There are so many flawed assumptions made in your post, I'm not sure where to start.

Should the people have benefited the most from our system of laws, national defense, and government supplied infrastructure (big benefits the anti-government crowd ignores) pay the most or pay simply in proportion to their income.

The assumption that the wealthy in this country have somehow become that way because an excess of government largess flows in their direction has absolutely no basis in fact. While the Democratic Party would love us to think that all good things flow from Washington, this is not the case.

I get not one additional service from the government, on any level down to the municipal, that someone who pays a tenth of the taxes (or no taxes at all) gets. In fact, considering the goodies passed out to the lower income groups, it's the other way around. I don't get to drive on special roads. I don't get an extra fire engine when I call. The American military doesn't pay extra attention to defending my house. I'm in the upper income levels. Exactly what do I get for my tax money that is proportionate to my taxes?

The wealthy in this country benefit from a system that MINIMIZES the government interference in the economy, and protects the rights of all citizens to their own lives and property.

Now, if you want to correlate the flow of government goodies to campaign contributions (to both parties), you might have something there.

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates get it. Perhaps as an admirer of capitalism you should listen to two of its most successful participants.

Do you really think either of these guys gives a rat's rump what the tax rate is? You tax a billionaire at 90 percent, how many meals is he going to miss? A few thousand dollars makes a big dent in MY budget.

Bill Gates earns about $500,000 a year in salary. He doesn't pay taxes on his stock unless he sells it. Microsoft pays huge taxes, but that's not coming out of Bill's wallet. You might be astonished at how little tax Bill Gates probably pays personally.

Now, if you want to hear about tax rates, go down to a small business with about twenty employees, and talk to that businessman about taxes.

Your Robinhood comments show a consistent lack of understanding of the issues of fairness I raise. You justify the Rich taking advantage of the poor by saying the alternative is the reverse.

I admit I apparently don't understand your concept of "fairness." It seems to sound an awful lot like the Robin Hood Principle to me, or that you have an idea of how much money people SHOULD have, and that somehow you are entitled to force this idea on the rest of us. Maybe I'm missing something.

Exactly how do the rich "take advantage" of the poor? Not one bloody cent flows from the pockets of the poor (who typically pay no income taxes) into the pockets of the rich. In fact, the top percentiles of wealth in this nation pay almost all the taxes.

We do live in a democracy Tom and the poor outnumber the rich. When it comes to mirror image issues I think the majority wins in a democracy. Sometimes the majority simply votes in self interest even when the issues are not morally equivalent. We can only hope that a moral sense pervades most people to prevent blatant self interest from ruling, but that seems not to be the case for America's wealthy.

Does capitalism outrank democracy in your mind?

When you come right down to it, damn right it does.

Capitalism is based on a foundation of individual rights. Democracy works only when it is restrained by a foundation of laws (the Constitution in our case) that recognizes the primacy of individual rights over majority rule. To put it more simply, there are some things that should not be up for a vote. When one group of people can vote to loot or destroy another group, then democracy has gone too far.

Pure unrestrained democracy is three wolves and two sheep deciding what to have for dinner.

Our country is losing track of this, and the results are obvious. Wealth redistribution has become our major government function, and as the report I cited points out, wealth redistribution is the only problem as far as national debt goes. It ISN'T low taxes. And it isn't the rich who are voting for the gravy train.

A rich guy getting his ass taxed off has one vote. How many votes do the fifty guys have that the politician passes the rich guy's cash out to? See where this is going?