Definitely! I'm in that 20% and I think it's fair, but I don't expect everyone to feel the same.

When I consider that I paid less in taxes due to my deductions than most of the younger guys that work for me and make far less, I feel bad for them.

I have NO PROBLEM at all with charity. Private charity is a wonderful thing and I give my share. Paying involuntary taxes to a govt that clearly pisses money away and is full of corruption is not my idea of supporting society.

I would like to pay for roads, schools, and defense. I abhor paying for many other things my tax dollars pay for against my will.

The problem with govt is its corrosive power. If I deal with most private entities, I can walk away. They can't make me pay for a product they sell in most cases.

With the govt, they can take your income, your taxes and in rare cases, you life.

:barf:

Jefferson Govt power
 

Thomas Jefferson
Letters on Liberty and Power


"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.1 This is so because those who gain positions of power tend always to extend the bounds of it. Power must always be constrained or limited else it will increase to the level that it will be despotic.

Jefferson wrote to Judge Spencer Roane in 1819, "It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also ...."2 With this principle of necessary limitation in mind, Jefferson declared "that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest upon inference."3

Jefferson on taxes
 

"The government which steps out of the ranks of the ordinary articles of consumption to select and lay under disproportionate burdens a particular one because it is a comfort, pleasing to the taste or necessary to the health and will therefore be bought, is in that particular a tyranny. Taxes on consumption like those on capital or income, to be just, must be uniform." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Smith, 1823. ME 15:432

As much as I disagree with alot you say, you hit the nail on the head here.
I think this is the biggest difference between dyed in the wool liberals and the same style conservative: the liberals seem to be content with a gubment program being of good intention, while the conservative wants his money to actually go to a workable cure, fix the damned problem, and move on to the next, so that, someday, we will have it all fixed up and we can quit spending our money on problems.
I'll repeat my dream - imagine (eat your heart out, John) all the people both consuming tax money to exist and those employed to service them being employed in the productive private sector, all working for their own and their family's future, while only having to support government to provide for our defense and society's infrastructure. What would that tax rate be? 3%?
Gee, sounds like old Tommy Boy Jefferson, don't it?