jameswharris

The Privatization of Education–The Hidden Political Battleground of the Conservatives

The United States of America was an early adopter of public education – free education paid for by tax dollars, and managed by local governments. Now conservatives want to change that and privatize education – free education paid for by tax dollars, but run by corporations. Education costs, both K-12 and higher education, are skyrocketing into unaffordable realms. You can’t really blame big business for looking at very large public budgets and thinking there’s a gold rush in education.

K-12 education has been getting bad grades for years, and resentful taxpayers want change. K-12 education is a fascinating concept. Basically it prepares each new generation to function in society. We spend monstrous amounts of money on education, and we’d like to produce very functional citizens. But does anyone know what constitutes a good education? The new trend is teaching core content, and that sounds like a dandy idea. But the history of education is a trail of dandy ideas that have failed miserably. Will shifting teachers paid by the city and states to profit making corporations solve our educational woes? I have no idea. I do think it’s a fascinating problem – but we need some ground rules.

Conservatives and the rich have been hard selling the idea of charter schools and vouchers for some time with no real data supporting their ideas. Their sales pitches are appealing. Their ideals are appealing. Unfortunately, I’m not sure their motivation is anything other than greed. Conservatives have a one track mind: pay less taxes. It galls them to pay for anything that other people get for free.

To reduce the education tax requires reducing the costs of education, but because these corporations also want to make money, lots of money, and reduce taxes, they will have to slash educational costs dramatically. That means cutting teachers salaries, using fewer teachers, shrinking administrative systems, shrinking the infrastructure of schools, and shrinking every other line item that goes into funding education. I can’t help wonder how they can produce a better product.

Of course, if they can do more for less, shouldn’t we welcome their revolution? Sure, but they haven’t proven their methods work, and it appears all we’ll get is badly educated students and new class of teachers that are paid more like fast food workers than professionals that teacher deserve to be.

Like I said earlier, we should have some ground rules for this great social experiment. I think the number one key to analyzing the success or failure of this experiment and all future educational experiments is doing away with grading by educators and moving to national standardize tests that are administrated by other private corporations that have no ties to the public or private education systems. This would allow any city to try out any new-fangled educational system they want and tell if it’s effective or not. Of course, this means experimenting with a whole generation of kids.

Back to that core content idea. At a national level we have to decide what every kid should know. Most people will think about the academic content, but I think we also need to add social skills, work stills, health and physical education, etc.

The next idea hasn’t been mentioned yet, and that’s responsibility. I don’t think the weight of education should fall totally on the educational system. I think students and parents should be held accountable too. There is no pedagogical system that produces 100% success, even if teachers, students and parents give 110%. I believe public education often fails not because of teachers, but because of students and their parents, but the teachers get all the blame. So in setting up this grand experiment, I believe we need to assign a degree of accountability to students and parents.

Students need incentives to work harder, and grades are no real incentives. Nor do students equate education with later success in life, because such delayed rewards are no incentives to young minds. We need to find ways to reward kids for working hard. Parents should have the built-in incentive to work harder for their kids, but that genetic incentive isn’t trustworthy either. Parents need their own carrots.

If I was a kid and was told summer starts as soon as I finish the core content for the year, even if that’s two months after the academic years starts, I think I’d study harder, especially if failure means no summer and Saturday classes, ever even Sunday classes for falling behind. Or if I was told I could play sports, video games, take music lessons, read, or pursue other free activities each day as soon as I finished up my assignments, I’d study harder. I believe the real incentives for students to get a better education is the reward of less schooling. This will only work if the core content is practical, manageable, and efficient. One failure of education is we try to teach too much.

Many of these corporate ideas for schools involve virtual schools and online education. Most parents want K-12 schools for free daycare, so there’s going to be a real clash there, except for the parents advocating home schooling. Many of these corporate teaching systems advocate fewer teachers and larger class sizes – and that’s only going to work if students are motivated by self-study. Their hope is video lectures will replace live lectures, and teachers will be used as guided homework helpers. Whether this idea has merit is yet to be proven.

