This answer obviously won't be part of the competition, because as you and I know, there is no simple answer to that complicated tax question.

You and that individual will never be able to come to any agreement or conclusion because you see mirror images of things.

I was watching a video the other day of a crowd of starving Venezuelans, beating a cow to death with rocks and sticks:

And it struck me that these people have essentially returned to the stone age. Put skins instead of woven fabric on them, and they would fit right in with a group pulling down a mastadon.

What was interesting to me about that video was that it obviously wasn't their cow, and they had no interest in the reality that they were stealing someone else's property, that this cow (looked like a bull to me) could sire other cows if left alive, that this cow might be able to pull a plow to grow food, could haul firewood and carts, could turn a grindstone, could even turn a generator. In short -- this cow is an amazing, marvelous machine.

But all those folks could see was food. No plan for the future. No thought about tomorrow, no concern for what you do to society when you side with the part of society that has decided that stealing someone else's property is justified if you "need" it. Nope. All they see is "food right here right now." Today I eat. I'll worry about tomorrow tomorrow.

And that is how the person you were debating sees businesses and individuals, and how the leaders they vote for see them as well. When they see an individual or a business, they don't see a marvelous machine that can yield amazing benefits if left alone. They don't care if they grind businesses into the ground through taxation, or prevent the formation of new businesses through punitive taxation and regulation, or cause people to move away through punitive taxation, or drive wealth underground to avoid punitive taxation. They don't see businesses and society as an emergent, unfolding fractal flower, as a process of self organizing complexity that develops in exponential fashion. They don't see the gains that they won't get if they eat the seed corn today.

Nope. All they see is a business cow or rich person cow wandering around alone and unguarded in a field. So they surround it with rocks and sticks, outnumber it, and beat it senseless so they can eat it.

Intellectually they are still in the stone age. They aren't builders. They are voracious consumers. They have no interest in or capacity to consider the system they are building. All they know is today they eat, and they will worry about tomorrow tomorrow.