Back during the 1996 Presidential Campaign, we had a self-confessed troll on Usenet who called himself "Mr. Sam". I don't know who he really was, never tried to find out. A "troll" for those not up on Usenet terms, is someone who posts something simply to provoke a reaction from others. One of the more potent methods of trolling is to state something that is demonstrably false, and stick to it, as people laboriously attempt to demonstrate that you are wrong. A good troll (and Sam was one of the best) can rack up hundreds of responses in this manner.

Sam's particular troll dealt with a claim made regarding the Presidential campaign planks of Steve Forbes. Sam claimed that Forbes did not want to "zero out" capital gains, or in other words, didn't want to eliminate the capital gains tax altogether. Since this was a centerpiece of the Forbes' campaign, various folks on Usenet turned themselves inside out trying to demonstrate to Sam that in fact, this was exactly what Forbes wanted to do.

Sam would simply repeat the claim again, and draw even more response. And the response would develop out, as people attempted to show that Forbes' entire philosophy endorsed eliminated cap gains and generally lessening the tax burden on the upper classes.

Sam professed to be a fan of Forbes, but my guess is that he probably supported one of the other candidates, perhaps even worked on a campaign staff. For his fraudulent defense of "my man Steve Forbes" flat-tax and cap gains caused people to examine Forbes' tax plan in detail, and brought it, over and over, before thousands of readers. Without saying a single word against Forbes or his tax plan, Sam managed to get people to examine the potential effects of Forbes' plan in excruciating detail, and demonstrate who would pay more, who would pay less, who gained, who lost.

By the time Forbes and Sam vanished, more or less simultaneously, only a handful of people - including Sam, of course - supported the Forbes tax plan. Everyone else had sat down, thought it through, and realized that the GOP had been working overtime to convince the middle class that what it really needed was one damn fine shafting.

Forbes' plan sounded too good to be true. 17%, and there would be a household exemption of $30K or so. A household making $32,000 would only pay $34 in Federal taxes.

By the time we were done examining it, we had realized that anyone making over $60,000 would be paying MORE tax. Well, most people didn't make $60K a year anyway, right? Right.

But the budget would have a shortfall-estimates ranged between 20 and 40% drops in revenue, and of course, the ultra rich, like Forbes, who get most of their income from capital gains, would be getting a free ride. Forbes tried to pretend that cap gains would help the middle class recognize profits from home sales, but in fact, there already was a sizeable exemption (a quarter million) on home appreciation gains, and not many middle-class folks ever saw more than a quarter million increase in home value.

In fact, the Forbes plan would gut government services entirely, leaving the middle class to support the military and the police and little else, while the ultra wealthy would enjoy the benefits of such without paying one red cent.

Nearly every GOP tax proposal since then has been along similar lines. "Simplified tax code" (in other words, a flat tax) which usually has several common elements: a single rate, usually between 15 and 24 % of income over X amount ($10K to $30K, usually), and the most important element is zeroing out capital gains. Republicans breathlessly offer middle class families tax savings of dozens of dollars a year, while neglecting to mention the thousands of dollars in services provided by the government that would be lost.

The GOP shills like to accuse opponents of such plans as LIKING the present complicated code. Part of the nefarious scheme by liberals to make government overbearing and oppressive, you see. They haven't had notable success with such claims, and the fact that various flat-tax proposals, most notably the most recent ones by George W. Bush and Steve Forbes, have fallen flat among the electorate.

I was so accused once, and that annoyed me enough to propose a flat tax of my own.

It has the advantage of being the simplest one offered so far. It is careful not to hurt working people. It maintains progressivity, and is based on the common-sense notion that those who benefit the most from our society should pay the most. It eliminates all but the standard deduction, again based on a common-sense notion that if you are wealthy enough to pay taxes, you don't need deductions.

The plan fits nicely in two lines:

30% flat tax. $80,000 deductible per individual. Or $160,000 per household if there is more than one wage-earner. Whether wages or capital income. No other deductions.

If you made $80,000 a year, you pay no taxes. If you make $80,000 a year, and your spouse makes $80,000, you pay no taxes. If you make $100,000, and your spouse makes $60,000, you pay nothing.

Cap gains are taxed at the same rate. This includes homes, since all the mortgage and resale deductions and exemptions did was artificially inflate the value of homes, and put most of the profits in the pockets of speculators and real estate agents. Besides, if you and your spouse are making more than $160K a year, why should I subsidize your home purchase?

No deductions for kids. There's six billion people on this planet. Why should we reward people for having more kids?

