Well, I guess I was silly in thinking that I was paying income taxes that far exceed FICA, etc. Why do questions of how much ratio people are paying, or social

Well, I guess I was silly in thinking that I was paying income taxes that far exceed FICA, etc. Why do questions of how much ratio people are paying, or social engineer (i.e., giving incentives for certain behavior) always come up in tax debates? I should have to pay for the services I get. If I have 2x as much property, then maybe I should pay twice as much in tax, since the government is protecting twice as much. But when people talk about the fact that the tax you pay amounts to X% of your income, well, so what? And even worse, when they talk about the need to tax, say, cigarettes in order to discourage smoking, well, the point of the government is not to tax first, and find places to spend it later...