Believe it or not, or primary difference there is over how massive the cuts to both should be, but I can at least respect the consistency of your position and its lack of double standards; I only wish both were more common.

My core point though is that, unless we want to completely disband the government and let anarchy rule, we must tax to finance whatever level of government we do tolerate (though your presidential candidate neighbor seems to dispute this, despite her career as an IRS lawyer.)

Likewise, we must get that tax money from those who have it. Whether or not placing most of the tax burden on the nations comparatively few wealthy people rather than expecting the more numerous but less wealthy to pay an equal share is fair, there is no choice so long as they have almost all the money. You may recall Jon Stewart recenty deriding Congressional Republicans who countered a proposed millionaire tax hike with a proposed food stamp tax hike: Maybe it would be more fair to increase taxes on the 51% of America paying nothing, but taking EVERYTHING they own would only bring in a little over $400 billion, or about 25% of our 2011 deficit, which doesn't begin to solve the problem. Meanwhile, Americas total personal wealth (i.e. the half with <$0.5 trillion plus the half with more) was estimated at $54.2 trillion in 2009. If you had to balance a massive budget, would you get the money from the half of America with <$0.5 trillion or the half with $53.7 trillion?

Sorry for the delay; never got email notification of your response.