]The thing is that there is no right or wrong answer here.[/B] Many of the most economically prosperous nations in the world (especially in Europe) have tax rates in the 60%s and 70%s. Yet they function fine. Of course many nations work just as well having far less for taxation. It depends on many factors.
First of all it depends on how you measure success. Taxing is not implemented to ruin our lives. It is meant as a redistribution of wealth for our own good. If you started cutting taxes you would start seein more pot-holes in our roads, our kids would start coming home learning less and less, and all sorts of other government services would be reduced to the point where they would do more harm than good.
It is easy to say that you deserve to keep your money and you are completely right. But the reality is that then people start having to pay for schools and people have to start paving their own roads. And then you can end up with a society with an enormous disparity of wealth reminiscent of Pre-Revolutionary France, South Africa, or the UAE.
In my view the government's job is to ensure the highest opportunities and quality of life for all its people. But that means that people need to give the government money in order that it may do that. A tax-free society would be just as defunct as a 100% tax society. Money is the most efficient and easy way for the government to procure resources without taking people's time or property.
The reality is that liberals believe that the best good is done by collecting a great deal of funds and then creating equality of possibilities for all americans. Whereas conservatives believe that humans create their own possibilities. And you can argue all sorts of ways but in the end you end up with the worker who either says that they need more money to pay for food, but in cutting their taxes you take away their subsidized healthcare or insurance and then he gets sick...I personally take the liberal view because I believe it to be a more secure and balanced approach but opponents are certainly not wrong when they say the government is taking their money away.
But I do agree that tax increases are not the answer, they delay the problem. When you look at the operation and bureaucracy involved in government you find atrocious inefficiencies. All sorts of allocations of funds that hurt the system and damage both sides: an ineffective welfare system, the notorious 'bridge to nowhere' in Alaska, NCLB...the list is endless. The problem is that politics takes priority over reason and logic 9 times out of 10. So all that any of us can do is vote for nonpartisan candidates.
