Winston Churchill said that I believe.
Its not about a social conscience or compassion. Its about other people deciding what is the "right" thing to do with my money. I'll give you an example. I don't have the citation, but a few weeks ago I was reading in the LA Times about a housing project in Chicago and how the housing police were cracking down for all kinds of minor violations as, in one residents mind, a way to "clear out" some people. Be that as it may, the resident who was being interviewed was a 74 or 75 year old lady who had lived there for 50 years. Stepping outside of the main story, I said to myself "What the fu(k is someone doing living in subsidized Federal housing for 50 years!! Lets see what I've done in the last 50 years...went to nursery, elementary, and high school. Went in the military, got out, put myself through college, worked, went to school at night for my Master's degree, worked, studied and went to school at night to get professional certifications, worked.
What has she done in the past 50 years since she was 24 or 25 to improve her lot in life? Oh, and she had three kids but no husband, now or ever, that I could discern. This is a person who has been living on Federal handouts since Eisenhower. Its someone with a "social conscience" that was using MY taxpayers $$$ to allow this.
This goes on today, and I don't see how raising my taxes, with the mantra that "I'm lucky, or I'm not paying my fair share" is something I should stand for. I pay more taxes than the average family of four in the US even makes. In fact, the "average" american family doesn't even pay enough taxes to put their own kids through public school. In Cali the per student costs the state pays are $7000 so if you have two kids you should be paying $14,000 per year or your kids education, let alone police, fire, roads, flood control, etc. To pay $14K for your kids education in Cali you need to have an adjusted gross income of around $150K (9% top tax rate). Again, this doesn't include police, fire, etc. I think people should pay taxes that are "fair" by that I mean what you take in goods and services from the state should be roughly close to what you pay in. Or we should at least start with that premise and go from there. How is it "fair" that one family pays $40k in taxes and another family the same size pays two bucks? I don't think we'd have such a bloated inefficient government (case in point the Los Angeles Unified School District, which paid $12 Million for a payroll system that doesn't work), and then spends several hundred thousand more on
PR firms to stem the criticism of the flawed payroll system) if Joe six pack was paying taxes closer to his "fair share".