[Cyrus]

Jimbo,

The level of taxes is not something written in stone. In general, it is good for business and investment and job-creating endeavours to have lower rather than higher taxes. As a matter of fact, I have been trying for lower taxes, in public life, myself, at appropriate times.

If you look around there is not a single politician who has ever run on a platform of higher taxes!

The question is, (and this is where the political bickering begins!) what is being done with the money collected by the state from taxes. What is the proper allocation among defence (offence, in the case of the US!), education, welfare, etc, and the proper level of funding each one of 'em, if at all. These are political decisions to be sure, but the level of taxes should be the afterthought, not the stepping stone. (E.G. if the country urgently needs WMDs to defend itself, the country's leaders should calculate the cost and then fund the thing, which might also entail higher taxation. A country can never say that it cannot defend itself because that would mean higher taxes. Just an example.)

Without making too much out of it, I believe that this not unlike cooking - where the best chefs in the world and your grandma know precisely the ingredients and the proper mix of 'em. Which changes from menu to menu -- more salt on this dish, less on that, etc.

IMHO, the United States one of the worst possible chefs in the White House right now. Forget that he won resoundingly a second term and how. A man who knows only one recipe in defence (bombinvade, bombinvade, bombinvade, ad nauseum) and economic matters (lesstaxes,lesstaxes,lesstaxes,lesstaxes, ad nauseum) is a lousy strategist and a bad cook.

And a bad poker player : Give me the best player in the world to face if he's gonna adopt one and the same tactic throughout our game.

Take care,

Cyrus