If all privatization of education is going to give us is overcrowded schools, with low paid teachers, we can’t really expect much. And the only way these privatization advocates can prove cheaper education is better is by test scores. However, anything less than standardize tests conducted by separate national corporations can be scammed. Grade inflation and cheating is the scourge of education. Separating educators from testing is the only possible way to solve this problem. And this kind of testing only works if we have a national core curriculum. Many advocates of privatization of education secretly want to control curriculum for religious reasons, so this will be another battle.

There will be other corporate opponents too. Education involves a lot of money and lots of people want get their hand into the pie. Textbook costs add a lot of red ink to educational systems. A national core curriculum could hurt the textbook industry and they will fight that with all the lobbyists they can buy. Privatization advocates know you can’t make education cheaper without reducing all the factors that go into the total cost of education and textbooks are a major issue. Since many cost reductions depend on the Internet and online education I expect the core content to be public domain in the future. However, there will be a booming business to sell supplemental textbooks, computer programs, videos, and other training material to parents of affluent students that will give the rich an edge competing with the poor.

There will be side-effects to the core content theory. If everyone has a good core content education how can the exceptional stand out? With standardize national tests, with no grade inflation, we’ll actually know what every individual is capable of and comparisons between individuals will be easy, but will an array of standardize scores covering a variety of subjects really let employers hirer the right people they need? Maybe, if they want math wizards and science geeks, but I image they’ll want more, and thus even with national core content we’ll find ways of making society un-egalitarian.

Personally, I think a good education for all will cost more and not less, but I can’t prove that. It’s only a hunch. However, I believe the tide is shifting quickly towards the idea of educational privatization. We’ll just have to try it out for a generation and see how it works. I don’t think most people know about the political battles that are going on right now. It’s not a very newsworthy topic, but the battles are being fought and won in state capitals around the country. Liberals don’t have a clue. Liberals don’t work at politics like conservatives do. That’s why I think the conservatives will get their way. Most people focus on presidential politics when the real political decisions are being made in the shadows of the political limelight.

Keep an eye on ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council). ALEC is leading the effort of the privatization of education. If you do a Google search you’ll find many conservative and libertarian think tanks devoted to this topic. This is a very political topic. And ALEC is revolutionary, so many other corporations oppose it because ALEC ideals conflicts with their efforts to make money from education the old fashioned ways.

To understand more, read these links:

For more, just search Google for “ALEC Education”

JWH – 5/14/12

Anna Karenina–Translations

Every time we read a book we have to translate it into our mind, even when we’re reading a book written in the language we speak. If the book was written in another language, we have to depend on another mind to do an initial translation for us. Sometimes two or more people work on a foreign language translation. Those translators must interpret what they read in the original language and refashion it into English for us. They have to choose between a literal translation and one that reads well. Many decisions have to be made. If an old book is being translated, does the translator preserve the language of the past, or modernize it, do they translate the colloquial phrases, or substitute similar English sayings, should they improve upon the original authors writing, for example, and change a weak passive sentence into a strong active one, etc.

In our modern world books are most often translated to film, but every reader translates words into pictures when they read.

There are so many kinds of translations going on, more than just moving ideas from one language to another. When we read a story we picture it in our minds, and we seldom picture it as the author pictured it. How often have you read a book and then talked with someone about that book only to find they translated the book completely different. The best illustration of this when movies are made from books. Is Keira Knightley what you think when you imagine Anna? Or is Aaron Johnson how you picture Count Vronsky?

If you’ve read a book about a poor person and have never been poor yourself, you will translate the book different from a reader who has been poor. I have never been a woman, Russian, rich, dashing, beautiful, lived in the 19th century or been part of an aristocracy, so I have to imagine a lot when reading Anna Karenina and translating what it must have been like to been Anna or Count Vronsky. I have studied American History, but is translating concepts about American slavery equal to Russian serfs? I’ve seen Greta Garbo play Anna in a 1930s film, but is Garbo anything like what Tolstoy pictured when he was describing her with words?

Here is a portrait of Baroness Varvara Ivanovna Ikskul von Hildenbrandt that was painted in 1889, years after the book was published, but who people in Russia then used as a model for Anna.

Researching translations is fun. That’s why studying the Bible is fun for me even though I’m a non-believer. My friend Mike loves studying Homer and other Greek and Roman writers and comparing translations. Readers have to constantly ask: Is this a good translation? Think of how many Christian creeds, sects and churches been created from reading one book.

