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I suspect a lot of people get really upset at me when I complain about taxes because a) taxes are the primary complaint by ancaps and other right wing “libertarians” and b) taxes have come to represent the state’s primary and most visible mechanism for returning to workers a tiny share of what’s been stolen from them.

If all you focus on is the flow of wealth from rich to poor via redistributive taxes (Thomas Piketty, I’m looking in your direction), then those taxes can seem like a sizable boon to the working class. Plenty of observers have attributed growth in living standards in western countries to redistributive taxes, and they’re not wrong to note that workers have fought and bled to get even those scraps.