Yes, I relate to that entirely. One of my co-workers stated during the current budget crises here in Cali that people shouldn’t complain about tax raises, as the upper level people can afford. One community was voting on a local sales tax hike to pay for budget gaps. All of the local businesses were against it, as people will naturally go elsewhere. His view was “if you can afford a big ticket item, you can afford the tax.” Ok, thats all well and good. But when same individual worked a pile of overtime, and only saw a small increase in pay, well that was a different thing altogether. Now I like this person, think a lot of him, but it show the disconnect that some people have.
AND it's based on taxes that MAGNIFY rather than DAMPEN the fluctuations in the economy as a whole, income taxes with "progressive" rates. Economy ticks up 10% and tax revenues go up 20%, say. They gladly institute new programs, creating new constituencies inside and outside government with money that's not their own, and which a nine year old would know is transitory in nature. Then when the inevitable downturn comes, it's magnified into a larger fluctuation by their poor choice of a tax system, and they act like it's the TAXPAYERS responsibility to fix the problem they created and which was easily foreseen. If you object they say you're racist, selfish, homophobic or whatever else comes to mind.