Quote of the Day: Mencken on taxes

“The intelligent man, when he pays taxes, certainly does
not believe that he is making a prudent and productive
investment of his money; on the contrary, he feels that he is
being mulcted in an excessive amount for services that, in the
main, are downright inimical to him. . . . He sees in even the
most essential of them an agency for making it easier for the
exploiters constituting the government to rob him. In these
exploiters themselves he has no confidence whatever. He sees
them as purely predatory and useless. . . . They constitute a
power that stands over him constantly, ever alert for new
chances to squeeze him. If they could do so safely, they would
strip him to his hide. If they leave him anything at all, it is
simply prudentially, as a farmer leaves a hen some of her eggs.”

-H.L. Mencken