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by pascalxus 2939 days ago
I agree that we need police, courts, roads and sewers. But those are very tiny percentage of your taxes. The vast (over 70%) majority of taxes goes towards: Defense, social security, medicare and medicaid. And although those categories contain some worthwhile things, there's also a lot of waste in there. You really should look into where all this money goes before you assume that we need it.

And there is a point at which it becomes theft, it's just a question of where: 60% of income, 85% of income, 95% of income? As it is right now, in the US we currently pay 38% of our incomes to the govt: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-spendi...

And if you live in New York or CA, you can bet, it's much much higher than that, both because the state taxes are higher and because of the higher COT which results in being at a higher federal income tax bracket.

Now, you may not see those income taxes all in your pay check because some of it gets paid by your company: those are lost wages that could've gone to workers. For consumer products, People think that they don't pay taxes that corporations pay. But, in a competitive economy, it's you, the customer that ends up paying for it. There's many many more.

Let's say 50% of your income goes to taxes. It's actually worse than you think. Because with the 50% that's left over, your buying power has been further reduced because any labor you purchase is taxed, which raises the cost of that labor by that amount. That's how you end up in a situation where you can't even afford to work because Day care costs nearly as much as your net salary.

1 comments

My claim is that taxation is not theft. I’ve not stated any position on whether or not taxation is too high or whether or not our spending proroties are good.

I’ve merely stated that government is necessary, requires money, and that taxation is not theft. Is there any part of this that you find objectionable? If so what part?

EDIT: According to this website in the U.S. we clearly haven’t reached the taxation is theft level so your point doesn’t seem to be apt.

https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-revenue.htm#ind...