Most of us would be rich if we had what the government’s taken from us through the years. From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:
I got an email from my old friend Dick not too long ago, who is maybe the smartest guy I ever met, and I’ve known a lot of smart guys. He was coming through town and we decided to meet at our old hangout, Jay’s Bar.
Dick was from California, but he came through Chicago every now and then back in the 90s, and he often joined our cypherpunk hangout in the back room at Jay’s.
At the appointed time, I met him in front of Jay’s and we walked in together. It was still afternoon and there weren’t too many customers.
Jay was behind the bar, working a few hours (he’s retired now) to get things ready for the evening rush. His face lit up when he saw Dick. “Hey, mister Viking, I not see you for a long time!”
Jay always called Dick “the Viking,” which he really did resemble back then. I left Dick and Jay to talk for a few minutes and sat down at the other end of the bar and ordered a couple of drinks from Jamie, the daytime bartender.
Some years ago I wanted to know exactly how much goes to taxation. It is very difficult to know, because besides what is taken directly every time a product is purchased the taxes that industry is paying is paid by the consumer. When I was making the calculations it was easier to find out how much money was in circulation. I took that figure and calculated the Federal budget to be 67%. Somewhere during the next year the government was going to take that money out of circulation from someone. Then add sales tax, that money is taken from taxpayers, state income tax, property tax (even you own property you pay it in rental fees), and numerous other little fees that are difficult to discover. I came up with 80% of every dollar earned was garnered by some government agency somewhere. Then I took the budget (got a copy from my congressman) and pulled out the operational costs of only the constitutionally authorized needs (courts, defense, congress, etc.) and even assuming there were no excessive costs there that could be cut the entire operation could be funded on import duties, as it once was. Your income would go five times further than it does now. Minimum paying jobs could finance people’s needs and desires. Unlikely that can be changed at this point.