I’ve always wanted to tackle Anna Karenina or War and Peace. Well I’ve finally read (listened) to Anna Karenina, but how much of the story did I get? Is one reading enough to make a fair judgment? Did I pick the right translation? Without doing any research I ended up with the Maude translation because I liked the sound of the reader of the audio book. But I have to wonder, did I pick a good translation.

I’ve gone out and found four different translations. Two of which I have on my Kindle, and two of which I did a screen shot of the first page off of Amazon.com.

Here’ is the opening of Anna Karenina translated by Constant Garnett (1901):

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning.

Here is the same opening translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (1918), the version I listened to:

ALL happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was upset in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered an intrigue between her husband and their former French governess, and declared that she would not continue to live under the same roof with him. This state of things had now lasted for three days, and not only the husband and wife but the rest of the family and the whole household suffered from it. They all felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that any group of people who had met together by chance at an inn would have had more in common than they. The wife kept to her own rooms; the husband stopped away from home all day; the children ran about all over the house uneasily; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper and wrote to a friend asking if she could find her another situation; the cook had gone out just at dinnertime the day before and had not returned; and the kitchen-maid and coachman had given notice.

Here is another translation, from Joel Carmichael (1960).

And here is the more recent translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2000):

This last translation was made famous by being picked for the Oprah Winfrey book club in 2004.

While listening to the novel I felt there were phrases that sounded modern, and wondered if Russians had some of the same sayings we did, or if the contemporary feel came from the translators. Then my friend Mike called me to talk about his research on translations of War and Peace. So I got to thinking about the translation of Anna Karenina.

I was very happy with the Maude translation, but it felt like I was reading Dickens. But then Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina just after Dickens died. It was also serialized like Dickens’ novels, so it had that episodic feel. Plus, both writers are coming to grips with similar changes in society brought about by industrialization, science and technology.

If you look at these different versions you’ll notice they are different and similar. So, does the translation really matter?

In the old two, Oblonsky had an intrigue with the French governess, while in the modern versions he had an affair. Why the change? How long has “an affair” meant what it does now? But look at some other phrases:

“The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days.” – Garnett.

“The wife kept to her own rooms; the husband stopped away from home all day;” – Maude, and it’s only part of a long sentence.

“Oblonsky’s wife refused to leave her rooms; he himself hadn’t been home for three days.” – Carmichael.

“The wife would not leave her rooms, the husband was away for the third day.” – Pevear and Volokhonsky.

Notice, there’s even changes in facts. In the first the wife had one room, in the others, rooms. In the second, the husband had been away all day, but in the others three days.

Notice how we’re told the cook has left.

“the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner time” – Garnett.

“the cook had gone out just at dinnertime the day before and had not returned” – Maude.

“the day before the cook had picked dinner time to go out” – Carmichael.

“the cook had already left the premises the day before, at dinner-time” – Pevear and Volokhonsky.

The Carmichael one doesn’t mention that the cook never returns. And why doesn’t three of them mention that the cook is male? I assumed the cook was female from my translation, but that’s my cultural spin on things. I thought “walked off” was the strongest way of saying the cook quit. “Left the premises” seems passive and not definite about why.

Well we do know why, the household is in confusion, upset and topsy-turvy. Each of those words convey a different meaning to me, and none of them really convey the anger of a marital fight. But then that might be Tolstoy’s failure.

Also, the famous first line is subtly different. I wanted it to be more succinct. Like “Happy families are all alike, unhappy families are distinctive.” I don’t know Russian and would never be in the position to do a translation, but are the others translators like me, wanting to write the lines like they would want to read them? If I had translated Anna Karenina it would have been a much shorter book, but is that translating or editing?

Then there’s Android Karenina, a parody mash-up of classic novel and science fiction – it’s another kind of translation.

Now many readers will be outraged by this particular translation of the novel, but really, is it any different in its extremes than the many film versions of Anna Karenina? Most movie versions jettison the stories of Levin and Kitty, who appealed to me far deeper than Anna and Count Vronsky. Just look at all these images from a Google search. Each actress, or each painting for a book cover is an interpretation or translation.

