umm.. if you're smart enough then it isn't that hard

Making lots of money is easy, but you have to learn (legally/politically) not to pay taxes on it, so it will be yours!

The problem is that government takes 72 percent of the average worker's money in taxes. About half of that value is hidden in the purchase prices of the products you buy (and pay all the business taxes through).

So the more you ask government to do for you, the harder it is to work to get money. People are working 4 times as hard to make ends meet as they would have to work if there were no taxes. And if we "get" national health care, workers will have to work 10 times as hard.

For every person who doesn't work, someone else has to work twice as hard. Nothing is free.

Once again, you are spouting quite untrue, stupid information. BACK UP YOUR CLAIMS!!!!! GEEZ man.. how many times do I have to tell you.. no one is going to believe anything you ever say, because one, it's always ridiculous, and two, you never back it up with factual data!!!!

I did so once. I will do it again. But I am not going to send you to websites, because you would just discount them.

Instead, I want you to walk through the figures on your own income, the same as I did with mine. Get all of the figures from your governments, and ask businesses what portion of their product prices are their own taxes passed on to consumers (this is hard to get).

First of all, figure your direct taxes. If you are a typical worker, your total direct taxes will look something like this (these are my actual values from 2005):

- Federal income tax: 13 %
- Social tax (SS, MC, SSI, SMA) 7.5 %
- State income tax: 3.4 % (varies by state)
- County income tax: 1 % (varies by state)
- Real Estate tax: 2% (varies by locality)
- Sales tax: 6% (varies by state)
- Trash, sewer, and storm water tax: 1% (my city - required use by law)
- Miscellaneous taxes (utility, personal property, township, etc): 2.1%

Total personal direct taxation: 36 %

(Utility tax is the taxes tacked onto utility bills, not the utility use charges. But if government requires everyone to use THEIR monopoly utility (e.g. the trash collection, sewer, and storm water above) as opposed to letting people choose service providers, then it is a tax.)

Note that I didn't include gasoline tax, auto license taxes, or royalty taxes, since individuals are not required by law to use them.

But there are also hidden taxes:

Because your employer has to pay payroll tax on your job, your salary was reduced by 7.5 percent of your current salary (it is 93 % of what it would have been without the payroll tax).

Note that the business can't absorb this out of profit, because the tax is much larger than the profit. And if you don't want to count it as a reduction of your income, you have to count it as an increased cost of producing the product your employer makes. It costs you the same amount either way.

Subtotal: 43.5%

But now we must consider how much of the purchase price of each product is hidden tax.

The business must pay taxes too. And because the taxes are much larger than the profits, the only other source of money to pay the tax is to raise the price of the product. The taxes paid by each typical business are about 20 percent of its gross income (not profit) from the product. But there are at least 3 businesses the product passes through from raw materials to retail sale (manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer). This assumes the motor fuel taxes for transport are paid by the wholesaler. When these taxes are compounded, they equal around 50 percent of the product price.

That's right. About half of the price you pay for products is tax, because too many governments want to tax business too much! The tax does not come out of profit, but increases the price the business charges for the product. This can happen because all businesses selling the same product are subject to the same tax.

So YOU pay all business taxes on the products you buy.

Since 43.5% of your own income is direct or payroll tax, the rest is your real disposable income, 56.5%. But about half of that is tax, or 28.25%.

Total: 71.75%

I rounded it to 72% in the post, because the amount is approximate.

If you don't believe that, then compare the figures found in the back of the federal 1040 tax booklet. The social taxes and payroll taxes are 15% of the total economy, and 32% of the federal income. The remaining 68% is taxes you pay, either through direct taxation, or through increased product prices.

Since the 32% of the tax revenue is 15% of the entire economy, the entire federal tax revenue is about 47% of the economy. Adding in state and local taxes brings it up to about 72% of the economy.

So only 28% of your income actually went into the production of the products you buy.

The federal statistics hide this, by counting some of the same money twice. They add business income to personal income to get Gross National Income (GNI), forgetting that the personal income comes from payrolls taken OUT of the business income. Using the GNI, they "demonstrate" how taxes are a much smaller portion of the economy.

Liberals refuse to believe these figures, because:

1. They worship government, and can't believe government would do this to them. Instead, they blame the employers for not taking the hidden taxes (which are larger than profit) out of profit.

2. They believe in the disproved Keynesian Economic Theory. According to Keynesian economic equations, government can create wealth by spending money (it cant), and some believe that, if government becomes large enough, people won't have to work (this is preposterous).

If the Keynesian Economic Theory were true, the late 1970s would have been prosperous, rather than an economic disaster. This period showed that the Neoclassical model is much more accurate. But under neoclassical economics, the only source of wealth is work.

If you don't believe me, then show me that I am wrong.

Yes, that would be nice.

Okay, I'll assume that you didn't lie about these stats.

No, because you would have to pay for it anyway idiot.

You moron.. even if that is true, then it is already deducted when you receive your paycheck.. so you just added it AGAIN to the total percentage.


That is by far the dumbest thing I have ever heard of... and of course, you provide no evidence at all for this.. so, I will assume you made it all up (since this is what you usually do).


Wrong.. Idiotic.. Stupid.. you obviously know nothing of economics.

