxes.

Ultimately our "progressive" tax systems ends up being more regressive than at first glance. The true rich people simply stash their wealth overseas or hire lawyers, leaving the upper-middle class and middle class footing the bill for a growing bulge of people who cannot pay fair taxes.

Yet you have a class of wealthy tax-dodging democratic politicians who have power because they use other people's money to keep a underclass of citizens dependent on them.

Cain's flat tax is probably the boldest plan for America, but it represents change. It has the proper protections for people below the poverty line and is engineered so everyone pays less net taxes-- although if you're a heavy consumer you'll end up paying a bit more with the sales tax. But this encourages people to manage their own capital wisely. The extra money if their pockets would be their own payroll, and not from the government.

--shaheen13

What's offensive about a consumption tax?

Remind me:  What's offensive about a consumption tax?  After all, everyone's a consumer and everyone needs to pay for whatever is consumed.  The fact that some are "more able" to pay for what they consume seems to me to be irrelevant.  If someone can't/is less able to pay, perhaps they could re-evaluate what's important to consume.  After all, living in California is more expensive than many other States - surely consumers in California will pay more to consume whatever California has to offer...hence, giving California more income to distribute (to those who can't/are less able).

Anyone have any ideas on how we can get government to stop making land owners pay for something they already own (through some local/State/National tax scheme).

--hebfour

Why Democrats like the current tax code

It's interesting to note that a significant portion of each tax dollar collected is spent in the auditing and collection process.  A simplified tax code would free-up precious resources and give a much-needed boost to our flaccid economy.

The problem is that Democrats like the tax code just the way it is.  The only changes they ever seem to propose are increasing rates on high-income earners and providing bribes (tax incentives) to buy crappy electric cars and solar panels that nobody would otherwise purchase.

It ain't gonna happen.

--GregMaragos

Why flat taxes would make things worse

Why are we even discussing this? Flat taxes is just another con by conservative to award a boon to the wealthy and powerful at everyone else expense to insure massive political donors checks. The nation is paying it for now by the tax breaks for the wealthy and deregulation of the corporations well as under-taxes of them both for decades cause by GOP corrupt mismanagement. Why does anybody think things will get better by massively enacting action proven to make things worse?

--neoblueleo

Photo album provides a new picture of Wyatt Earp

Sure, he's best known as the steely nerved Wild West lawman who faced down the bad guys at the O.K. Corral.

But Wyatt Earp may have had a soft and sentimental side too.

Brothers Keith and Brian Collins say they discovered Earp's personal photo album while picking through a Hesperia antique shop.

Inside the worn, leather-bound album were more than two dozen tiny tintype and carte de visite pictures showing Earp as a child, a teenager and a young adult, they say. They say the album also contains photos of his mother and pictures of two of his three wives.

Keith Collins, 50, of Sylmar, said the photos put a human face on Earp — whose life included stints as a shotgun-wielding stagecoach guard, a gambler, an investor in California mining and oil interests, a boxing match referee and a pimp as well as the deputy marshal of Tombstone, Ariz., where the legendary gunfight took place.

The brothers bought the photo album five months ago for $50.

"We split up to look for pictures in the store. We always do that," said Brian Collins, 40, of Victorville.

It was Keith Collins who said he recognized Earp in the tiny photographs. Back in Sylmar, the pair used a computer to compare the album's images with known photographs of the famous western figure.

Although it's possible to create realistic-looking reproductions of tintype and carte de visite images, the pair are convinced the album belonged to Earp. They have invited experts to inspect the pictures and verify their authenticity. However, that's not such an easy task.

"The problem is, nobody has seen pictures of Wyatt Earp as a kid. You can't compare them with anything," said Nicholas Cataldo, author of "The Earp Clan: The Southern California Years." "There are known pictures of Wyatt in his 20s and 30s and in some of them he doesn't look alike."

It's uncertain how the album came to be in Hesperia, although Earp's sister lived in Highland, 38 miles away, at the time of his death in Los Angeles. He died of kidney failure at 81 on Jan. 13, 1929. Earp lived at 4004 W. 17th St. in the Arlington Heights area, which is now the site of the Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Middle School.

The Collins brothers' interest in old photos dates to their childhood, when their grandmother often pulled out family photo albums to entertain them, Keith Collins said.

The pair said they picked up their sleuthing skills from their late father, a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy.

"Our father taught us analyze photographs by measuring and comparing facial features — the ears, nose and eyes," said Keith Collins. They also learned how to authenticate their finds by amassing evidence on dates, locations and other family members.

