thread, I'm bothered by the assumption that liberalism means wanting to spend unnecessarily.
The real question, is how much we want government to do, versus how much we'd rather do for ourselves.
Take Powerman's initial example of "stupid" seat-belt laws.
Seat belt laws keep people from losing control of their vehicles, and reduce their and others' rate of injury. That's not a purely personal issue, since the average head injury, for example, costs $500,000 to treat, and chronic head injury can easily cost several million dollars. The brunt of that falls on the taxpayer; hence it's appropriate for the state to mandate seatbelt use. Same goes for helmet laws for motorcycles. Hence liberals might want certain types of state control. But so would most conservatives--I don't think anyone's going to argue that it's a good idea to put guardrails on highways, or to grade them in such a manner as to reduce accident risk, or to have Coast Guard that you can call when your sailboat is sinking.
But that does not mean that liberals in general want to tax everyone at 90%! I certainly don't. I'm in favor of programs of demonstrated utility that help level the playing field, so that no matter who your parents were, you have a crack at the American Dream.
Under Bush's policies, we're going precisely the other way. Wealth inequality is increasing. Workers have never kept so little of their productive work for themselves. CEO's have not made so much relative to their workers since the era of the robber barons. You can say, "This is their money, they made it." Or you can recognize that they could not have made this money without the existence of a large, stable, happy middle class that can buy consumer goods. If we don't protect the existence of this middle class, and ensure adequate social and economic mobility, we drag ourselves down in the long term. Furthermore, many of these so-called "self-made" people have benefited from one or another government program along the way, e.g. the GI bill, which educated an entire generation of veterans, or social security, which freed people of the burden of caring for their parents, so they could get out in the marketplace.
Land grants created the first U.S. middle class--farmers. Think about that--a several trillion dollar (in today's money) giveaway of land to people willing to settle and farm it. That's the largest welfare program in history, and it was hugely successful. After that, tariffs against foreign goods kept the middle class alive, along with unionization, and finally redistributive taxation. With globalization, tariffs are disappearing (as they should--economies run much better without them), and unions have been fatally weakened (remember--the weekend was created by union agitation--it wasn't the robber barons' idea!). This leaves us with only redistributive taxation as a way to ensure the middle class's continued existence. I don't like it either, but take your pick--redistribute wealth or head in the direction of a country like Brazil, where a tiny few own nearly everything, and the masses have little.
Another way of looking at taxes is to compare the tax rates on earned and unearned wealth. Right now unearned wealth is taxed at a lower rate than earned. That's not fair to people who actually depend on a paycheck, versus those who inherited the manor and trust fund from their parents (and I know quite a few of the latter type, here in Cambridge and at Harvard).
Mariner.
