On the subject of paying taxes... there are places I could live where I would pay less taxes than I do in New York City. Texas comes to mind, but also India or for that matter Somalia. Yet people generally move in the opposite direction as they become more successful.

I find it deeply ironic that David Koch lives in Manhattan, with its high state and city taxes, as well as extensive welfare spending. It's almost as if paying taxes buys you access to civilization, which makes living in a place desirable.

With respect to India, I thought I'd give you a little more insight.

A grossly generalised point of view:

* Low class group don't pay taxes

* Middle class group do pay taxes

* High class group might not pay taxes

The middle class group usually bear the burden of the development of the country. The taxes that does reach the government is cut by a large extent by high income corrupt politicians, who obviously, don't pay taxes.

Bottom line, the ROI for a middle class person in India to pay taxes is not high as you thought it would be. Hopefully, this changes.

New York is a city in which the very rich enjoy some of the best living in the world because it is the largest and wealthiest city in the United States. The city has enormous areas that are simply terrible to live in, but people like Koch are shielded from it. I understand that Koch, like most rational people, uses tax reduction strategies, so his tax rate is probably less than that of many ordinary people in the city.

I do not think the fact that rich people cluster in cities commends high rates of taxation in cities when so many citizens of them suffer poorer housing, worse schools, worse crime and general higher cost of living in addition to not having the benefits of living in a more spacious, green area.

The Bronx, etc, housing projects are unpleasant, but quite a bit better than what those folks would have otherwise. They have access to education, healthcare, and housing. The rural poor are dramatically worse off.

Couldn't agree with this more. I grew up in the Bronx, and now live in Manhattan. There are plenty of great neighborhoods in the Bronx as well as the rest of the other NYC boroughs.

I find it a little troubling that you're implying that welfare and high taxes made New York one of the richest cities in the world.

He's not implying that at all. I think he's saying that the wealthy like to live in places with high taxes and welfare because places with low taxes and no welfare are shitholes.

I would say it's the opposite: places like New York have high taxes because there are people there who can pay them. You can't get blood from a turnip.

The interesting thing about the discussion on taxes is that usually what gets discussed is how much we pay and not what it is used for. "We should pay more taxes" doesn't really mean anything to me until you explain the context which with those taxes will be used -- of course the grand elephant in the room is that it is preferred we not know or discuss the specifics of that. It is a great irony that voters have much more control in how many taxes they will pay, but rarely in how they will be used. Whether through electing a president who promises to raise taxes on the wealthy, or one that promises to lower taxes dramatically, or an initiative to increase sales tax -- it is almost never known what will be affected, even when a new tax is given a "purpose" it is almost always in the small print that it doesn't necessarily have to be used for that purpose. And so our system allows us to often end up with the worst of both worlds:

1. Citizens perceive waste and thus push for lower taxes, yet there is no guarantee the "wasteful" programs are reduced, and thus often it is the important programs that are hurt.

2. Lack of funding in important programs is used to convince citizens that higher taxes are needed, but there is often no guarantee that the higher taxes will be used for those programs.

Notice, for example, that there are certain "blessed" government programs that there seems to always be money for. Yet it is always the roads or education that will suffer catastrophically if taxes aren't increased.

One of my biggest problems with taxes is that the output of my hard work is spent on things that I find morally reprehensible. I feel it is absolutely evil to take someone's money at gunpoint and spend it on something he finds evil. For me, that's abortion.

We needn't labor the point of why other people don't find it evil - that's irrelevant to this discussion. The important part of my argument is that, short of going to jail, there's no option for me not to subsidize something I find morally reprehensible.

Failing to let individuals make that sort of decision dehumanizes them. I'm sick to my stomach every time I think of it.

> One of my biggest problems with taxes is that the output of my hard work is spent on things that I find morally reprehensible.

That's something you choose to believe. You could just as easily choose to believe that your money goes to support all the programs you favor and the money that goes to those things you hate comes from people who support those programs. Money is fungible and government is not alacarte so you have to realize every program that exists has supporters who pay taxes and want those things to exist and they feed from a common pool.

It's just silly to torture yourself over the idea that some of your money goes to a program you don't support. If it were actually possible to track every dollar you gave, you'd find it's not evenly distributed across every government program, so you may as well believe you're paying for the programs you do support because it's just as true. I support abortion, you may as well consider that my money that's paying for that.

People have been paying tribute to leaders of the tribe ever since civilization has existed. Part of the wheat your ancestors reaped fed the army. The army provided protection, but probably did some pretty terrible things, too.

Unlike your ancient ancestors, you are free to emigrate to a country that is more in line with your values.

I find suburban zoning laws to be morally reprehensible. They create isolating, ugly, and car-dependent wastelands. If you go really deep, you could even say members of our military have died defending this way of life. Even though I live in NYC, I'm sure that some of my tax dollars end up enforcing those laws. Would not paying my taxes change any of this? No. This is not an with taxes, it's an issue with the law.

Does it help to realize that the amount of money spent on abortion is basically a rounding error?

You are absolutely right. In my comment I singled out programs that I agree with.

I did not want to make this too political, but of course I object to the parts that I perceive as waste such as: Financing two useless and expensive wars, bailing out banks that should have been allowed to fail, the "war" on drugs and other questionable law enforcement initiatives, much of the NSA and CIA spending, etc, etc.

In California you get to pay a lot of taxes but it goes to retired government union workers instead of public services. We have the highest marginal tax rate in the nation, but terrible services.

But Californians really enjoy paying taxes so they keep on going up. Maybe if we put enough money into the broken system some good will eventually come out of it.