[quote BigGovernmentIsGood]
To me, issues like clean water, clean air, food safety and security, and enviornmental protections are way more important than the amount of taxes that I pay.
[/quote]
Where is it written that to have these, you have to have high taxes? You can have poor food safety with high taxes.. or low taxes. The real question is how effectively is our tax money being spent. Money is a type of resource. Wasting it in one area precludes using it for something else.

Elements within the government often chime that taxes are going up because there are now more people in the country. This ignores the obvious fact that with a larger population, there is also a larger taxpayer base. A 20% greater population also means 20% more taxes with all else held constant. What is also ignored is that with greater size, comes greater efficiency (of scale). The problem comes from the fact that to survive, a company has to be efficient else it ceases to exist – with the exception of a company that is a monopoly. Governments on the other hand, end up creating bureaucracies that have their survival based upon how many individuals are below the ‘head man’. Their survival is structured to be completely in-efficient due to how they handle the accounting. The bureaucracies are not rewarded for being efficient – they are penalized for it. NOTE: I am not stating that all government services need to be farmed out – that would be a straw-man argument. There is a balance. The one thing that does irritate me is when people take a look at another country and want to change this one to be like the country ‘over there’.. particularly when they could just simply move there if this country was such a problem. As you have a right to live as you wish.. so do I.

[quote BigGovernmentIsGood]
Can there really be more than one person out there who thinks about something other than taxes? Answer: Yes.
[/quote]
You are attributing a position to me that I do not take nor have I stated – and then after you painted that position as mine, you proceed to skewer.. I think it is called a straw-man argument in the arena of flawed logic.

[quote BigGovernmentIsGood]
There appears to be a large subgroup on this board who feels that taxes is the most pressing issue in the world. When someone makes a post about some issue of actual importance, the cognitive dissonance in the ‘taxes is everything’ subgroup causes them to either (a) accuse the poster of being on government assistance (b) ask for them to be banned for posting about something other than taxes or (c) to think that all of the handles posting about something other than taxes must be the same person.
[/quote]
Another straw-man, also presenting points not supported by facts in evidence or present at hand.