It depends on how the taxes are collected.
I support a single tax system on natural resources. I view natural resources (land, oil, natural gas, coal, etc.) as collectively owned. No one labored to make the Earth, and therefore an individual (by virtue of having the sharpest swords or luck of being somewhere first) does not necessarily have exclusive rights over such things. That does not preclude private management and control. I believe in private management and control, and in a large sense to most people things would not seem different.
Currently in the United States many people pay a property tax. The conventional property tax is generally two taxes in one. One falls on buildings and the other on the land itself. Instead of taxing buildings and improvements on the land, I advocate just taxing the land itself.
Why? Because if you tax buildings you raise their cost and discourage improvement. We want people to improve the land, to make it more useful, because that's good for the environment and the economy. As people improve their homes and work toward weatherizing them, installing solar panels and the like, they are rewarded by paying lower taxes. If enough changes can be made to improve the land, then you're effectively paying no taxes at all.
Furthermore, it discourages urban sprawl. It is more economical to build up than out, because we're taxing parcels of land rather than improvements to the land. Since it encourages urbanization, it also encourages shared transportation systems like subways, which reduces the number of cars on the road, which in turn reduces pollution.
However, outside of the environmental benefits we can also move away from taxing labor and production. This encourages more labor and production, increasing the number of jobs available, and spurring economic investment and growth.
When it comes to other resources such as oil, natural gas, coal, gold, etc. you can think of it similar to Alaska's oil dividend. The money can be used to fund social safety nets, be given out directly to citizens, or used to fund other critical areas of government. I'd leave such up to the elected representatives of the states.
Obviously, this type of tax does not lend itself to raping citizens of their wealth, and fueling insane amounts of government. It would have to be accompanied by bringing government down to its more core and essential roles, reducing it in areas that are not needed. This also has the side effect of making government more effective and efficient, because the bigger something is the more bureaucratic it is, which in turn means it is more wasteful, which in turn means it requires more money to function, etc... it's an awful cycle.
This would not be the only economic reform needed. Modifying the currency to a system of demurrage is also critical. Basically, all this means is that money loses its value over time. In a natural economy, a barter economy, let's say Bob, you, and I want to trade something. Bob is a farmer who grows wheat. You are a chicken farmer wanting to sell eggs. I'm a fisherman wanting to sell my daily catch. In a barter economy, there is no money.
If I want to sell my fish for wheat, you want to sell your eggs for wool, and Bob wants to sell his apples for a goat we're all screwed. No one is going to get what they want. Hence, money enters the equation. It becomes an intermediary form of exchange. Money itself has no actual value, but instead is used as a medium of exchange to get what we want.
The problem is how money works. In our monetary system money, like the things we want to exchange, has value. As a general rule of thumb, the longer you hold onto money the more valuable it becomes (inflation being the exception to this rule). In our current economic system when people hoard their money, we try to get people to loosen their grip on money by inflating our currency. Since inflation makes our money less valuable, people spend their money.
This is all well and good... except inflation itself has negative consequences. (I can go into more detail here later.) In the natural economy if people are hoarding their money what happens to Bobs apples, your eggs, and my fish? They all spoil. The apples, eggs, and fish are the things of real value, and yet if we cannot get rid of them fast enough they become useless to us and others.
A system of demurrage fixes that problem. It puts money on par with virtually everything else. In effect, a hoarding fee is charged, and the money you hoard is de-valued. So let's say at the end of each month the money you're holding loses 10% of its value. No one wants to hold something that loses 10% of its value (just like you don't want to be holding rotten eggs). Thus, you have incentive to spend, loan, or invest that money into something that has actual value. That could range from a work of art, to putting money back into a business, to adding improvements onto your home, etc. These things have real and tangible value, whereas money itself does not.
The key to understanding this is that interest is the cause of the income gaps we see in our society. Interest causes money to flow upward to the top. In effect, money is almost like a magnet, attracting more money over time. That money flows from the hands of the middle class and the poor to the rich... and it even flows from the rich to the super rich, and from their hands to the ultra-rich, and so on. It's like a giant pyramid scheme where all the money is flowing directly to the top, and eventually like a pyramid scheme it all collapses.
In a system of demurrage it is no longer practical to give yourself a 1 million dollar bonus. At least not unless you plan to spend that money very soon, because by the end of the month your 1 million dollars becomes $900,000 dollars. Therefore, it is more practical to give yourself stock options in your company as payment, which then in turn rewards you for taking that money and placing it back into the company itself.
Since jobs are more plentiful in the system, workers have options. They can leave your employment for a more favorable boss. Once they get enough experience they can even leave your employment and start their own competing business potentially. Therefore, it becomes more beneficial to pay your employees well as they themselves are an investment.
Demurrage has the opposite effect of interest. Instead of causing money to shift upward in the pyramid it causes it to spread out more equally in the system. Yes, there will still be rich and poor, but the gap would shrink dramatically and the poor would be much better off.
This is just a tip of how I'd handle social safety nets. Not by creating more government, but by reforming the system itself. For more information on the general idea behind demurrage read
http://www.appropriate-economics.org/ebooks/neo/neo2.htm">The Natural Economic Order by Silvio Gesell. It is free online. I'm sure you'd have a question on banks and such, and that's all handled in the book.
The post is already too long to go on further. :P
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