Why I dont feel sorry for the rich having to pay more taxs

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1) The truly rich don't pay taxes. Not only can income be hidden in various tax havens, only the rich can buy foreign assets to avoid the inflation tax (which is how we're *really* paying for this deficit).

2) Most taxes can and are passed down via increased prices. A lot of these costs aren't accounted for in GDP because they occur in higher order goods (which is why we import so much these days). Taxes are ultimately paid by those who are lesser equipped to evade them. Higher taxes for one group will have a greater effect of distorting what economic deals can be made given the tax regulatory structure rather than higher revenue for bureaus.

3) Increasing taxes may make you feel better, but does it make you better off? Does increasing the number of bureaucrats increase the average man's income? Does reducing the overall burden make you cry because rich people are being disproportionately unburdened?

Tax politics has more to do with envy than economics.

Oh, so I suppose since it's "common sense" you don't have to address anything I said with any specificity.

Bush baaad, Obama goood

to the point where he still is one of the prime subject of comedians the world over.

The bread analogy is a good one. If you force everyone to buy government bread at the point of a gun, then you:

• Preclude any alternative means of feeding oneself. This not only includes currently known methods, but methods which aren't currently known. Maybe I want to make my own bread, or use a tortilla, or eat better quality or less expensive bread.

• Eliminate market forces thus making it impossible to know a) How much bread to make b) What the price should be c) what are the opportunity costs of buying bread for $3 a loaf d) what quality and type of bread to make. Not only are we unable to perform the economic calculation necessary to determine how many resources to dedicate to bread, there are other entrepreneurial functions which are impossible to perform. For example does the government run the bread factory at 100% output and wear it out sooner, or at 80% and make it last longer. This involves not only time preference, but predicting future demands and costs. Bureaucrats do not succeed or fail based on money they personally invested and are wholly unable to perform this task.

• Set the stage for institutional corruption. Regardless of whether the bread-maing is contracted out or is made within the bureaucratic machine (like a massive vertically integrated monopoly), someone is going to benefit from this bread-making privilege and we end up with rent-seekers. There has never been a system of welfare or rationing or public utility without such corruption. Ultimately, the only regulation which matters is the ability to refuse payment. This is true regardless if you're talking about payment via taxes or having to buy from a privileged monopoly or not being allowed to remove your money from a banking institution. No amount of rule-making will remove corruption if we're forced to pay.