Unfortunately, the perception that taxes pay for public services is simply absent from this country. Unlike Europeans, who know that their high taxes pay for public goods such as health care, education, or transportation that virtually _everyone_ uses, most US-ers tend to believe that their tax dollars are squandered on pork and barrel and kicbacks to business cronies.
What is considered "pork and barrel" depends on the political orientation. Liberals define it as the defense spending, highway construction and corporate perks, while conservatives see it as welfare programs, public housing and public transportation serving mainly the urban underclass (read: blacks).
I think that the US-ers do not have the concept of "public good" at all, they see only private goods and welfare handouts to despised minorities of their choice - and this can be tracked to the 19th century machine politics being the main vehicle of public welfare programs, as Theda Skocpol quite effectively argued (_Protecting Mothers and Soldiers_, _Social Policy in the United States_).
As a result, I sincerely doubt that the notion of higher taxes for better public services will sail very far in the United States.
I do agree, however, that the idea of gouging the rich for the money needed by the public sector is pretty much mistaken.
Question: can you summarize Eisner's argument or sent me a reference where such a summary can be found? Thanks.
Wojtek