You story is flawed in its very first sentence.

"Every American should pay the same tax rate on all income above a livable minimum."

The flaw is the idea that we should be taxing income and what we define as income.

The rich don't pay much in income taxes because they don't have much "income."

Another problem with taxing income is earned income suffers from over 8% in payroll taxes and then gets state and federal income taxes.

I suggest we skip taxing income and tax wealth or change in wealth.

We should tax net worth or growth in net worth.

TEK