Scandalous as it may sound to the ears of Republicans schooled in Reaganomics, one critical measure of the health of a modern democracy is its ability to legitimately extract taxes from its own elites. The most dysfunctional societies in the developing world are those whose elites succeed either in legally exempting themselves from taxation, or in taking advantage of lax enforcement to evade them, thereby shifting the burden of public expenditure onto the rest of society.

……….THIS IS COMING FROM FRANCIS FUCKIN FUKUYAMA, FOREFATHER OF THE NEOCONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT. He was was also one of the first to trumpet it’s death. Back in ott four or five, I think? I remember it was when I worked in the Arkansas history archives