Raised in Lancaster, the brothers moved with their mother to Bishop after she and their father split up.

"Up there we'd go to abandoned places and pick up things that had been left behind. We took them to antique stores to sell. We had to feed ourselves," Keith Collins said.

They eventually decided to specialize in old photographs. These days, visits to yard sales, flea markets and thrift stores are their fulltime jobs.

Photography became commercially popular in the mid-19th century. Tintype photos were created by placing negative images against a blackened metal base; the carte de visite process used a paper print that was mounted on a piece of cardboard the size of a calling card.

The tintype and carte de visite pictures in the album are tiny — measuring about 2 inches by 3 inches, including their borders.

The photos, formal portraits taken by professional photographers, show subjects in their best clothes. The brothers say two of Earp's wives — Urilla Sutherland and Mattie Blaylock — are pictured. Missing is his third wife, Josephine "Sadie" Marcus, who was at his side when he died.

Also included are photos of Thomas Fitch, the lawyer who represented Earp in the judicial hearing after the 1881 gun battle at the O.K. Corral, and Calamity Jane, according to the brothers.
They speculate that Earp may have met frontierswoman Martha Jane Cannary in the Dakota Territory boomtown of Deadwood. Or Earp could have simply purchased the tintype: Calamity Jane sold them.

"Back then she was not a star, she was a hooker. But Calamity Jane was brilliant. She marketed herself by selling pictures of herself," Keith Collins said.

Historians in Deadwood, S.D., say Calamity Jane and Earp could have crossed paths in 1876.

"She was in and out of Deadwood quite a bit, and Wyatt Earp passed through Deadwood very briefly," said Arlette Hansen, curator and archivist at Deadwood's Adams Museum. "Or they may have met in Wyoming. It's surprising how easily people traveled back in those days."

The Collins brothers suggest that the album's photos could fetch $1 million if sold. But they intend to keep them and lease out the rights to them.

High-quality copies of the pictures have been made by the brothers' partner, Baret Lepejian of A&I Photographic and Digital Services of Hollywood. The originals are stored in acid-free sleeves in a bank safe deposit box.

The unknown seller, who acquired the album at an estate sale, apparently didn't know its contents. But at Hesperia's Carriage House Antiques, which hosted the consignment sale, there was rejoicing at the brothers' good fortune.

"We're happy someone found a treasure," said shop worker Chris Spurlock. "They don't always come back and tell us when that happens."

Texas Rangers show blueprint for hitting homers in a football town

The Texas Rangers, who used to be the expansion Washington Senators, are probably about to win their first World Series since they fled our town to Arlington, Tex., after the 1971 season. Within days, a world title may fly above The Ballpark in the Middle of Nowhere, next door to Jerry Jones Monstrosity.

Last October, in the 39th season since they absconded, some of us thought it was time, at last, to remove our youthful curse from the Rangers. So we blessed the first postseason playoff series victory in Texas history.
Now, with the 40th anniversary of Bob Short’s escape in the rearview mirror, it’s time to go all the way and let the last of the bygones be gone.

How times change. The Rangers are not only the Series favorite over the miraculous Cardinals — “Rangers in six” is the chalk pick and mine, too — the Texas franchise has become a fine team-building model for other clubs from prosperous cities that are football crazy but not yet addicted to baseball.

Now, what team could possibly fit that description? Oh, right, the Nationals.

No franchise is in a better position to understand what the Rangers have done to transform their lot in just three lightning years, and to emulate that success, than the current club in Washington. You would be pressed to find two franchises more similar than the 2008 Rangers and 2011 Nats.

The Nats finished this season a thousand miles from the playoffs, much less from reaching consecutive Series like the Rangers. But there is a map. As the Rangers’ huge leaps in attendance demonstrate, it is actually a gold map, even if you play in the shadow of the Cowboys (or Redskins).

Just three years ago, the Rangers drew 24,320 a game, had a $66 million payroll and finished their fourth straight losing season at 79-83. This year, the Nats were 20th in attendance at 24,877, had a $66 million payroll and finished 80-81. Can you get closer? It wasn’t a fluke. If you look at four-year attendance, the Rangers and Nats were 99 percent identical. As a baseball market, and in talent level, the Nats are the ’08 Rangers.

How close (or far) are the Nats to a transformation of their place in the game, their fan base and their financial underpinnings? You have to win to find the answers. But the Nats should be motivated when they look at Texas, where crowds are up 49.6 percent since ’08 to 36,382 this season with 40,000-a-game plausible next year. And the Rangers have done it with a sane 13th-ranked, $93 million payroll.

