And I think that has less than nothing to do with whether it is reasonable to expect someone to maintain patriotism toward a country that seizes 100% of your assets. Are you seriously trying to argue that because the government does some things that you think are very bad, it doesn’t matter if they forcibly steal everything someone owns? Would you feel that way if it was you?

But there, I’m arguing with an obvious troll.

BobG,

Well, what is the answer to your question? What is a fair income tax? Is it unfair to give a deduction for dependents? Is it unfair to give a blind person a higher standard deduction than a sighted person? If everyone pays a flat rate of, say 15%, is it fair for someone working for the minimum wage, who isn’t making enough to support his family above the poverty level, to pay the same 15% rate as a CEO earning $15 million?

A lot of people have been arguing about unfairness, but when it comes to taxes, I haven’t seen anybody making a case for what precisely is fair.

Mr Bush told the US military they were defending their nation. It would seem that Americans were the main shock troops sent to enhance the war profiteers who suddenly whine about having to pay taxes.

Ask a family suffering through a third deployment abroad if their sacrifice is worth a comfy profit margin for oil companies. Or those whose lives were given for higher stock dividends. That the soldiers volunteered to join a military is irrelevant. No child has volunteered his mother or father to serve overseas and die. Have some respect and show some support for the troops, will you?

A whole lot of money was made and swindled over the past decade. Deficits are irrelevant if we’ve become a country of lawlessness.

Huh? They seized their assets? When? When was the last time people were sent overseas involuntarily to “defend the rich?” And when were their assets seized as a result?

Funny you should phrase it that way. The US has confiscated the last dime of several thousand people–the men and women it has sent overseas to defend the rich at home. And abroad, too.

It seems simple, but the GOP certainly didn’t find it easy. When a family wants an extra (like a war or two) you find a way to add income, like getting a second job.

I happen to think foreign adventurism and profiteering under the 43rd president were bad ideas, but they were compounded by the general unwillingness to expand and share the sacrifice by raising taxes.

Every responsible homeowner knows that family income needs to be invested in infrastructure: replacing old appliances, fixing the roof, painting, and attending to damage from vermin.

The problem with Joe’s post and Mr Greenspun’s analogy isn’t that it’s not apt, it’s that they themselves don’t take it seriously enough.

How patriotic *should* someone feel toward a country that proposes to confiscate his last dime?

Remember, no one’s seriously proposing this, but are you suggesting that there’s a moral problem with being unhappy with, and fleeing from, a government that confiscates your *every last dollar?*

No, I didn’t think that at all or mean to imply it. I just meant that your suggestion that it would work (in theory) probably didn’t even hold up as far as it went. I was just continuing to play with the numbers, the way you did.