Flat taxes - views from the left

Jarndyce has a really good post explaining why the left should be in favour of flat taxes. Mind you, he is showing signs of having hung out with too many libertarians with comments like this:

Finally, Pearce clings unapologetically to the line that government is the friend of the poor. He should read a bit of history. It was the market that crushed feudalism in England after the Black Death and the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. It's the market that prevails in every rich country in ther world today. From government siding with the landlords in the fourteenth century, to various experiments in state-sponsored impoverishment in the twentieth, it ought to be clear by now that the state isn't the unequivocal friend of the poor.

Definitely read the whole thing.

Bloggers for Labour in the meantime seems to have gone off the idea and instead wants to tax economic capability:

[I]s it fair to tax merely according to one's economic assets, blind to their non-economic ones (mental, cultural [did you pick up on this, folks?], or political), and the impact these have on the individual's overall "economic capability"? Capability - the ability to apply one's talents and resources for one's own economic advancement - is surely what the authorities ought to be watching/equalising/taxing, rather than merely one's income, let alone one's wealth.

I can't see it catching on myself.