[f7ebc20c97]

So the income tax is essentially a ~30% transaction fee. Imagine a world without that deadweight loss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss#Deadweight_los...

[tagami]

Yeah it’s inefficient, but that “deadweight loss” gives you the common infrastructure required for a modern society (roads, police, fire, et al)

[tengbretson]

In the US nearly all of your examples of what we get in return are funded by sales and property taxes

[HideousKojima]

Specifically, roughly 70% of the federal budget is spent on the military, social security, medicare, and medicaid.

[stuxnet]

Not to mention a gigantic military budget including all the alphabet agencies... all funded by that inefficiency.

[f7ebc20c97]

Perhaps there is a way to pay for these things besides taxes? Unthinkable!

[adastra22]

Costs are deducted though, so it is only 30% of the profits.

[f7ebc20c97]

Technically everything is a cost, though, right?

[adastra22]

These things are precisely defined in accounting terms though. Whatever you bartered away had a cost basis, and whatever you got in exchange has a fair market value. The difference is income.

[f7ebc20c97]

What if you live in a closed bartering community of abstract economic business entities and everything is a cost basis for something else?