Mr. Middius said:

I took a spin over to some of the overtly political Usenet groups. Amid
the usual namecalling, baseless generalizing, chest-thumping, and
exultations of stupidity, I educed a common theme among the retrograde
claque. They all think taxes are unjust, unnecessary, immoral, etc.
Similar to the braying we see on RAO from certain people whom I don't
need to name because we all know who you are.

One thought that keeps surfacing is that the government "takes" money
from people who "earned" it, and these citizens hate that. I've seen this
thought expressed so many times that I almost becamse numb to its
inherent stuipdity. After all, we (the U.S. electorate) re-elected our
worst President in my lifetime, and possibly in the whole country's
lifetime. And why did most of us vote for him? Fear, that's why. Not real
fear, but fear of imaginary evils. Boy, are we stupid!

But even against that backdrop, the foolishness about taxes is
extraordinarily stupid. The main point is that our taxes are among the
lowest in countries with standard of living that's similar to ours. A few
are a tiny bit lower, such as Switzerland and Finland. But I don't think
it's wise to compare the U.S. to those countries, for a variety of
reasons.

My point about taxes is that people are able to earn good livings in this
country because of our infrastructure, which was built with tax money and
is maintained through tax money and will be improved through tax money.
If you run a business, do you really think the amount you pay your
employees represents the true cost of the value of their work? It does
not. The transportation network was not free, you know. Nor is education.
Do you want to hire people who can't read at high school level? Do you
want to have to train people to use computers? Do you want to build your
own roads? Do you want to build your own power lines to connect to the
electric company, and your own sewer lines so you can have indoor
plumbing? Remember, our taxes are among the lowest for industrialized
countries.

The real problem is government waste. Is it worse than in large
companies? The biggest money pit in the government is the military. But
you "conservatives" love the guns and battleships and fighter jets. It's
just that you don't want to pay for them.

As a possibly former conservative, I must say that my objections to taxes have
never really been about the AMOUNT of taxes taken from my paycheck, but the
needlessly complicated and inefficient way the government takes those funds.
We have created a cottage industry based upon the fact that the tax system is
too complicated for the average taxpayer to understand. Not only do we pay
taxes, but we have to pay others to pay our taxes for us.

I've always been for a flat tax, or a national sales tax, or something similar.
Get rid of the loopholes for the rich. Have everyone pay the same percentage.
Offer exemptions for those under the poverty level and that's it. Get rid of
the IRS, whose paperwork costs alone amount to close to a billion dollars per
year. Can't we find a better use for that money, like education or the
environment? We need to simplify the tax code once and for all.

The fact that Bush is promising to revamp the system is the best news I've
heard from the Oval Office since that monkey took office.

Boon