> The Europeans tend to see taxes and social programs as an
> 'economy of scale' - pooling resources to provide universal
> benefit at a lower per-unit rate.
But less-so every day, no?
* German rail strike hits commuters and business * French strikers prefer cold picket lines to talks * German rail strike causes chaos for second day * Pound falls against dollar again * French transport workers block trains as strike enters third day * Unions to extend French transport strike
> Homo Americanuses, by contrast, see taxation as burden rather
> than investment, and social programs as a handout to the poor
> at the expense of everyone else.
Yeah, what was your crack about being on welfare the other day?
> Progressive taxation is really a lame of way of income redistribution
If that's your goal, maybe. But if your goal is to find a reasonably fair way of paying for whatever it is you've decided is important to you, it's better than all of the other ways of doing it. I think you've confused the decisions about what to pay for with the mechanism for paying for it.
In the mean time, a progressive tax (like the income taxes in the US) is still the best way to pay for even the most awful of things: progressive taxes means that the richer you are, the more you'll pay for this wretched war. And I suppose, that's as it should be.
/jordan