I would have liked to have been able to say that I was paying for some of what the government ran on. Just a wee bit of Income Tax liability would have made me feel more like a stakeholder, you know? Meanwhile, the lump of money I felt extracted from me painfully every year was going to pay other people's Social Security, disability, and Medicare. Would it be there for me when I needed it some day? That is still open to question.
Anyway, I felt then, when I was poor, and I feel now, when I'm -- well, not poor, that all but the lowest wage earners should pay a small something in Income Tax. The idea that nearly half of all workers in our country pay NO Income Tax seems to me a dangerous thing. It means that soon the majority will be able to elect a Congress that will simply take from everybody else to vote them benefits. And that's not healthy, nor safe.