While that's not exactly what I said, I can see your point. Want to assess a tax to pay for education? Great. I will gladly pay my share. All I ask is that you call it what it is. Furthermore, in my opinion, if it's for something as critical as education, it should be coming directly out of our income, not predicated on the hope that a bunch of already economically-depressed citizens will continue to buy soda and candy at the same rate, despite increased costs.

I don't buy the arguments for favoring sales taxes over income and property taxes. Ultimately, I guess it comes down to Americans not wanting to face the reality of how much of their income actually goes to taxes, whether it's via direct taxation on income or via consumer spending. If something is critical to us as a society, we should be willing to pay for it out of our income so that it will always be accounted for.

This isn't a catch-all statement; there are plenty of examples of services that I think should be paid for by only the people who use them (fishing licenses are an example we should all be able to relate to). I believe car tabs fall into this area too. It makes sense that if you want to drive a personal vehicle on state and federal roads, you should be required to pay for the damage you do to those roads, while someone who does not drive on those roads should not need to pay for their maintenance. This case is a little less clear though, as it can easily be argued that even people who don't drive on roads do depend on them as routes for suppliers of the goods they buy. Perhaps there should be a small, base income tax for infrastructure and a supplemental registration fee for those who want to drive their own cars.

I won't pretend I think these matters are simple to resolve, but I think it's time we took a close look at the way we have been designing taxes, as they don't seem to be effective all the time. I also think that knowing where their tax dollars are being spent might lend some valuable perspective to those who argue that we are over-taxed.