Who dreamed a Texas ballclub could go to consecutive World Series and make money, all while playing across the street from Cowboys Stadium?

Could it actually happen? You need brains, organization, luck and money to go from where the Rangers were in ’08 to where they are now, but how much is required? The answer, which the Nats need to face, is: a whole lot. This isn’t a matter of stumbling into a couple of hot draft picks such as Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper, then letting them grow up, adding a couple of $100 million free agents, and ultimately collecting your hardware.

A family affair

The Bergs settled in Richmond Hill, a middle-class Queens neighborhood. Karen finally had the big house she wanted, but its stately exterior belied a modest existence. They had moved back from Israel without enough money for a car, according to former student Dorothy Clark. She and another former student recalled that Karen dressed their sons in secondhand clothing.

The house doubled as the American headquarters of what would soon be known as the Kabbalah Centre. The basement served as a dining hall and the living room as a synagogue. Classes were held around a pingpong table, one of the Bergs’ few pieces of furniture, recalled Michel Obadia, a Manhattan hair salon owner who studied at the center.

As in Israel, the students were mostly alienated Jews who liked Philip’s combination of approachability and orthodox background. He would teach that the oft-told stories of Adam, Abraham and other Torah figures contained hidden wisdom about how the universe worked. Over two hours, Obadia recalled, Philip would discuss what the Zohar taught about a particular esoteric topic -- how to find the middle ground between judgment and grace, for example.

Obadia said students would speak up about how the abstract principle applied to their own lives.

“He had the language, the formulas, for you to pierce through and all of a sudden start to understand things,” said Obadia, who left the center more than 20 years ago but can still recite many of Philip’s teachings.

He said that at the close of class, many students would strap on phylacteries -- small boxes that contain Torah passages -- and pray together.
Their congregation was growing, but the Bergs were determined to reach even more people. They turned to publishing. In Israel, they had discovered that students wanted their own kabbalah texts and would pay for them. This was a revelation to Philip, who was used to impoverished yeshiva scholars hunkered over communal books, as he later recalled in testimony in a civil lawsuit.

The books sold in Israel were dense and difficult, and written in Hebrew. Berg turned to Clark’s husband for help in making the teachings more accessible. Kenneth Clark was a Chicago Tribune reporter covering entertainment in New York. The two men got together every Wednesday night at the Bergs’ dining room table.

“His idea was to get this into common language that anybody could understand,” Kenneth Clark recalled in court testimony years later.

Philip would explain a portion of kabbalah to Clark, who had been raised a Southern Baptist and knew no Hebrew. Clark would look for ways to make the ancient teachings relevant. When Philip described kabbalah’s conception of the age-old conflict between good and evil, Clark suggested comparing it to the "Star Wars" movies.

Books he wrote with Clark and other ghostwriters allowed Philip to reach beyond Queens and Israel, and the Bergs soon had branches in cities with large Jewish communities, including Miami, Toronto and Paris.

They also established a religious order called the chevre , “friends” in Hebrew. The chevre , primarily young Israelis, took vows of poverty and lived dormitory-style in a house near the Bergs’ Queens home and later in cities around the world. By day, they knocked on doors in Jewish business districts, carrying Zohars and delivering a pitch about the center to raise funds. At night, they roamed Jewish neighborhoods.

“We would say, ‘We are teaching Jewish spirituality.’ Most people would say, ‘I'm not interested.’ Some would say, ‘What's it about?’” recalled Shaul Youdkevitch, a high-ranking teacher who had a falling-out with Karen in 2008 after three decades as a chevre .

The chevre tried to persuade people to make a donation or buy a Zohar for $360, according to Youdkevitch and other former members of the order. Many of the people they solicited did not read Hebrew, but the chevre assured them that wasn’t a problem: Just passing a hand over the Zohar’s letters can give spiritual insight, and its physical presence provides protection from harm. (The talismanic powers of the Zohar remain a central tenet of Kabbalah Centre teachings.)

In the mid-‘80s, the center began emphasizing donations as a way to ensure members’ well-being, spiritual and otherwise. Consistent with Jewish tradition, followers were urged to give generously beyond the expected tithe of 10% to 20% of their income.

Teachers departed from tradition in telling donors their money should go only to the center: Spreading kabbalah was more vital than the work of homeless shelters and other charities. The center taught that tithing protected donors against financial setbacks, and that additional donations would stave off divine punishment in the form of illness, family strife and other problems.

Karen kept close tabs on fundraising, Youdkevitch and other former members said.

“She was sitting on every chevre in the world: ‘Where are you? How much money are you bringing in?’” he recalled her inquiring. “She would say you have to be outside all day.”

