(Rearranged your post in a couple of spots for idea flow.)

Obviously that's not true. But without taxes there wouldn't be a country.

We had a pretty damn good country on one hell of a lot smaller government. It was half the size it is now as recently as 1974. There's reasonable taxes, and then there's getting half my income sucked into the rathole. The first income tax form was one page, and taxed incomes above $500,000--not exactly chump change in 1913--at six percent. It's been downhill ever since.

As I have constantly tried to make clear, we are talking a matter of degree here. You can spend all day telling me what a swell idea it is to give blood, but that doesn't automatically justify taking two gallons of it at one time.

Using Bill Gates. Taxes pay for the infrastructure which allowed MS to grow. Provided a stable environment, for instance. He didn't have cops showing up to confiscate whatever he may have started to accumulate, like Mexico....Provided an army to ensure the safety of the borders. That's no small matter in some areas of the world.

Good point, but law enforcement, courts, and defense are a legitimate function of government. A much smaller government.

Provided roads so employees could get to work.

Been over that one before.

Provided a stock exchange which allowed for increasing capitalization, wealth. That exchange is regulated so that there is confidence in it, so that investors can trust the system to some degree. Provides banking stability and a stable currency.



And, Gates has more to protect than the average bear. Should pay more. For instance, if the evil empire, whoever that is at the moment, overruns the US, I will lose a house and some money. Gates will lose much, much more than I. The military, the police forces, the SEC, the banking people, are protecting much more of his than mine.

The system he needs is much more complex than that of the guy making a minimum wage. Should pay more.



Geez, how many hundreds of billions of dollars do you think the government spends regulating the stock exchange? How much extra does it cost to keep Gates' bank account safe in the same bank as Joe's account? Face it, Bill Gates absorbs very little more as an individual of government largesse than Joe Sixpack does. And considering that because of him, a huge amount of wealth has been transferred into the economy and the treasury that didn't exist before, this seems to be a lousy trade at best.

Okay, let's make a deal. Microsoft pays a hefty corporate tax, but Bill Gates personally pays about the same as Joe Sixpack. Or are you saying that Gate's big house takes hundreds of thousands of times as much government funding to protect as Joe Sixpack's split level?

What you are also conveniently overlooking is that the government services you are touting as essential actually are a small fraction of our current government's spending, dwarfed by entitlements, pork, and income redistribution schemes. Entitlements are almost twice ALL discretionary spending combined.