>> steve hankin, i was a used to be an attorney with the irs i'm retired now. i want to go back to the statement made about fairness and how that is the major concern. you seem to have accepted the notion that everybody agrees that this income tax system and particularly with the progressive rates is fair. i would like to submit to you that taxing the rich is essentially taxing a person based on his status. it is not much different than taxing a person based on his religion or his ethnic group. the difference of course is that it gets the amount of revenue in that if you tax people who are wealthy. that is a big source of income. but the fact remain that is it is -- you are taxing somebody based on their status. their wealthy status and our country never wanted to have these distinctions based on status. from what i commit submit to yo say that is fair to tax somebody based on their statd tus. i don't think ha is fair at all. you are starting off from a point of saying that must be fair when it is not. >> i think you are probably talking about me because i said

. >> steve hankin. i was a, i used to be an attorney with the irs. i'm retired now. um, i want to go back to the statement made about fairness and how, you know, that's the major concern. you seem to have accepted the notion that everybody agrees that this income tax system and particularly with the progressive rates is fair. i would like to submit to you that taxing the rich is essentially taxing a person based on his status. it would be, to me, it's not much different than taxing a person based on his religion or his ethnic group. a big difference, of course, is that the it gets the amount of revenue in that if you tax people who are wealthy, that's a big source of income. but the fact remains that it is, essentially, you're taxing somebody based on their status, their wealthy status. and our country never wanted to have these distinctions based on status. so what i submit to you is to say ha -- to say that that's fair, to tax somebody on the basis of their status, i don't think that's fair at all. i don't think that -- you're just assuming that that's fair. you're