[jimmy1]

> It puzzles me that people hate taxes so much.

People's problems with taxes typically fall into two buckets, sometimes both.

1. On a fundamental economics level, the Government is an inefficient third party spender: it spends other peoples money on services it doesn't utilize. There is no feedback loop there besides bureaucracy.

2. We actually have a pretty moderate tax burden already, mostly footed by the average US worker. Everyone talks about the top rate, or federal taxes, but we also have sales tax, property tax, estate tax, in some areas a county tax on top of city or municipality tax, and additional education-related taxes, not counting the outlier states that have even more taxes on top of that. (There's a saying in NYC: Every day is tax day). The common worker pays the majority of the taxes, and they are the ones who are most sensitive to any increase in taxes, and feel pinched already, so they naturally, and very expectedly are against being taxed more. (Realize that the typical HN'er is not the average US worker, making ~60k median salary with few benefits)

[zzzeek]

76% of voters favor higher taxes on the wealthiest americans, 61% favor Warren's "wealth tax", and even 40% support a marginal tax rate of 70% on americans earning $10M or more:

http://fortune.com/2019/02/04/support-for-tax-increase-on-we...

this would contradict your theory that "the common worker hates taxes", since most Americans want more taxation, not less.

[refurb]

That’s kind of obvious, no?

It’s like asking somebody if they want free stuff. Of course they say yes, it costs them nothing.

Ask the same question where their own taxes go up and see what the answer is.

Reminds me of the HN thread about the 2018 tax changes (limited SALT deduction). The same people who call for higher taxes (many of them in the top 5% income range) start complaining about their taxes going up.

Everyone is fine with higher taxes when it’s someone “richer” than they are.

[closeparen]

More taxation for other people, not themselves.

If you hate taxes and love services, the obvious thing is to get someone else to pay for them.

[thrill]

Yet another reason why the Founders' recognition that ruling via a simple majority was an eventual death knoll for a society.