Income taxes

It's that time of year, and of course I rebel against the amount due sometimes.

We obviously (or maybe not so obviously, if you are hard-core Libertarian?) need some method of raising revenues for the government juggernaut to roll. Where you fall on the graduated vs. flat tax debate probably depends on your income level.

One of the other major alternatives tossed around always seems to be a consumption tax instead of an income tax. The upside to this is that you are not taxing the creative/industrious efforts but instead raising revenues from people spending the money. The downside is that our entire economy is pretty much based on the urge to spend, spend, spend. Putting the brakes on that would tilt the entire economy and it would probably take years of fine-tuning to "get it right," whereas there probably would be a very volatile economy in that interim.

Hmmm. Maybe the libertarians have a point...