The beer represents all government programs - WIC, war, social security, road improvements, defense, federal salaries, all of it. Things that affect all Americans and sometimes the world. Given that, the current system is much more fair than what\'s shown in that example, and it raises (in theory) the money needed for all those expenses, despite how wacky it seems if it were applied only to beer.
If we were all just buying actual beers, then your professor would be on to something - but that\'s already been addressed, which is why sales tax (including for beer) is already the same no matter what your income level.
For frivilous spending, we have a shared sales tax. But for the stuff we need, we can\'t ask the poor to pay money they don\'t have, which is the point.
When it comes to the real world application and income tax, we can\'t hit everyone equally since everyone doesn\'t have equally. It\'s not possible for everyone to have equally... unless we switch to socialism. If we did socialism, your ideas would work a lot better, no?
And it has to be a tax on income rather than spending because if people hoarded their money, which people do, our nation would be broke.
Anyway, you can\'t hit the poor for more than they\'ve got, so if the rich don\'t want to give more, we need to cut federal spending and programs and unecessary funding and that\'s something I agree we should do more of before anything else.
