It's April again, which can only mean one thing: lots of people whining about taxes. 

Oh, it's so unfair.  Oh, the wealthy are so oppressed.  Oh, the federal government is such a wasteful, bloated bureaucracy.  Oh, there's no incentive to work hard and amass a fortune because the rotten evil government will just take it all away.  Come on guys, give it a rest.

A little poking around on the IRS web site reveals that in 2002 the top 2.6% of earners filing (those with adjusted gross incomes over $200,000) paid just under 40% of the total income tax bill.  Maybe that seems like a lot, but it still leaves these folks a minimum of six figures to play with; just picture that in food stamps.  Some people argue that a flat tax would be fairer, with everyone from the poorest student right on up to Bill Gates himself handing over, say, 10% of their income.  That might be a step in the right direction, but the wealthy would of course still pay more actual dollars.  The only thing that would be completely fair would be to add up the whole bill and split it 280 million ways.  What do you suppose the odds are of that happening?

Which leaves us where we are now, with those just scraping by off the hook and those raking it in coughing it up.

So the current system penalizes the wealthy and discourages hard work, huh?  Yeah, I'm sure all those Enron execs would have played nice if only they weren't forced to be so greedy by an unfair tax system that was keeping them from sending their kids to Yale.

I'm sorry, but there are plenty of hard-working people who will never be rewarded with that kind of wealth...teaching and nursing are just two critical professions that come to mind where long hours and difficult working conditions don't pay off in European vacations and German luxury cars.  I have a hard time feeling sorry for some MBA or tobacco lawyer who has to settle for the Jersey shore instead of the south of France this year because of a tax bill on his capital gains.  As far as I'm concerned, if your job description is anything remotely like "Moves paper and/or money around from one place to another without any tangible benefit to society," than there should be an extra tax just for you. 

Maybe it's just that those who foot a bigger share of the bill feel unappreciated, which may be legitimate.  If that's the case, let me take this opportunity to say thank you; your tax dollars support our interstate highways, our highly trained military, and our humanitarian efforts around the world.  We couldn't do it without you.  Now go back to your yacht or your golf course and stop complaining.

Ironically, the biggest whiners are actually not from the country-club set, but from the trashy, angry, Rush-Limbaugh-adoring crowd who only wish they were in that desperately oppressive tax bracket.  The kicker is that this tends to be the same trigger-happy, jingoistic crowd that supports their president no matter what and questions the patriotism of anyone who even suggests that maybe the war in Iraq could have been better handled.

You want to be a patriot?  Then shut the hell up and pay your damn taxes.