Yesterday was "stupid privilege day", e.g. "tax protest day." Rather than write a lot about it myself, let me defer to a coherent writeup on why this is foolish:
There were some protests today all over the US, orchestrated by an outfit called "FreedomWorks." I heard one guy on the radio saying that he objected to paying taxes when he "doesn't get anything for his money."
I heard that and I thought , really? You don't get anything?
I guess clean water, food that isn't full of mercury, highways, national defense, buildings that don't fall down, medicare (so you don't have to pay all your parents' medical bills when they have a triple bypass), social security (so your parents don't have to eat dog food) , kids toys that aren't coated in lead paint, breathable air (because we don't put lead in our gasoline anymore), cars that don't kill you (because the inside is all chrome which looks great but stabs you in the face when there's an accident), are worthless. I almost forgot-- storm drains and sewers that don't dump raw sewage into your work parking lot when it rains.
We've already seen the phenomenon of people who move to new communities with a lower tax rate and then complain vociferously when (1) the schools are bad and (2) the fire department can't save them from fire. Consider what your life would be like without roads, clean water, police, clean food, and the Federally subsidized research that made computers and modern medicine possible. If you're fine with giving up all of that, then I'm cool with you wanting to pull back on your taxes. We'll make a little extranational enclave for you where there's none of that wasteful government spending.
I hear there's a nice one near the Gulf of Aden.