Ignoring for the sake of brevity your purely ideological musings on private property as a "sort of tax," I have a simple question: Is it possible for taxes in a "civilized society" to be too high and/or the burden of government upon the taxpayers too great?

This is the longest stream of pure excrement I've ever heard. Please tell me what you do, so I don't ever unknowingly put myself in your hands. Such a pile of misinformation leading to preposterous conclusions as I can not easily recall. "Consumer surplus"? You're kidding, right?
"Why do employers hire people? Why do customers buy products? Answer: In both cases, they are getting a sort of consumer surplus. There would be no reason to engage in a voluntary economic transaction unless there was some such benefit."
I am growing exhausted telling people how the real world works. There are volutary transactions because it is more efficient for me to make what I make, and buy my string beans from others who do that better, instead of wasting my time trying to grow string beans. Only a class warfare indoctrinated leech would think that only greed makes the world go 'round. There is some greed in all humanity, but someone who gets something for nothing is far greedier than someone who gets a little more for his efforts besides his costs. I would hate to have you, as an employer or employee, with that attitude, alas, so common on the pampered left.
Perhaps those aliens in the Penn State study are here to take you home.
Bon Voyage!

David Welker. Your absolutely right. About the rudeness. People who feel obliged to express themselves in such a fashion invariably have nothing of value to add to any discussion. Cordially , Bill

"SS and Medicare have always been fully funded by payroll contributions and are essentially a forced savings program."

In theory yes, but the Social Security fund has been thoroughly raided to pay for spending not related to SS for years. I thought this idea had been widely debunked since Al Gore talked of "lockboxes."

Kevin, it is the disguise of the Ponzi scheme that is so insidious. Like Madoff investors, we delude ourselves that OUR SSI and Medicare benefits are legitimate, while ignoring the growing pyramid of suckers below.

* Many long-lived seniors -- 75-80 year olds -- don't remember that their FICA rates were at job force entry (mid-60s) were about half what they are now.

* Wage caps have risen 30x since 1950, which cost of living has risen roughly 10x.

* Wage caps are gone for the health care part of FICA.

* Most people have no idea their employer "matches" the tax (start a business, though and you'll see the entire 15+%).

Insurers that ran such a scheme would be perp walked into courthouses from coast to coast. If we continue to pretend that these programs aren't unsustainable scams, we should expect such treatment from our children.

"People would retire wealthier and more secure if they were able to invest the money we force into Social Security."

You are right, with a caveat: only some of the people would invest wisely. Some would invest poorly, and many would spend the money in their youth (or middle age) and have little left at retirement. So we have collectively required everyone to contribute to a payroll tax, which as your readers point out, is matched by employers. I understand that this match (and the tax itself) cuts into either wages or profits, or raises the cost of the goods provided. It's just that many of us believe that this is a relatively small price to pay to ensure some measure of economic security for most Americans.
Yes, the trust fund is running out of money and we have delayed reform repeatedly. But reform could save it; or you could have your way and we could kill it.
I don't expect to change your mind, or your readers' opinions. But I will explain why I'm on this side.
There are many reasons for social welfare programs. Here are 3:
1) Compassion. Accepting the simple truth that some of us are more fortunate than others, and having compassion for the unfortunate, is a valuable act. Yes, I can hear the blame assigned to defrauders and drug addicts, and it's true. But that is not the majority of those who need help. Some people were not as lucky as us, with intelligence, character, or opportunity.
2) Economic mobility in America. When you are middle class, you think social mobility means you can become rich. This is possible in our country, and many find wealth. But when you are born into poverty, economic mobility means something else: being the first in your family to go to college, to get a job that isn't back-breaking, to own a home, to have enough money to pay for your kids to buy uniforms and play Little League baseball. These are dreams for a large underclass in America. And having a "safety net" that keeps a family from losing everything, including their sanity, and their dignity, is a backstop against disaster. The ability we have as a society to drop a ladder into the murky waters of poverty and let people climb out of it is a wonderful and remarkable thing, and the histories of millions of successful American families include getting a little help along the way to prosperity and happiness.
3) The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose. When you allow thousands, millions of people to be born into a culture that doesn't possess the skills to function in our economy, with parents who are struggling and lack the ability to train their children to compete with those ahead of them, you create an environment where most of those people are going to lose. They will be losers - desperate, confused, and angry. And they will strike out, doing violence on whatever they see, and that violence will only make things worse: crime, injury, destruction, despair. This helps no one.