How can modern readers understand Anna Karenina without understanding the social norms of the 1870s? How much history do we have to know to really appreciate what Tolstoy is writing about? I read AK at 60 and admired it greatly. I could not have comprehended it at 20 or 30 or even 40, but even at 60 I’m sure I’m missing most of the story. I don’t know Russian, but even if I did, I really don’t know much about life in 19th century Russia. However, reading Anna Karenina is teaching me about Russia, like Dickens, Elliot and Trollope are teaching me about 19th century England. Again though, through their translation.

History and fiction are constant mistranslations of reality, that change from generation to generation.

To see how we mistranslate history watch this little video “5 Historical Misconceptions Rundown" at YouTube:

JWH – 5/11/12

How Much Information Can I Process?

Like that old phrase, “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach,” I tend to put too many words on my plate to read each day. The saying, “My eyes are bigger than my brain” doesn’t seem to say what I mean, so I’m looking for a pithy saying to express various flavors of information overload. Obviously we’re all taking in more megabytes of data than our brains were designed to handle.

If I went on an information diet, how much is a reasonable amount of data to take in each day?

Like most people in 2012, I suffer from information overload, but unlike many people I know, I’m trying to do something about it. Cancelling cable TV really helped. Reducing my channel choices from over 200 down to 5 feels great. My wife works out of town and when she comes home on the weekend she gets pissed off that I hate to add a 6th channel to the clicker – her favorite. She doesn’t understand how much it pains me to flip through 6 channels. To show my wife how much I love her, I added her channel to the clicker, but I don’t think she appreciates the sacrifice I’m making. She just thinks I’m a TV wimp.

(“You watch more than you can see” – not bad phrase, almost mystical, and philosophical, but too Chauncey Gardner.)

I’ve cancelled the newspaper and all my print magazines years ago. I bought a Kindle and iPad to help manage information, but I haven’t gotten them under control yet. Because of the novelty of the gadgets, and Amazon’s low monthly pricing, I quickly subscribed to several magazines. I’ve been cutting back on those too. I still hope to regularly read The New Yorker, National Geographic, The Rolling Stone, Discover and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, although I fail miserably to keep up with all these magazines. I never did in the decades of subscribing to the paper editions, so I don’t know why I think it will be different on the iPad. At least I don’t see the mags grow in large piles around the room.

(“Your data intake exceeds its processing time” – not very catchy. “I take in more data than I can shit out” – rather gross, but does imply I’m bloated with data. I’m factulent!)

Just now I was trying to catch up on The Magazines of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and discovered they are filled with novellas. I don’t have time for novellas, or even novelettes. So I switched to the book review sections, and quickly found two great sounding books I want to read, The Future of Us by Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler, about two friends in 1996 discovering their Facebook pages from 15 years in the future, and A Bridge of Years by Robert Charles Wilson, about a guy who gets to time travel back to 1962 Greenwich Village. I had to add both to my Audible.com Wish List.

(“You’ll need nine lifetimes to read all those books” – not too bad, but not accurate either. I’d need ninety lifetimes. “If you can’t handle 200 channels of TV, how can you handle 200 unread books?”)

It sure would be pleasant if I only had 5 books laying around waiting to be read. You have any idea what it feels like having a to-be-read pile 700 books high? Why do I keep buying books? I’m insane. And the highlight of this week is the annual library book sale.

(“I’m a glutton for words.” “I’m a bookaholic.” “I need to go on a data diet.” “I’m obese from eating too many words.”)

I feel I’ve gotten TV under control, now I need to get my books and magazine reading roped in and tied down. I think part of the problem is we all feel we must keep up with what’s going on around the world, whether it’s news, pop culture, music, literature or even TV celebrities. We don’t like other people to think we’re living under a rock. But is it vital that I keep up with European politics and economics, with South American mining, with Chinese manufacturing, with Russian crime, and so on?

Do I help the world in any way by watching all the sparrows? Aren’t we using the internet, smart phones, and cable TV news in an attempt to be omnipresent? Of course, I’m assuming my addiction to information is common, and that may not be true. Most people might eat a healthy diet of data and never feel full with information overload.

