War...get it over with already.

Rather than taxing incomes down to a certain point (flat or graduated), I'd suggest we just gain control over the outrageous salaries some people get.

I would suggest something like Ben and Jerry's has which is based on something more like a Swedish system. It has a 7:1 ratio of pay to the top employee (the CEO most likely) and the lowest paid employee. So if the person is working for minimum wage (for the sake of math I'll lower it to $5/hr) that person would be earning just over 10k per year. In that case the CEO would only get 75k per year. Now obviously that is really low so the CEO would want more...lets say he wants 280k (again picked for simple math)...well, he can do that, he just has to pay the lowest paid employee 40k per year.

Now perhaps we don't do 7:1 but are a bit more generous and do 10:1. And don't say they couldn't afford it. Cutting the top employee from 200 million to 200 thousand provides plenty of money to trickle down through the ranks. It would thus not impact the bottom line, but would raise general pay levels and make for better quality of life among the poorest but still provide incentive to move up.

Then you just cut out the income tax all together and use the Value Added Sales tax and get income that way which will not cause to great a loss in taxes as more people have spending power. CEO salaries are a big part of the corruption that has been seen lately. Paying a CEO hundreds of millions when the company is losing money and firing low pay employees right and left is just immoral.