"Snort! Well, I guess we need not discuss taxation constructed on notions of benefit, sacrifice, ability to pay, or economic stability. Nope, only liberal economists bother with such trivia. Since these progressivity hinged notions of equality and distributive justice so destabilize conservative minds, let's do away with the benefits of taxation for those who don't work hard enough to be millionaires.  I think we should start with stripping public funding for unnecessary items like homeschooling . People who want to homeschool their kids had better just work harder so they can make more money."

I can't explain the font change, I'm not enough of a geek to figure that out. Anyway, back to the debate: Jim makes a persuasive arguement, and there's only one thing missing, The Constitution.

Lets think for a moment about why taxes exist, the obvious answer is to fund government operations. As I will show, this is now the conservative/ libertarian position. We believe that taxes should be as unobtrusive as possible, and as fair as possible. And no, not the warped Democratic version of fair, where everyone is treated differently, the oldschool definition of fair, where everyone is treated the same. Hell, this country got along without an income tax for 130 years, and as recently as the '50s, the government share of the GDP was less than 5%, now it's over 25%! Just think about that, out of every $100 spent in this country, 25 are spent by the government.

Jim does a good job of stating the liberal position. They want to use taxes, and by extension, the government, to reshape society to their ends. "Sacrifice"? The only time taxes should be a sacrifice is during something like WWII, not the regular state of things.

"Ability to pay" is another good one. Seldom is liberal hubris better illustrated than here. This is them saying to you, "We know your finances and your life better than you do". Recall, often have Democrats argued against tax cuts saying, "the government can't afford it". Do they ever argue for the the people, their supposed constituency, "they can't afford that tax increase", of course not, because government is their true constituency.

"Distributive justice" is my favorite, though. Holy shit, Jim. Were you chanelling Karl Marx that night? To arbitrarily take from one class of people and give to another is theft tarted up as compassion.

I'm pretty sure Jim threw in that crack about homeschooling because he knows that weirdkid is homeschooled. Whatever, we paid for it before, we can do it again. Hell, from an economic point of view, liberals should support homeschooling. They're still getting the property tax money from those families, without having to worry about the kids. But then if they're not in public school, they can't start learning sex ed in 3rd grade.

In conclusion, liberals believe that the people exist to provide tax revenue to the government, so that the government can "help" them. It's the statist "circle of life".

Conservatives believe that the federal government has only a few basic functions, which are clearly delineated in the Constitution, and that the taxes necessary to support those functions should be as unobtrusive as possible.