Philip focused on spiritual matters. He prayed six to eight hours a day and continued to write books with Clark. In 1988, Philip published “Power of Aleph Beth.” The first sentence mentioned “Star Wars” director George Lucas and the cover featured a sci-fi design with Hebrew characters floating under a dark planet.

The book used modern worries such as nuclear war and drug abuse to give kabbalah teachings a contemporary feel.

There was also a nod to a world-famous pop star.

“We are living in a material world and I’m a material girl,” began the second chapter. Nearly a decade before Madonna attended her first kabbalah class, she served as what Clark called “a made-to-order metaphor for what kabbalah does not teach.”

For Kobe Bryant and Lakers, NBA lockout could be good, or very bad

The inevitable finally arrived, and it was bad for basketball fans, even worse for the NBA and atrocious news for the Lakers.

Or was it?

The last we saw of the ex-defending champs, they were getting pummeled in Dallas while Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom committed stupid flagrant fouls. Phil Jackson looked at the devastation in front of him, pulled his cowboy hat low over his eyes, and slowly turned his horse toward Montana.

The Lakers might be itching for the NBA lockout to end so they can prove themselves, but that's a cliche better reserved for the Miami Heat, who actually made the Finals and own a stunningly young nucleus of players.

The Lakers aren't young. They're old. Very.

On Monday the first two weeks of the season were canceled, and more games could be killed soon, making this an abbreviated season at best.

A shorter season might actually help the Lakers. Why wouldn't they want it for Derek Fisher (37 years old), Kobe Bryant (33), Pau Gasol (31), Steve Blake (31), Matt Barnes (31) and Luke Walton (31)?

Oh, and Odom will be 32 in a few weeks, followed a week later by Metta World Peace's first birthday after the first 31 were celebrated by Ron Artest.

Rest during the lockout should be embraced by the Lakers the same way dancing lessons should be bought in bulk by World Peace, who somehow fared worse on "Dancing With the Stars" than his team had on the basketball stage a few months earlier.

Regardless, there's a slim line between a shortened season and an uncomfortably truncated one. The Lakers don't want the lockout to drag on too long.

The last NBA labor dispute was 13 years ago, and after it ended, players and owners emerged from the smoldering wreckage to start the season a few days into February 1999. The Lakers played 50 games in 89 days, including six in a particularly grueling eight-day span, the type of schedule that wouldn't do any favors these days for Bryant's achy right knee.

NBA teams typically don't play more than two games in two nights, but that probably would change with a severely condensed schedule if the lockout skulks into early 2012.

The Lakers had three back-to-back-to-back situations on the reduced 1998-99 schedule, including road games on three consecutive nights in Seattle, Denver and Vancouver.

Those were rough months for the Lakers, who went 31-19 in the regular season, blew through three coaches (Del Harris, Bill Bertka and Kurt Rambis) and got swept by San Antonio in the Western Conference semifinals.

Fisher was on that team, but he's a little too busy to reminisce. Thankfully, Robert Horry, a key player for Lakers championship teams in 2000, '01 and '02, has plenty of time to talk about '98-99.

"It cut my career by a year," said Horry, 41, who last played in the NBA in 2008. "Those times where we played three games in a row, your knees hurt so bad you walked around like you were on hot coals. And you were so tired from all the traveling, you'd walk right into walls at the team hotel. It was murder on our bodies. It wiped me out."

If a new labor deal is struck, it will take about a month until the games begin. So if something's done by early November, the Lakers would begin playing in December, which wouldn't be bad for them.

They'll have gained an extra month of rest and their schedule won't be overly condensed, allowing them enough practice time between games to absorb Coach Mike Brown's new system.

But if there's no labor deal until January and the games begin in February, it'll be a sprint to the end, just like the last lockout season. Bryant sat out almost every practice last season to rest his knee, and the Lakers would again have to monitor his practice participation as the rest of the team tries to perfect new schemes on offense and defense while speeding through an abbreviated schedule.

There are other problems, regardless of when the games start.

Lakers owner Jerry Buss desperately wants a season. He's one of only eight owners who, according to the NBA, did not suffer financial losses last season, and he knows the championship window for his current roster is two or three more years . . . if that.

Bynum might have already played his last game for the Lakers if this season gets obliterated. The team holds a $16-million option for 2012-13, and that sounds pretty expensive right about now.

Bryant and Gasol each has two years left on his contract after this season. Odom has only one.

The Lakers still have some time to recline during the lockout, but not much. The last thing they want is a season starting in February . . . or, gulp, no season at all.