Forgive my replying to my own thread, but I would like acknowledge that much of the way public institutions do things is currently broken, even if the idea of public institutions is great -- I am very sympathetic to all the libertarians here at HN even as I vehemently disagree with them (I would say I am in favor of decentralized socialism, run by Athenian style democracies). Bad management of epidemic proportions (which I grant -- e.g. see "Waiting for Superman") makes people susceptible to a simplistic anti-government "privatize everything" sentiment (which I think is downright goofy).

But I still believe in taxing the rich, since they feed off society at least as much as they contribute.