I'd love to hear a proper counter-argument. Maybe Florida works different, but sales taxes tend to be constant (i.e. scaling linearly with consumption), and individual consumption does not scale linearly with income. Someone making 200k may buy more luxury food, but not necessarily 10x as much as someone making 20k. And someone making 2 million a year does not consume 10x as much as the 200k person.

>If sales tax is fundamentally a tax on the poor, then so is an income tax.

If income tax wasn't progressive it would be. But it is. Not progressive enough, but the idea is there. Higher brackets get taxed more percentage wise, not in a simple linear fashion.

>and even provides good social programs.

Sure. Give your money to insurance premiums that run away when it's time to do their job instead of government program. Sounds much better.

>I’m glad that people who want to tax the rich to death for the sake of a crusade

Always nice to have people be honest with themselves. I'm just being honest with math. We call a 10 millionaire being taxed 90% a millionaire. We call someone making 30k being taxed 10% on the verge of homelessness (likely on government assistance despite working). As long as such inequality exists, we can and should be aggressively taxing the most privileged to build a society that prevents that reality.

>don’t have much of a voice in my state.

We are both under the same federal government. Most of these large scale issues are federal anyway. The winds are changing slowly and I won't pity those who baron robbed the country one bit (many of whom tried to flee to your state) when it's time to pay the piper.