Some guy, I think that is a very good question. I can only speak for myself, but I have never minded when my taxes were spent on useful things that are beneficial to society. Things like infrastructure, schools, mental health services for the poor, etc. The problem is that the federal budget tends to get bogged down in pork projects that aren’t beneficial to the nation, such as (from the CAGW website):

1. $4,000,000 for the Northern Line Extension in Alaska. The Northern Line Extension will provide a direct route from North Pole (pop. 1,778 in 2005) to Delta Junction (pop. 840 in 2000), which is a whopping 82.1 mile drive on one highway between the two villages according to MapQuest. If Alaska needs this, why am I paying for it?

2. $59,000,000 for medical research projects ranging from cancer to diabetes to gynecological disease. As important as this research may be, there is no mention as to why these programs should receive money from the Department of Defense. One program which weighs heavily on taxpayers in this category is $1.35 million for the “Obesity in the Military Research Program.”

3. $7,556,660 for grape and wine research. Wine is a popular beverage. In fact, in 2006, per capita U.S. wine consumption was 2.39 gallons while the U.S. exported 404.5 million liters of wine. Total wine sales in 2006 were $27.8 billion. There is no pressing need for taxpayers to pay for this research. The wine industry is huge, why can’t they foot this bill?

I am sure that there will always be major differences as to how money should be spent, but I think that most people are angered when they feel that our elected officials seem to waste “our” money.

Order stuff from overseas. Avoid consumption tax.

Barter goods & services to avoid consumption taxes.

Point is the grass isn’t necessarily greener on the other side.

CEO pay? Point is the pay gap between CEO and rank & file worker has increased dramatically in the last 20 years. Not that CEOs make more money. CEOs are raping corporations and stockholders due to corporate boards being in bed with the CEOs and due to the size of the corporation and lack of oversight from the government.

The fair tax? Nope, sorry–consumption taxes do the opposite of progressive taxes–the burden of tax falls on those folks lower on the economic scale. Those on the higher end use a (much) smaller percentage of their income on such taxed consumptions, compared to Joe Sixpack who spends far more (as a percentage of income) on taxed consumptions.

I would agree we need to take a hard look at how taxes are assessed, how they are collected, and how they’re spent. We have to collect taxes–there is no other way to support national programs including the military. No doubt we’d all like to pay less taxes–we just need to be careful that we don’t cut so much that we end up costing ourselves far more a few years down the line.

Continuing to Freakhead:

How can you evade a sales tax? You buy the item, and the tax is in the price. You pay for the item and leave, the government gets a cut. In order to tax labor you just tag on a percentage. 100 bucks pre-tax, stick on a 15% tax, and bam! $115.

I’m officially resigning from commenting on this topic.

To freakhead:

CEO’s have always made waayyy more than the average guy, its just that politicians are just now starting to publicize it.

Fair tax would eliminate most of IRS. The whole idea of fair tax is to eliminate the tax code and withholdings. Those two things basically constitute the IRS.

I for one welcome our new Democratic overlords. But if they screw up, we’ll be waiting for them at the polls in 2010, 2012, and 2014.