Hello, Excon.

Somebody has to pay for that, and I'm fine with it being me.

I also think taxation is important. I also am fine with paying taxes to pay for what government does.

Although you and I disagree about what exactly the government should do, we both think it is important for us to pay for it.

In fact, I am pretty sure we both think it is disastrously stupid for the government to borrow to pay for stuff, instead of prioritizing and cutting spending to fit whatever the revenue is.

I think that taxes have another important function. Government needs people to pay taxes. This means that , government needs the people who pay the taxes. This situation acts as a deterrent to wholesale slaughter or neglect of the citizenry.

Those people who neither work nor pay taxes, and those who do not work, and then draw money out of the government coffers as social security, welfare, or other government programs are only valuable to the government insofar as their potential to do so, or to do work on things on which the government depends.

AlofRI,

Eventually a handful of people will have most of the 27% of the money that is left in this country and they will begin to take any as it becomes available.

It is not a zero-sum game. There is not a finite amount of wealth. How much wealth there is can grow continuously. Free market capitalism is effective at enabling people to create wealth, enriching everyone.

As much to the point, rich people are not rich by virtue of having piles of stuff they took from other people. Their wealth is primarily in the forms of the businesses that almost all the other people are working at.

They will always have to leave a little in the kitty for U.S. to pass around

The fact is that rich people leave almost ALL of it in the kitty.

When we say Bezos has $90 billion, we are not saying he has a pile of $90 billion that nobody else can get.

What we are really saying is that he owns companies that are valued close to $90 billion, if he were to sell them. Those companies are the sources of jobs for thousands of people, who have jobs precisely because he started the company. By virtue of having these companies, Bezos is helping those thousands of people to get money by helping them to create value, and giving them a venue in which to do it without having to come up with their own $90 billion (collectively) of capital to start their own businesses.

Al,

WE MUST HAVE FAIR, BALANCED TAXATION.

Based on your previous posts, I am pretty sure you do not believe this. AT ALL.

The following are IRS tax data for tax year 2013.

The top 1% of earners pays 37% of all federal income taxes.

The top 25% pay over 86% of all federal income taxes.

Less than 3% of federal income taxes are paid for by the bottom half of earners.

The bottom 40% pay none. In fact due to the Earned Income Credit (EIC) Many people get refunds bigger than what they paid in. (They are paid the Federal Government to live in the US.)

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"Fair, balanced" taxation means that EVERYBODY pays a share of what they get.

To a degree I agree with this. I believe in the graduated tax structure, but NOBODY should pay nothing because we all get some benefit for living in this country. I think that EVERY man, woman, and child should have to ante up a minimum of $1 per year in Federal taxes.

NOBODY should EVER get back more than they pay into the Federal income tax system.

People with more kids should pay MORE in taxes, not less, so the child tax credit and EIC should be abolished. The way the system is now, people without kids are essentially subsidizing those with identical incomes who have kids, and people with one kid are subsidizing those with five kids. That means that people who make the same money as each other pay less if their family gets more total benefit (because there are more of them.)

Do you really want fairer, more balanced taxation?