[Tsuwabuki]

...see what I mean about repeating the lie so often, people start to believe it, GoNative?

We are no longer a country barely united where our identity and loyalty were directed mostly towards our immediate community, or, at best, towards our individual state. Those days are so far behind us, your rose-colored past spectacles must be working over time if you think any of what you describe applies to modern nation states. We are a national, and indeed transnational, community.

Not everyone is capable of becoming part of the 1%. Not everyone has the opportunity. The idea of the American dream including a feasible "equality of opportunity" is total bullshit. Walk yourself down to South Dallas or Vine City Atlanta, and tell me those minority children in crumbling school buildings sharing twenty year old textbooks have "equality of opportunity." If you can look me in the eye and tell me that with a straight face after seeing the conditions yourself, I will eat my hat.

If modern economics worked like the Smithian invisible hand in a monetary system, then no one would be teachers or firefighters or police officers or sanitation workers or artists! These are areas where, with a few exceptions here and there, demand is never high enough to allow individuals from those areas of human endeavor to be so in demand they become part of the 1%. You would have these people barely make ends meet while providing necessary society improving services, services that help the 1% in many cases.

That's wrong. You're wrong.

49% of Americans cannot pay taxes because if they paid a flat tax, like you suggest, it would impede their ability to stay out of poverty. They would default on mortgages, not make rent, have to choose between clothes and food, and end up on the street, in which case without unemployment, medicare, social security, or welfare they would end up homeless, sick, malnourished, and increasingly desperate. You think the Occupy Wall Street protests are bad? Just wait until all those people have NOTHING, and I mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, to lose!

You have the right to succeed or fail on your own merits, but you also damn well have the right to expect that society is going to be there, with some sort of social safety net, to catch you when you fall, and provide services like healthcare and education that create productive members of society. Rising tides lift all boats, and we all gain when we take care of each other. In our modern world, that is a proper role of government, and I will keep voting for politicians that agree with me, and I will keep paying taxes so that others might have a social safety net when they need it.

The ultrarich and their middle class spokespeople, such as yourself, need to stop thinking so much about your "individual rights" and start thinking more about your "individual and collective obligations" and "responsibilities" to your fellow citizens.