"Fair Tax" Not Fair?

More insanity from Congress:

"When you have a tax, where you pay the same tax whether you're wealthy or you're poor, that's not fair."

--Congressman Charlie Rangel (Democrat, 15th District of New York)

It's hard to wrap my wits around this one. I think he's saying that if I pay the same percentage of tax as the next guy, say I pay 30% of my income and he pays 30% of his income, then it's not fair.
I think he lives in an alternate universe where "fair" means that because I am productive and work 16 hour days (on average), that I should pay a higher percentage of my income than someone who is not as productive as me and works not at all.

Thirty-four years ago I was introduced to a wild notion from L. Ron Hubbard:

"WHEN YOU REWARD DOWN STATISTICS AND PENALIZE UP STATISTICS YOU GET DOWN STATISTICS.

If you reward nonproduction you get nonproduction.

When you penalize production you get nonproduction."

--L Ron Hubbard (from a policy dated 6 March 1966)

It's funny, but in the last 34 years in running many businesses I've never had any trouble applying that bit of revolutionary thought. Of course the corollary of that is "if you reward production, you get more production". It's the kind of keen and uncommon common sense that Hubbard excelled in, actually seeing the obvious and never being afraid to state it or use it or teach it.

My favorite line from that same policy is: "No good worker owes his work. That's slavery."


And having been made at various times by bosses of one ilk or another to feel that I owed my work, I can tell you that there's a boatload of truth in that!