@chrisgeidner I understand this distinction. I really do. What I'm driving at is that we see this as normal when it shouldn't be. A person pays a certain amount in taxes, full stop. The fact that we break these up into arbitrary buckets is meaningless to me, since money to the feds can go straight back to states, or even localities, or vice versa. We should be looking at our effective tax rates as they compare to the wealthy.