Less than 10% of the U.S. population owns more than 90% of the wealth. That's like saying 1 person has 9 apples while 9 people are left to share only 1 apple. With 9 out of 10 people looking down at their tiny, 1/9th sliver of an apple while observing the other guy trying to keep 9 apples from falling out of his arms, it becomes apparent that something is wrong with this picture.

The gap between rich and poor continues to grow while education, health care and many other basic services slip out of reach of more and more Americans. Taxes on food, gasoline and every other product and service take a higher percentage of income from the average person while the affluent hardly notice. Rising property taxes force more and more of those on fixed incomes to lose their homes, while huge corporations and wealthy investors use write-offs to pay a much smaller portion of their income in taxes than the rest of us. One has to wonder why the population has yet to riot in the streets over this disparity in income and these obviously unfair taxation policies.

If the people who have 90% of the wealth were made to get by with only 80%, that would double the standard of living for the average person. It should be obvious that 90% of the population would be more than supportive of a change in the tax structure which would make this happen. This country is supposed to be a democracy where the majority rules, yet things obviously don't work that way or this disparity in income would never exist.

It is important to maintain an economic system where those who work harder, or whose work benefits more people, are capable of achieving greater wealth as an incentive to stimulate their greater contributions. But this can be done without essentially enslaving the population to work as serfs for the elite. One way of doing so is through a truly fair system of taxation.

The best solution appears to be replacing our current, complicated tax system with a flat tax, a single form of taxation based upon income. The tax rate would be the same rate for everyone, and most importantly, there would be no loopholes. An "exchange tax" paid by the receiver in every transaction might be the best way to achieve this.

To see how this would work, let's consider what happens when you spend $20 buying dinner at a restaurant. To begin with, 20% of your income was automatically deducted from your paycheck before you received it. You are totally and completely done paying taxes at that point. No more paying sales tax, phone tax, gas tax, hotel tax, cigarette tax, alcohol tax, service tax, property tax, etc. No incomprehensible tax forms to file, and no Internal Revenue Service to deal with. You have paid your 20% and are totally free of any further concerns about taxes. When you exchange $20 for your meal, the restaurant owner pays 20% as the receiver in the transaction. He or she is also done paying taxes. No unemployment or social security contributions to pay, no city taxes on signage or other business related taxes, no sales taxes to calculate and pay quarterly, and of course, none of the other taxes all of us currently have to pay.

This is where the tax system helps redistribute some of the wealth. When the restaurant owner pays his employees and suppliers, he used to deduct these expenses from the amount of income he or she would have to pay taxes on. Instead of paying taxes on the full $20 you paid, in the past he would only have to pay on perhaps $10. The business owner appears to pay more taxes. The meat supplier used to deduct what he paid the slaughter house, the slaughter house used to deduct what he paid the rancher, the rancher used to deduct what he paid for feed, the feed supplier used to deduct what he paid for fertilizer, and so on.

At first glance an exchange tax with no loopholes may seem like something business owners would loudly oppose, but small business owners in general are not rich - not one of the nine-apple people. It is estimated that when all the various taxes we currently pay are added up, the average American pays more than 40% of their income in taxes. A flat 20% tax rate would cut the actual taxes paid by small business owners in half. At the same time they would save the cost of spending $20,000 per year per child to put their kids through college, and would pay nothing for health care. Government home loans could reduce interest rates and cut mortgage payments significantly. Expenses for the average person could be cut by half, which would double their discretionary income and standard of living. With 90% of the population having twice the money to spend, the economy would be stimulated immensely, resulting in massive job growth and greater entrepreneurial opportunities than have ever existed before.

The people who are going to scream are owners of big business, who through the use of deductions often pay less than 5% of their actual income in taxes. The nine-apple people will have to get by with only 8 apples, but that is the whole point. Even if the exchange tax rate were 30% the average American would be better off than they are now. In addition to having free education and health care, government could provide guaranteed employment, fund alternative energy research, end homelessness and hunger, cure diseases and much more.

Yes, there are complications involved. A provision must be made so money received in the form of a loan is not taxed. Greedy companies wanting to avoid fair taxation may take their businesses offshore, and investors would want to invest in countries where tax rates are lower. These are serious issues, but like every other problem there are effective solutions. In the long run the ultimate solutions require a single worldwide government where all laws, including tax laws, are the same everywhere. But in the meantime we can implement a single tax system, an exchange tax, with exceptions for loans and stock market transactions, and work hard to encourage the rest of the world to follow our lead.

We are an industrious people, and it's unlikely that all our best and brightest will leave the country because we ask them to settle with just 8 apples rather than 9. If they do, we really don't need them anyway.