tax structure

We have seen the "ten men eat in a restaurant" explanation of the tax structure many times, and in some ways it makes sense. The wealthy do contribute a lot more to the running of our government than the poor.

Here's something that may be overlooked. Do the wealthy use more government resources than the middle class?

Obviously, the poorest of the poor use a lot of government resources in the form of various welfare programs.

But getting back to the lower-middle class: a person who cannot afford a car probably is responsible for less damage to the roads than one who does own a car, even if our carless individual rides the bus. A person who does not travel by air does not contribute to the need for a TSA. A person who does not attend university does not draw on the rather massive state subsidy that goes into higher education (I think at present, most public-university students pay less than 50% of what it costs to educate them).

Does it begin to balance the equation? I sort of suspect not, but I've never seen any analysis of the question. It just occurred to me a moment ago that having more money enables a wealthy person to take advantage of more of the services that the government offers. I suspect that if you plotted "Net burden on government resources" on the Y-axis and some measure of relative wealth on the X-axis, you'd get a graph that looked a bit like the letter U--even if it was a very shallow and wide U.