Re: A few points for Lat...

"And yet, before the last 20 years taxes on the wealthiest Americans were much, much higher than they are now. The problem with modern conservatives is that they want to eat their cake and have it too. They want to run amok with regard to being unregulated, and yet they also want to not pay their fair share of taxes. Fuck 'em."

I think there's another factor: middle class conservatives know that they're paying 40% to 50% of their income in taxes, and they know that is way too high. They also know that every year the government does its level best to make their lives more difficult, and understand how important it is for businesses to have capital investment - so they reflexively oppose any increase in taxes that might lower that capital investment, even though that allows rich individuals to accumulate ever larger fortunes.

Of course, government spending and government control of the economy are the real problems, and middle class conservatives know this too - so they also object to any tax increases because they (justly) want to "starve the beast".

What may not be so clear is the way the politically-connected wealthy avoid paying even their fare share of taxes and subvert the regulatory climate to benefit themselves at the expense of small business. Even the Social Security system benefits the upper classes, who are more likely to live long enough to collect the benefits than the lower classes that pay a larger percentage of their income into that Ponzi scheme.

It is also noteworthy that many prominent Liberals are very wealthy. They know how to game the system, and they are smart enough to know that that is exactly what they are doing - exploiting the working class to their own advantage, and getting the suckers to beg for it. They play the good cop to the Conservative bad cop in Washington.