[...] But everyone contributes to a community in their own way, be that through performing those essential jobs, raising children, volunteering to plant trees and tidy neighbourhoods, or paying taxes.
The difference between those contributions is that some are voluntary and others are not. If I could volunteer to pay less tax, would I? No, because I am lucky enough to have enough money to live in relative comfort and I believe that I have an obligation to ensure that the community in which I live, whether at a local, national or international level, is the best that it can be. I do not sit there and complain that I have paid enough to fund the maintenance of the roads only on which I cycle, or the collection of my wheelie bins alone, or the single visit that the police have paid to my house when it was burgled. I recognise that I must pay more, because I can, to ensure that our world is a better place in which everyone can live in comfort, health and happiness, even if there is no direct benefit to me. Should I stop donating to schools, universities or medial research on a regular basis because they have already received funding from me through taxes? No, because sometimes more is needed than what is provided by funding, regardless of whether that funding is (objectively) correctly or incorrectly allocated.
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