Really. It seems to me that I'm the one who's trying to bring this back to the issues. Veiled insults? You've called me an asshat three times. DId I call your anger invalid? No, I didn't. I called your anger non-responsive. I further pointed out that your anger with me had absolutely nothing to do with the discussion, yet you persist in making it central. Don't want me to be dismissive and patronizing? Don't make facile and infantile arguments. "You have not explained why this is so." I explained it at length. Again - the argument from the Mises.org article is "rich people have children, therefore they shouldn't have to pay taxes." You keep calling it a metaphor, when the actual phrasing was "parents take care of their children." If that's a metaphor, then the only way it works is if the parents are the rich and the children are the poor. It isn't a metaphor, though, because for four sentences the author continues in the same vein. I don't know which interpretation is more offensive: not-metaphor, as in "don't tax us, we have kids" or metaphor, as in "don't tax us, we're paternalistic towards the proles whose well-being we manage." Either way, it's not an argument of social mobility. >If, as Warren states, the wealthy are meant to "pay it forward" to the community which supports them, it is because it is a generally accepted social practice and not because it is federally mandated (as in the example of hereditary wealth between family members). The reason Warren was prompted to make her statement is that "wealth concentration" has become a hot-button issue. Clearly, "pay it forward" has not happened. The core of Warren's statement is that wealth is not an individualist accomplishment, it is the outcome of a social contract. Further, that social contract is being shirked by those with wealth. "There is no coercion involved' is the direct cause of the wealth concentration we currently experience. Warren, I surmise, would encourage further coercion because the system as currently implemented does not "pay it forward." >You didn't actually address this argument, you just ridiculed it. So I write a thousand words and I'm criticized for not writing more? Okay, I'll write more: A factory in Boise may not appear to have as likely a risk of a terrorist attack as a factory in Newark. However, the entity targeted by "terrorism" is likely to be "weak factories" and if the factory does not have the same intelligence about terrorism as a central authority, the factory is addressing issues of terrorism in an inferior fashion compared to that central authority. Further, a central authority is the most efficient way to deal with central problems - if one does business on a national basis, one should accept the input of a national authority rather than a state or local authority because knowledge can never be perfect. Further, if one practices business on a national level, one must necessarily use infrastructure provided on a national level unless one wishes to build a parallel infrastructure from the ground up. Simply put, unless you're building your own UPS fleet to run on your own roads to deliver your goods and services to everyone, you owe taxes on the highways between you and your customers. And if Al Qaeda intends to attack "the united states" as a resident of "the united states" you share the burden of paying to protect "the united states." >Then there is this significant chunk of the article sub-titled "Practical Problems with Warren's Stance" which you didn't not address at all -- and it's no small piece, either Would you like me to address it? I can. Or would you rather call me "asshat" again? Perhaps "provocateur" and "egoist." Maybe "smug" and "annoying" would suit you better. How 'bout "asshole?" This can go one of two ways. You can actually try and have a civil discussion, or you can continue hurling insults. Let's be clear about one thing, though - YOU brought us here.