You are such a dumbass!! Keynesian economics believe that the government should do something in order to fix the business cycle.. previously, it was believed that the business cycle would auto-correct. And yes, the government can create wealth by spending money. It's called fiscal policy. But, you're a dumbass and you wouldn't know that. This is how fiscal police works: There are two options.. 1.)Increase government spending which increases employment which causes consumer and business spending to go up, thus increasing GDP. The other way is to raise taxes.. which is political suicide, and the politicians would never do it.

You seriously are the stupidest person on the planet, aren't you? In 1975 we switched to the view of the monetarists.. which is what most people are today. Monetarists basically believe that the economy is in the hands of the federal reserve, and monetary policy.

Neoclassical model?? WTF? This came prior to Keynesian economics, and they believed that the economy was self-correcting.. These people held the belief that the business cycle would always bounce back.. However, in 1929, this model was proven inadequate b/c it did not fix itself during the Great Depression. The government was forced to intervene, hence the evolution of Keynesian economics. Today, the neoclassical model is garbage, and no one believes in it.


Okay, so.. we have just proven that you know absolutely zilch about economics.. Do you possess intellect in any field at all? Or are you just an all-around stupid person?

- I wouldn't have to pay the storm water tax if the government hadn't squandered the money originally earmarked for it on art.

- I wouldn't have to pay the sewer tax if government didn't require sewers. I would have a septic tank. But government sees it as a way to get more money to waste on trivia.

- We used to drive to the dump with our trash for free.

The name calling subtracts from your argument. And it's not the same money. The government takes 7.5% from you, and makes the employer pay a matching 7.5%, for a total of 15%. But you end up paying it yourself, either as a loss in your paycheck, or as an added cost which does not go into producing the product, but which is included in theprice of the product.

I hit the %$#$# time limit, so I have to do the second half again.

The name calling subtracts from your argument.

And it's not the same money. The government takes 7.5% from you, and makes the employer pay a matching 7.5%, for a total of 15%. But you end up paying it yourself, either as a loss in your paycheck, or as an added cost which does not go into producing the product, but which is included in the price of the product.

Your credibility is slipping. Argumentum ad hominum (name calling and abuse) is also a fallacious argument mode. very illogical.

That's classical economics. Neoclassical economics believes that government should do something, but that Keynesians are doing it wrong.

That's NOT creating wealth. That's unbalancing markets so it looks like there is more wealth.

Creating money and creating wealth are two different things. Only work can create wealth.

You don't even have the Keynesian model right. That is CUT taxes, not raise them. Raising taxes causes a recession in both Keynesian and Neoclassical economics.

More illogical argument?

That is still part of Keynesian economics. And when the Democrats took over both Congress and the White House, they piled fiscal policy on top of the monetary policy. The result was 18 percent inflation and 15 percent unemployment.

That's the Classical model. The Neoclassical model says that the economy needs correction, but timed differently than the Keynesian model, and for different reasons.

This is because the people running the federal reserve were also playing the stock market, and adjusting the monetary policy to make their stocks rise. The entire reason the depression lasted so long was that the dollar was too large, and there were not enough in circulation. But we didn't know enough about monetary policy to know that then.

The Keynesian fiscal policy also helped prolong the depression, because it was in overshoot.

People believe the Keynesian model only because it the teachers unions demand that it be taught in public schools.

I have a minor in Economics.

The Neoclassical model believes in using fiscal and monetary policy together to quell the business cycle. Liberals try to stop the business cycle at the boom side, which is not possible.

Here is how fiscal policy works in Neoclassical economics:

- Fiscal policy is applied in a short burst to increase the output of the economy when it is heading downward, nto when it is at the bottom (which is too late).

- If fiscal policy is applied in a continuous action, it causes oscillation. The economy gets better for a while.

- The fiscal policy, combined with the better economy, causes inflation after a delay. The money market is slow to react, producing the delay.

- The inflation then causes a recession, counteracting the fiscal policy. The change in the national debt by the fiscal; policy also adds to the recession, again after a delay.

- The recession removes the inflation after a delay.

The purpose of fiscal policy in Neoclassical economics is to stop the oscillations, not to increase the production value. So it must be timed to act in the opposite direction of the motion of the economy, but a quarter cycle earlier, because of the delays.

Neoclassical economics also predicts other effects which are observed, but which are not predicted by Keynesian economics:

- Markets can never stay in an unbalanced state. They always return to balance, causing side effects to government policies.

- The side effects of policy always work to undo the policy, but usually after a delay.

- Government can't create permanent jobs. The side effects take away more jobs elsewhere.

- The minimum wage is undone by the side effects of inflation and unemployment.

- Price ceilings cause shortages.

- Price floors cause surpluses.

- The economy must oscillate around a natural center point. Only one thing can permanently move the center point to a better economy, and that is a permanent reduction of taxes. Everything else just increases or decreases oscillation around the center point.

All of these effects have been observed over the last 80 years. Keynesians blame "greedy businesses" for the side effects that ruin their policies. Instead, it is the result of the side effects of Keynesian policy itself unbalancing markets.



If you can't do better than spout the union beliefs your 12th grade teachers parroted, I suggest you take some real university econ.

I agree with MidiMagic, the name calling is very immature! Most countries in Europe take about 50% taxes from you, and people have gotten used to it. For that we get free healthcare too!