I strongly disagree. I think how much money you make is a very good measure of how much you benefit from the existence of government and civilized society.
Take the family of four. The father sends his kids to public school in Connecticut. But he works at an investment bank. He draws his salary from the economic activities of companies he provides M&A advice to. Those companies benefit from having a work force educated at the public expense. Does the father just benefit from the education his own kids receive, or does he benefit from the educations of the workers at each of his clients?
> The biggest targets are small business owners, startups, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and others of their kind. Can you say for an absolute fact that they owe ~40% of their annual income to the government? I can tell you for a fact that the difference between a freelancer in high demand earning $250k/year vs $100k/year is a matter of the hours you work. If you kill yourself to work around the clock to make more money.... you are rewarded with higher taxes.
No, you are rewarded with more money. If I work more and make $250k instead of $100k, I still have $80-90k extra in my pocket. As someone taxed over 40%, I don't think "man, I'm sick of carrying the weight for all these other people." I think: "all these other people ultimately generate the wealth that allows me to live the way I do." There is a point at which I'd be upset and contemplate moving, but we're not near that point.
The fact is that anywhere else I'd want to live has higher taxes. That's the relevant criterion at the end of the day. My dad, an extremely ambitious man, left Bangladesh (taxes around 8% of GDP) for the U.S. (taxes around 26% of GDP) completely unconcerned about the increased taxes. Do I ever think: "man, it'd be great to go back to Bangladesh and pay low taxes!" Of course not. When I tell my wife "hey honey we should move there" it's never to a low tax place like Botswana. It's France, Germany, Canada, etc. Hell, I could save a lot of money and move to Texas but I'm not willing to do that either. Taxes pay for a pleasant civilized society.
Indeed, it's the doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc, who benefit from that the most. We don't have "fuck you" money. We can't go to a low-tax jurisdiction in the middle east and set up a luxurious bubble for ourselves amid the squalor. We live in cities, use public transit, and have to interact with everyone else. We get to live very well in pleasant surroundings as a result of these taxes.