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Let's not let this degenerate into the whole socialism cross subsidy discussion. Cross subsidy exists, it always will, until you can attach some kind of a meter to people to determine their exact contribution to GDP and consumption of public services and size the tax bill accordingly.

Having said that, what Super failed to mention when he started this discussion with that acrimonious piece about the virtuous middle class was that the current progressive tax code is founded on the principle of "fairness." "Fairness," put another way, means, "to each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities: which, you guessed it, came from Ol' Karl Marx, who was NOT, contrary to what they taught you in school, one of the Marx brothers. Marx ripped it off from Saint-Simon who ripped it off from The Bible but there you go.

Where was I? Oh yes, the fundamental principle of the tax code is to conscript wealth from high-income people (let's not call them "rich" just yet) at a higher rate than lower income people because they "can afford it." Leave aside for now the two significant questions of 1) WHAT tax revenues are being spent on and; 2) the relative efficiency of government bureaucracies in putting those dollars to work.

Let's just consider what is in the mind of somebody who believes you can afford it. Here's what I think the underlying assumptions are:

1) Income generation exists only to support individual consumption, or consumption within one's immediate family, for basic human requirements like shelter, energy, transport and food.

2) Any income above the subsistence level should be redistributed until everyone is at the subsistence level.

Do you see what's missing from those assumptions? Saying that somebody with income above a particular level "can afford" progressively higher payments FOR THE SAME PACKAGE OF ENTITLEMENTS presumes they don't have anything better to spend their money on.

This is a misguided assumption. Ask yourself, "Self, what is the process of capital formation in the United States as opposed to Europe and Japan?"

Give yourself time to answer. My answer was, that we have a tradition going back a couple hundred years of direct equity investment in business ventures. High income people typically reinvest surplus cash in a greedy attempt to earn even more money! This results in all manner of nasty things, like the capitalization of new business ventures, entrepreneurship, "angel funding," people starting small businesses on their own, with the surplus that they have after the children are fed and the firewood is stacked by the back door!

In many of the socialist countries, nobody has any idea that they are supposed to form new businesses, and even if they did, their tax rates are so prohibitively high in a misguided attempt to equalize conditions that there is no money left over to invest in ANYTHING! If you are an entrepreneur in Germany, do you have a number of venture capital firms? NO, you have a German commercial bank as your principal backer, furnishing you with DEBT CAPITAL that is SECURED by whatever personal assets you've been able to squirrel away over the years, and they put three people on your board of directors to oversee their investment! The essence of new business growth is the ability to raise equity capital and put it AT RISK in the hope that the venture will be succesful. 98% of the time it's not, you lose your money! And that 2% of the businesses that are successful are the drivers of the greatest economy in the history of humankind, that of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Simply put, the fundamental principle of tax fairness assumes that if you have higher income, you will just spend it on candy or cheap foreign-made consumer electronics purchased at your local big-box superstore. It is utterly ignorant of the fact that wealth creation is largely the product of individual Americans putting their surplus capital at risk in an attempt to better themselves.

What about the concept of universal suffrage for men and women (post 1920, Amdt XIX), you only get ONE vote, but depending on your income level you may pay several times the taxes of someone who receives the same package of entitlement as you do. Do you consume, as a high-income taxpayer, so much more civic resources? Do the fire trucks come to your house but not stop in the poor neighborhood? Do the police protect only your property rights but ignore those of the middle class? Do you avail yourself of more air traffic control services because you fly around in a Gulfstream V, or do you beat the roads up more with your Porsche 911 than a low-income person in a beat-up Chevy Nova?

I would argue that you don't consume any more services of government, and in fact you consume less. But what really bakes my noodle is whether your higher tax burden is a reflection of the fact that all of our system of private property rights, law enforcment, civic services, national defense, etc., is intended to protect your LIFE, LIBERTY and PROPERTY. If you are a high-income person, you have more of one. But of the others?