re: How would the total elimination of federal income taxes change your life ?

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A progressive tax regime

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Is inherently, unfair, by definition.

Do I need to post the definition of the word "fair?"

Like the guy from The Princess Bride, "You keep using that word, but I'm not sure you know what it means."

Oh, heck, let's go ahead and do it. The primary definition:

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fair1
/fer/
adjective
1.
impartial and just, without favoritism or discrimination.

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What you want is favoritism to the poor, which you then want to insist is "fair."

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You sure about that?

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Quite. We spend far too much money in America which requires far too much tax revenue. I am not conflicted, confused, or ambivalent about that in the least.

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the retired poor.

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Why are they retired if they are poor?

If I got to retirement age and still needed money, I would keep working.

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if you tax the frick out of poor people you will have to enact programs to subsidize them.

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Why?

They are already being subsidized. They already get food and housing allowances. Health insurance. Cash. Cell phones.

According to the Census Bureau from 2011, the average poor household, as defined by the government, had a car, air conditioning, two televisions sets, cable or satellite (again, it was 2011), a DVD player and a VCR. 54% of poor households had a game system (Xbox, Playstation, etc.) and 23% were paying for Tiivo.

Also according to the report, the average poor person in America was not hungry and could get medical care when necessary (and again, this was before Obamacare went into full implementation).

Finally, according to the government report, the living space reported for the average poor American household was greater than the average living space for non-poor households in Europe.

I'm not saying that every poor person in America lives like that, but you have to be pretty much homeless and living off the government grid before you do significantly worse. And yes, there are people like that, but a consumption tax isn't going to move the needle for them b/c the reason that they are living like that overwhelmingly has nothing to do with taxes or government benefits.

I don't accept the premise that you would have to do anything more than is already being done. The vast majority of poor households seem to have disposable income to buy non-essential items with.

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so you have not accomplished anything.

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But you have. Though I do not accept it as a premise, even if, purely for the sake of argument, I consider a hypothetical scenario in which it is a wash money-wise, you still have gained something. Really it's more accurate to say that unscrupulous politicians have lost something.

They have lost at least a big part of the ability to play American citizens against each other via a class warfare narrative relative to taxes.

They would pay politically much more dearly for raising taxes than they do now, since they would be raising taxes on everyone.