Corporations and businesses are taxed the same on net profits. One element my plan doesn't address is simplifying allowable deductions, and making them a bit more reasonable and honest. Presently companies can deduct millions for hiring attorneys to figure out ways of avoiding paying taxes. That doesn't make much sense.

I would tighten the rules on non-profits, limiting the amounts of discretionary income and salaries they could claim. If it wasn't for the constitution, I would tax churches in a New York minute.

My calculations are strictly the "back-of-the-napkin" variety, but I believe that this set up would actually INCREASE government revenues slightly-by about 5%, I make it. Perhaps we could pay off the national debt by 2010, assuming the economy stays reasonably healthy.

Social Security? No longer a separate tax.

Is this a soak-the-rich tax? Certainly. The rich wouldn't BE rich without the support of this society. A wealthy person owes a lot more than does a poor one.

Will this hurt the rich? No. For one thing, the fact is a healthy economy needs a good circulation of wealth to really work on any kind of long term basis. Call it "trickle-UP" economics. You have a choice of one billion in tax credits spread among 50 billionaires, or one billion spread among one million families. Question: who is going to buy more shoes? Go to more movies? Buy more meals? The wealthy, if anything, stand to GAIN from a larger consumer base.

One thing Adam Smith economists always forget is that money must circulate. History is littered with cultures where the wealthy where an immensely rich 1% of the population, and the other 99% destitute. Such cultures always collapsed, no matter how rich that top 1% was. Money must circulate. It's like the body, where it doesn't matter how much blood the body has if there is no heart to move it about. Economic activity, rather than wealth, begets wealth. Higher taxes notwithstanding, the wealthy stand to gain.

A microcosm of how this works showed up in the past couple of raises in the minimum wage. The California restaurant associations fought the minimum wage tooth and nail, arguing that it would drive their labor costs up and throw hundreds, maybe thousands of small restaurants out of business.

The wages were raised, and it turned out that a lot of people used some of the new-found discretionary income to eat at restaurants. Enough so that it not only made up for the labor cost increase, but restaurants wound up hiring more people, and new restaurants opened. The net result was that one year after the minimum wage increases, there were more restaurants hiring more people and doing more business than before the raises.

What about those multi-millionaires and billionaires who decide they can't stand that, and move out of country? Let 'em. For one thing, there's few countries worth living in where a 30% tap on the shoulder is all they can expect. For another, we can drop the bad habit of pretending these overseas free-loaders are "American interests". Any company that moves overseas, unless it HAS to be there (such as petroleum) is no longer an American interest, and will have to deal with local authorities on their own resources. Not only will this keep the people moving overseas to deliberately undercut our wage structure more honest, but we can cut back on our grotesquely huge military budget. We don't NEED to spend a quarter trillion a year when our military is more powerful than the rest of the world combined.

Won't that provide disincentive to succeed? Of all the Randroid arguments I've encountered, this one is always the silliest. Think fast: which would you rather have: $50K tax free, or $700,000 after taxes? I've never heard of a millionaire renouncing income rather than pay taxes, and nor have you.

Isn't this socialism? It's sharing, which some people would call socialism. But people, we have a problem: we're getting too productive for our own good. In a normal economy, we can have 10% unemployment, and STILL have all our needs and wants met. Indeed, we no longer have supplier shortages. If anything, we have CONSUMER shortages. (Those old enough will remember panic-stricken businesses in 1930 bitterly blaming consumers for "holding out" on them.) It's important, if we want our economic engine to keep chugging along, to make sure that the consumers have purchasing power.

We could take the route the French are following, and simply reduce the legal maximum number of hours in a work week (it's now 35 over there). This forces companies to hire more people, and drives per-hour wages up. Their aim is the same: maintain healthy circulation of money, and made certain there is a strong consumer base.

We could follow the idea that Jefferson proposed be included in the Constitution, something he regarded as "self evident": a 100% inheritance tax on real property. He regarded the rise of a monied class as a greater threat to America than organized religion or the government.

Then there is the Trump approach. Donald Trump proposed a one-time 17% tax on all estate worth over one million. He reasoned the returns could pay off the national debt in one fell swoop, giving the government some $200 billion a year to put back into society. It's unlikely that any of mad Caligula's sycophants ever trembled in greater fear than the Wall Street Journal did when The Donald proposed THAT one.

Or we could use high progressivity in taxes. Compared to either the French model, the Trump model or the Jeffersonian model, my progressive flat-tax doesn't sound so radical, does it?

Either way, we have a situation now where 1% of the population controls more wealth than the bottom 95%-a dangerously high disparity. The type of disparity that can destroy countries.

Try suggesting my flat tax to the next flat-head Republican who says Forbes has the answer. If nothing else, the facial expression alone will be worth it.