Personally, despite being aware of those issues, I take some manner of pride in the fact that I declare my side income properly and pay taxes on it, even when the people who paid me make an explicit point to pay with cash. I do my fair share, and that's why I feel entitled to whine about people doing a shoddy job at managing it. ;)

I think people don't mind taxes nearly as much if they feel like they are getting good value for their money. In the USA, you feel like your just getting shafted by the government half the time. In Canada not so much.

Would you say that legitimately pursuing a law-evader somehow inevitably leads to a police-state?

Medicare is a pretty good example. As best I'm aware, that program's negotiated rate is less than the average private insurer for any given procedure, which is pretty impressive.

Public broadcasting tends to do quite a lot on a continually reduced budget.

There are a number of programs that are generally inefficient, and while I'd very much like to see greater efficiency, I'd also be very much ok seeing those existing programs have more money: education, infrastructure, Medicaid.

And I feel like most people who malign the government's inefficiency have either never been exposed to the inefficiencies in the private sector, or willfully turn a blind eye to those inefficiencies to make a point. In my experience, all large organizations/projects suffer from an incredible amount of waste - the government is just the poor jerk that deals with some of the largest possible organizations/projects and then has publish that inefficiency for everyone to point at and critique.

Your inverse isn't correct. The correct inverse would be to look at the countries that do have tax.

Let's look at Guinea

There's the tax information:

http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/guinea/pa...

Oh by the way it's the poorest country in the world 2017.

I did take a look at what jacquesm suggested and here is a list of countries that have no income tax.

* United Arab Emirates

* Oman

* Bahrain

* Qatar

* Saudi Arabia

* Kuwait

* Bermuda

* Cayman Islands

* The Bahamas

* Brunei

Now you could argue that the countries are rich countries and the only ones doing well are the native citizens or that two of them are tax havens for the rich. But hey that's not what he said.

And the moral of the story? Unquantified generic statements are usually bad. Don't do it. No matter who you are, don't do it.