The tax code can bring you to tears. I have never seen such a zoo of special interests, breaks, penalties, and other political crap in my life.

Thank God I'm not a farmer. Just clicking "yes" to the question of whether you farm or not on the tax program drops you into a load of byzantine tax rules that takes you an hour to back out of again. Maybe it would save me money, but cripes.

And of course, the government and those who support as large a government as possible spend a lot of time convincing us that each of these taxes (the sheer amount of which would have caused our colonial ancestors to not only revolt against England, but sail over there and hang King George personally) is absolutely essential to our existence. God help them if the population of the U.S. ever got a different idea.

Oddly, these same people will get apoplexy over gas prices going up a few cents, since obviously the only possible reason an oil company would have for increasing its rates is bloody-minded greed.