You definately summarized the situation much more eloquently than I did. These sorts of things put into perspect the nature of the relationship between a US Citizen and their government.

Its all fine so long as your income is high. Once you stop working, you're at the whim of forces beyond your control, irrespective of whether or not you've been a 'good citizen' and fiscally responsible. That's a reason why that sort of power needs to be guarded at the end of a knife blade, rather than meaded out over any trivial circumstance.

Once that power has been given (see Income taxes), you will never get it back. That's why the federal government and local governments spending habits is always forward moving, always outpacing inflation. At this point we spend billions of dollars per year paying the interest on our nation's debt, yet our spending is increasing. Its an anchor around the necks of the people that is just getting more burdensome year by year. Even now our economy just isn't keeping pace with foreign economies and its bound to get worse before it gets better.

When you go to save money, you take it out invisibly in small increments and you never miss it. Later you look back and see all you've saved. The government taxes in the same way, slowly, gradually, until they have all the money and thus all the control. Even now one of the bigger reasons why Congress won't relinquish the tax system is it provides them fine grained control over the market. Why exactly do we want them to have fine grained control over the market? They have no business meddling with such things.