But that doesn't answer the complaint. The original idea of income tax was also that only the wealthy would pay, not the middle class. Yet here we are.

Tax rates for the wealthy were cut? That's great, for them. Were tax rates cut for the middle class? Did any of the lower class no longer have to pay income tax? That's what would be a response to nemo44x. (What would be a response to me would be for there to be no income tax for anyone in the lower 90% of income. That would be back to the original intent, and would reverse all the years of scope creep.)

Yes, here were are because it turns out that modern societies with their amenities depend on taxation. What's the problem with that? If it were such a humongous deal you'd have more people voting for tax cuts.

OK, but it may well turn out that future versions of "modern society" depend on the revenue from wealth taxation, not just for those with wealth above $50 million, but with wealth above, say, $50 thousand.

Remember what the argument in the local thread is. nemo44x stated that "these things" (things like the wealth tax) always expand to cover more people than they did at the beginning. rurp said that the income tax cuts a couple of years ago disproved that. I said that the expanding scope of income tax over the last 107 years supported nemo44x, not rurp.

Your arguing that that's OK, because we want the society that results. That may be. But that's a different claim than "this won't expand to hit everybody".

The only promise the government will keep is what's in the Constitution. I find it unreasonable that a government should keep promises from times when I wasn't even alive.