Electoral Reform

[kandrathe]

That argument is bogus. The "status" of skin color, and very likely sexual orientation, is not chosen, and, to boot, has no relevance to taxation. What does it matter that you're black or white, gay, straight or otherwise come tax season? Your income, on the other hand, is a result of your own choices, and is directly pertinent to the issue of how much you can be taxed without undue burden.

I was not equating skin color or sexual orientation with taxation.

I don't think this notion of "status" has any legal weight whatsoever. Any American lawyers or jurists care to correct me on that?

How about David Bernstein, 1991 graduate of the Yale Law School, has just completed a clerkship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and now practices law in Washington, D.C.? Equal Protection for Economic Liberty <-- No flames please. Yes, I know it's a conservative think tank. But the article clearly references sources which show that the principal of equal protection being applied to economic justice are not new.

The constitution clearly grants these powers of income taxation to the federal government. The sixteenth amendment, at the very least, is nonsensical unless you grant this. The argument that progressive taxation is unconstitutional is bogus.

Yes, I agree the government has the right to levy a tax to support the government. My equal protection argument is that the government needs to apply that tax fairly. "Fairly" is the word in question. You consider it fair to burden 10% of the citizens with 80% of the taxes. I don't. And, as I've pointed out in other writing here, being a wage earner is in no way equal to being wealthy. The burden of taxation is unfairly distributed across wage earners, and even more unfairly distributed if you consider taxes paid in relation to net worth.

The rest of your post a rant, one assertion after another about communism, class warfare, a rather novel interpretation of the American revolution, etc... You will, I hope, forgive me if I ignore it as being rather beside the point.

Not a rant, but whatever. I'm just glad you read past the first sentence. :-)