I feel if I quit trying to read everything I’m going to miss something, something important. Like I’ll be a work and people will laugh at me because I didn’t know about Africa sinking below the ocean or when the aliens from space landed in Tibet.

Sometimes I think I shouldn’t worry about news at all. I’ve had a fantasy about writing a novel, and just forgetting what goes on in the real work, and only concentrate on creating my fictional world. But it’s so weird to think about shrinking my world to the size of house and office, and what I see from my truck and bicycle.

That would be like living in some 19th century novel. That would be bad, right?

JWH – 5/6/12

“Sucker for Your Marketing” – Sarah Jaffe

You know how a song gets stuck in your head and you can’t stop playing it? Well, I was listening to The Body Wins, Sarah Jaffe’s new album and got hooked on “Sucker for Your Marketing.” If you have Rdio or Spotify you can listen to it here.

http://rd.io/x/QJhDK72U3w

The lyrics aren’t much, but I find the music hypnotizing. Of course, it’s rather basic with Indian tribal dance like drumming, and an angry bass, and Sarah’s singing with far more emotion than the words convey, and then there’s the chorus of oh, oh, oh that reminds me of an exotic bird. It’s a very sparse arrangement depending mostly on the rhythm of the drums and Sarah’s bass playing, accented by a few piano riffs, and a violin that uplifts the song to sound like a much bigger production. In fact, the violin sounds more like a strings section than a violin player.

My friend John Grayshaw suggested we write about demos of famous songs for my music blog, and this got me to thinking about how “Sucker for Your Marketing” was thought up and arranged. I got on the net and found several live performances of “A Sucker for Your Marketing” as the song was called in its earlier forms. Here’s one of the earliest.

As you can hear and see, the song is not the same as it will become on The Body Wins. What’s interesting, is the song appeared on an album The Way Sound Leaves A Room, released in September of last year. So it’s development is in between that of the live performance and the newest album released last week. Again if you have Rdio, you can listen here.

http://rd.io/x/QJhDK_JQjw

This recording is rawer than the new version and the violinist didn’t play on this version. However, here’s a video from 2010 that does have the violinist – I think she adds a lot to the song. I’m not sure if the newest version has that violinist or a hired strings section.

That makes me wonder why she released the same song on two different albums with different arrangements? Jaffe must obviously love it too, as well as her fans. Maybe it will appear again on future albums with more development. I’d like to see a longer jam version. I’ve looked through many YouTube live versions, but none extend the song.

I think the song is evolving over time, becoming more powerful. It’s a shame the lyrics don’t live up the the emotion I feel from the song. I’m quite in love with The Body Wins. I think it shows great development over Jaffe’s earlier folk album Suburban Nature, which I also liked very much. One of the questions I had while listening to The Body Wins is whether or not these musical changes are Jaffe’s creative development, or a producer’s effort to make her more popular. Watching the videos makes me think its her and the band evolving together.

Now here’s a live performance from February of this year that shows the band has gotten tighter, that Sarah’s singing is more in control, and their performance skills have gotten slicker. This version also includes “Vulnerable” a song from Suburban Nature that often follows “Sucker for Your Marketing” in the videos on YouTube.

Here’s another version that I think was filmed by the record company and is probably an official video. I don’t know if it’s been enhanced in editing. But it really sells the song. Try and watch it full screen at 1080p. Sorry, but I can’t embed the video.

Sucker for Your Marketing

If you don’t like “Sucker for Your Marketing” try “Glorified High” at her site. That’s what worked on my friend Stormey after “Sucker for Your Marketing” didn’t turn her own.

JWH – 5/5/12

Simplified Tax Plans and Flat Tax Rates

Many Republicans are drawn to simplified tax plans that use graduated flat tax rates for federal income taxes. I’m a liberal, but I also find the idea interesting. Now the chance of such a system being implemented is very close to zero, but it’s still an interesting topic.

Why do simplified tax systems have no chance? Well, if we had a flat tax, there would be no deductions. Levying tax breaks gives lawmakers power. Law makers have various forms of power. They can regulate and not regulate, they can tax and not tax, they can spend and not spend. If we went to a flat tax our leaders would lose one-third of their tools of power. Can you imagine that?