I don't ask much; I certainly don't want to tax away initiative and ambition. I believe this is the most creative nation and culture on the planet, and that is a trait to protect and encourage. I just ask for some respect for the position that collectively helping each other does not necessarily define those who get help as babies, worthy of the scorn of those who make more money than them.

That last sentence strikes me as sly. I know you will play to win; I'm on your turf. No, I'm not making it up at all, it's just a matter of perspective. What you see depends very much on what you look for.

You want to put economics first; we can have that discussion. I would say that no one can precisely calculate the foregone returns on the money given up to a tax, nor the effects of increased savings. (Economics - perhaps it is the dismal science because we can never agree?) But I do agree with you that the effects exist, they have significant value, and that value is more than monetary. I do not have disdain for wealth, or for the liberty we afford capital. We as a people have prospered because of our creative use of money.
But I would also call your attention to the effects where the tax dollars are spent. The Social Security recipient likely doesn't hoard his check - he spends it in his community, or at the pharmacy, or at the very least he gives it to a bank, so that they can lend it out to more enterprising individuals. The dollar doesn't disappear. I imagine you would argue some of it is "wasted" by the scoundrels who work for the government - perhaps you even have a figure of how much of every dollar is spent on administration - but those scoundrels don't hoard it either. They make car payments and tuition payments and a few of them make house payments.
Now perhaps will you say I am naive? Can you make the economic case for one dollar in the hand of the taxpayer somehow being better for us ( I mean all us other taxpayers ) than one dollar in the hand of the retiree? Because this is really the heart of the matter.

I define it as "a small price to pay" because it is not large enough to be punitive to the workers (of which I am one), but it is a significant benefit to the retirees, and in some cases is a lifeline. And because I believe that SS recipients did their part by contributing throughout their working lives to another generation of Americans.

Someone else's money?

Did these people invent the concept of money itself? Ridiculous. Money itself is a social construct.

Civilization is a cooperative endeavor Mr. Williamson.

Let me repeat that. Civilization is a cooperative endeavor.

The question is not who "owns" what stuff. There is more to life than property. Property is a means, not an end. The only proper end is the well-being of people themselves. Everything else, including the social concept of property, is a means to that end. The question is how well does our civilization promote human flourishing overall.

It seems to me, that you are on the verge of arguing that society should protect private property even if doing so is harmful to society overall. As if private property is its own end. But since the concept of private property was invented to benefit society, that would be putting the cart before the horse.

You must pay taxes to contribute to our civilization. That is, you give up property that you would otherwise possess in the absence of taxation in order to protect the very civilization the established, nourishes, and protects the concept of private property in the first place. And what our civilization does with those contributions is not a decision that is yours alone. If we in our civilization wants to do more than protect citizens from theft, it is our collective right to do so.

Writes Dino:

When you allow thousands, millions of people to be born into a culture that doesn't possess the skills to function in our economy, with parents who are struggling and lack the ability to train their children to compete with those ahead of them, you create an environment where most of those people are going to lose.

This line of thinking infuriates me. How was our current environment created? Just popped up out of nowhere? Everyone is born with zero skills. If parents, teachers, politicians and the general culture taught and encouraged self-reliance more than it attacks it, you wouldn't have to worry as much about people not having the skills to make the best possible choices in their lives. When you teach and encourage the opposite for decades, you end up with millions who can't fend for themselves in any number of ways, and if you start early enough they don't want to change, or if they did, they wouldn't even know how to try or would be too scared because they'd have to overhaul their entire life. You end up where we are now, when, for too many, it's too late to fix anything. If the left were serious about fixing all our problems, they would have fixed them long ago. For some bizarre reason stuff ain't fixed. In fact, with the left at the helm, a lot of stuff has gotten worse. A shocking number of people don't know this, but it's far more insidious when you have people who do know it and don't care. They leave the ignorant in the dark on purpose. That's sick.

The government telling people, "you can't scrape by without my help" is cruelty, not compassion. We've got more than enough evidence, from more than enough places around the globe, for more than enough time to know that whatever the left sinks its claws into it ruins. It does this by oppressive laws, and if that doesn't work it grabs the bullets.

You have no idea how hard it is to suppress the profanity. I don't mean an outburst here or there, I'm talkin an avalanche.