It's actually very difficult to understand because it seems nonsensical on the face of it. If people paying more taxes is a net good, then certainly any amount of additional taxes collected would be a net good.

Are you suggesting that there's a magic threshold that needs to be crossed where individual contributions amount to more than the sum of their parts? If so, what is it, and why does it exist? And why does that threshold always seem to be conveniently too high for people who claim they want to contribute more?

Since we're on HN, I'll give you an example of a pretty successful startup built on those "magic thresholds": Kickstarter.

Yes, of course having more money scales the ROI superlinearly. Lots of projects can't be done at all without a minimum investment. Others just have economies of scale (e.g. dilution of fixed overhead).

And considering that the government usually does stuff on very large scales, it's not strange that a single taxpayer's contribution is too small to be meaningful. Just creating a government program probably takes more than what I pay yearly.

The government is not in the position of a “kickstarter”. It has tons of revenue already, so your point doesn’t make sense.

Paying more personal taxes voluntarily is a net loss to me personally. Everyone in my income band paying more tax is the same absolute loss in income, but the net loss is substantially reduced due to the additional governmental funds, perhaps even becoming a net gain.