I think that the 34% of the wealth figure is a more relevant number on which to judge fairness, because the wealthy have so many more opportunities to reduce their tax bill than do ordinary folks. That's the justification for the Alternative Minimum Tax, if you'll remember (which has turned into an albatross only because Republicans refuse to index it, in order to put the bite on middle class taxpayers to make up for the tax cuts for the wealthy). Using wealth as the indirect basis for taxation is fairer because it takes into account the outcome achieved even after finagling the tax loopholes.

The numbers game is risky, because you can inadvertently introduce statistics that support the other side. You actually exceeded my expectations when you came up with $100 billion in Federal expenditures directly beneficial to business. I chose just those examples because they're examples of direct causation and thus more likely to get through your internal cognitive filter.

Seen in terms of systemic causation, another $200 billion in benefits to offset taxes is a trivial matter, even though the lines of accountability aren't as clear as direct causation. Just a few of the myriad examples of systemic causation leading to benefits to business and the wealthy: Health care costs shifted from business to government when businesses don't provide health care; pollution cleaned up from general funds instead of direct assessment of the business causing it; worker training provided by the public education system instead of business (specifically, job-related skills taught in public high schools and trade schools); the public road system over which goods are shipped (vehicle gross weight taxes levied on trucks are estimated to cover only about a third of the damage caused to the roadways caused by trucks); police and fire services that protect the property of business and the wealthy (consider that in an insurance pool, you'd pay higher premiums to insure higher value property--proportionality of cost is a routine and legitimate business practice); standards-setting bodies such as NIST (formerly the Bureau of Standards) that lower the cost of standardized equipment and makes markets for compatible equipment; a civil court system that upholds and enforces contracts (about 90% of civil court cases by volume); product inspection and certification agencies that perform, for free, the quality assurance role of labs like UL (allowing small businesses to compete on an equal footing with big business in gaining and holding the trust of consumers); the Federal Reserve which, at least in non-inflationary times, makes capital widely available (and in inflationary times, minimizes the impact on business by slowing down inflation); a standard and relatively solid currency, minimzing the chaos of exchange rates and fluctuations; electrification policies that opened up rural areas to business development (who in a million years would've imagined Toyota would choose the rural South to build auto factories?) and a communication system built on government investment in technology, notably the Internet, that's become the vital core of all modern business; and...

Well, I could go on forever, because when you get right down to it, when examined through the broader-spectrum eye of systemic causation instead of the narrow keyhole of direct causation, most Federal expenditures end up benefiting most of us, even if sometimes through hard-to-see channels. That's what the ancient concept of the "commonwealth" is all about, and a commwealth is what the Founders established more than two centuries ago.

And that's why we believe that progressive values are the true traditional values. There's nothing new or radical about the idea that Americans are all in this together. What's new and radical is the NeoRepublican campaign to wipe out those traditional values and substitute something new and, to most of us, rather brutal and distinctly un-American. America has never been a jungle, and progressives won't stand still for imposition of a "nature, red in tooth and claw" belief system. We won't give up two centuries of progress.