I thought I was the only one who ever used it, and suddenly there it was, the title of a Wall Street Journal editorial. Greed used to mean an unscrupulous appetite for other people's money, typified by the highwayman and the embezzler. In the age of limitless government it has come to mean the simple desire to keep your own money. But nobody accuses the government of greed, no matter how heavily it taxes us.
Government is assumed to be entitled to take as much of the citizens' wealth as it desires.
Tax Freedom Day is the day when the taxpayer stops working for the government and starts working for himself. In effect, the taxpayer now works for the government until early June. Observing Tax Freedom Day is a great idea, but we need a historical standard of comparison. In those days there was no income tax, and Americans were enraged when the king raised excise taxes on certain goods by a few pennies. After all, the Thirteenth Amendment makes no distinction between servitude to the state and servitude to a private master.