I completely agree with your core premise that governments need to charge taxes. As you so rightly point out, public services neeed funding. That is the whole point of having a government, to pool our resources to do and provide things we all need, like roads and sewers and schools.

I'm commenting to quibble about the common theme that "who pays the most federal taxes is the be all and end all of tax discussions." The rich pay the most federal income taxes because [duh] the poor don't earn enough to pay federal income taxes. There are an enormous number of other taxes that are levied particularly on goods, services and income that are disproportionally paid by the lower quintiles. This results in a total tax burden for the lower quintiles much higher than those in the upper quintile.

Just to reiterate, none of the previous paragraph is meant as a refute of your basic point that taxes are good and necessary.