[hackuser]

Two thoughts on stories on taxes:

1) I'd prefer stories on government finances tell the whole story: Slashing taxes and government services by X. That may or may not be an acceptable trade-off, but usually it's presented as something like Walmart is slashing prices - there's a sale! - only looking at the cost side.

2) Present it as the zero-sum situation it is: If person A pays less, everyone else has to pay more for the same result. Somehow, people have to pay for things, and I think it's widely accepted that people should be making roughly equivalent sacrifices.

(That's not a call for a flat tax rate; 10% of income is much more of a sacrifice to someone making $10K than to someone making $1 million. FWIW, another HN reader told me recently that research says there is roughly a logarithmic relationship between utility and dollar amount.)