If we went to a flat tax system think of how many millions of people we’d put out of work. First, many that work at the IRS would be added to the unemployment rolls. But then think of all those bean counters and lawyers that work at corporations whose careers depend on finding tax loopholes, those people wouldn’t be needed either. Then companies like Turbo Tax and HR Block would go out of business too. And think of all those little people who do people’s taxes every year would also be out of work. And what about lobbyists? There would be less work for them too.

All-in-all, if we went to a flat tax system it would put millions out of work. Our complicated system of federal taxes is a never-ending economic stimulus package. Is getting rid of it even possible?

The government could enact a flat tax so we didn’t even have to prepare annual tax forms – just take their cut in every income transaction. They could come up with a graduated flat tax so most people would end up paying the same or less than what they do now and the government would earn just as much money without all the complications. Most advocates hope they would pay less and that tax cheaters would pay more, and the privilege would pay the same as the those people without influence. Of course that means those with connection to power would pay a lot more. Are they really going to back such a system?

Theoretically, a flat tax would be fairer, until lawmakers tried to reintroduce the first exception, then it would get complicated all over again. A flat tax depends on lawmakers giving up their power to help certain groups or endeavors with tax breaks. Will that ever happen? I don’t think so. Can you imagine such a world? Businesses couldn’t wheel and deal for favors.

And what if this extended to states and cities. One tax for all. How could states entice companies into their borders without tax break incentives? But wouldn’t that also be fairer for competition if everyone had to pay the same taxes? Could we survive in a society where all individuals and corporations were treated absolutely the same by the taxman?

People get home mortgage deductions because the government wants people to own homes. That kind of social influence would be over. Is that good or bad?

What if the government eliminated tax havens and all other forms of “legal” tax evasions so there was no way to to skip out on taxes. Just kill off accounting chicanery, tax-law loopholes, or off-shore three-card Monte, and the issue of how much people or corporations paid in taxes were no longer an issue for debate – could we handle such a society?

For people who take the standard deduction every year a flat tax wouldn’t be a big deal, but for those people delight in adding up their deductions and lowering their tax bill, a flat tax might be a bummer. Some people hate to pay taxes and will do anything they can to lower their tax bills. If they can’t shoot for zero taxes I doubt they will be happy. What happens if everyone pays the same? I think a certain percentage of the population would revolt at such egalitarianism.

And should everyone pay the same? Do some people do things for society that merits lowering their taxes? Will the go-getters of society be happy if their efforts are taxed in a higher bracket than the indolent? All flat tax proposals depend on the idea that the poor pay a flat rate less than the rich. Could we come up with a rate and rational that will satisfied the rich? Currently the rich live in higher tax brackets, but they get the chance to lower their taxes with our complicated tax system. If we had a simple system, there would be no hope for them.

Right now the rich protest they pay at a higher tax rate than the poor, so they are being penalized as individuals. We could think of that in another way, we could create a flat tax saying that norm for all humans is to make $100,000 a year. If you are unfortunate enough to make less we’ll put you in a lesser tax rate for your suffering. But should someone making $250,000,000 a year pay at a different rate than someone making $100,000 or $10,000? Are we taxing the person or the income? Is a rich person different form a poor person in the eyes of the law? We could consider income like pollution. The bigger the impact you have on the environment, the more taxes you pay. It’s actually very hard to justify how to tax people. If a person only makes $14,000 and the government makes them pay $1,400, is that the same as someone who makes $140,000 and has to pay $14,000, or someone who makes $140,000,000 and has to pay $14,000,000. Does 14 million hurt as much to a super-rich person as $1,400 hurt someone on minimum wages? But if the super-rich have a 20% flat tax, they’d be paying $28,000,000. They’d still have $112,000,000 to spend that year, whereas the poor person would only have $11,200.

See how hard it is to make a fair tax system. I suppose we could add up all the expenses for the country and then divide by the 313,000,000 people who live here, and everyone pay their fair share. But then many people would owe more than they earn. That’s why the rich have to pay more.

As far as I can foresee, I can’t imagine a flat income tax system ever passing Congress.

JWH 5/5/12