"So you would reward the "have nots" with funds taken from the "haves" just because they "have" it?"

Doug...you try to make it sound like I'm advocating taking ALL wealth and distributing it equally. Of course I expect those who are clever enough (or even just plain lucky enough) to have a higher standard of living to be able to eat out 5 nights a week and vacation in Arruba and drive Mercedes!....
But what I am doing is reminding you that the very concept of a graduated tax system IS 'taking money from the haves' and using it to make society run smoothly and fairly. Sometimes that means road building, sometimes it means Social Security taxes, and sometimes it means funding charity. All we are debating is the precise %!

Right now, we have the rich getting richer and the poor barely able to cope....and jobs are being exported and 'replaced', if at all, with minimum wage jobs, creating MORE poor. We have sports stars making millions PER YEAR...we have business executives getting 'bonuses' and huge "golden parachutes" when lower level employees are being laid off. We have gas prices at all time highs, while the sale of gas-guzzling SUVs still climbs, because 'some' have such large buffers in their income that they just shrug! .....and that is what the problem is...not that they HAVE more, but that they just shrug when it is pointed out that the line between 'having to be careful' and 'poor' is getting more & more tenuous! There is less & less genuine 'middle class'....partly because the formula for sharing the burden has been controlled by those who LIKE having lots more than others.

This society has enormous amounts of 'stuff' to spend $$$$$ on, and some feel they are **entitled** to own and indulge in every new gadget and service being advertised...and to hell with those who are puzzled over how to pay rent this month....and do not doubt that those puzzled brows are increasing in number!

.....and now Bush wants to allow those who 'wish'...(translation: who can afford it, and UNDERSTAND finances) to put most of their "social security" donations into private accounts, and shrug when the system is no longer able to be a safety net for those who can't do that. Social Security was never intended to keep the poor able to live in gated communities or drive new cars every year...all it is INTENDED to be is a safety net to keep their noses above water!

yeah...I AM proposing to "take funds from the haves"...because that's where the necessary funds are! What they get for their money is a reasonably content laboring class to collect their garbage, be nannies to their kids and pluck the chickens they have for Sunday dinner....and NOT rise up in protest and re-create the need for modern equivilent of castles with moats to keep the riff-raff out. (Where I live, I can see small examples of that already!...Guards and gates and fences and cameras...etc...)

The Republicans who practice that Golden Rule "he who has the gold, makes the rules" are hoping that the gates and guards..etc...will do the job. They shouldn't bet on it......