Is it moral to be paying more to Government than spending on your family? Reformatted, emphasis mine:
America spends more on taxes than on food, clothing, and housing combined. A LOT more.
- Housing: $2.3 trillion
- Clothing: $0.4 trillion
- Food: $1.7 trillion
- TOTAL: $4.4 trillion
- Federal Taxes: $3.4 trillion
- State and Local Taxes: $1.8 trillion
- TOTAL: $5.2 trillion
Do you think, as a country, we’re getting our money’s worth from all that taxation?
SOURCES: https://www.bea.gov/iTable/index_nipa.cfm
Table 2.4.5U. Personal Consumption Expenditures by Type of Product
https://taxfoundation.org/tax-freedom-day-2018/
To answer the two questions (mine, the article’s), the answers are Yes and No. In what should be a free country, why are we essentially indentured workers feeding the ever enlarged craw of government? We were built on the idea of a limited government that was supposed to protect our Liberties. Chief amongst these Liberties are:
- Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
NH Constitution: “[Art.] 2. [Natural Rights.] All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights among which are, the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting, property; and, in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by this state on account of race, creed, color, sex or national origin.”
The pursuit of Happiness was originally the pursuit of property – the real measure of wealth back at that time. The NH Constitution puts it more plainly (and bluntly) and specifically calls out private property as it should with the “happiness” clause not being primary but in a summary mode. Life first, Liberties second, Private Property third; those constitute and make up Happiness.
Our current GDP is approximately $19 Trillion dollars – let’s round up to make the math easier: that means Government consumes 25% of that GDP. Historically, up until the “Progressive Era” spending (when “Progressives” started to gain the reins of government) started in the late 1920s, Govt accounted for around 3% of GDP (H/T:
From 3% to 25%. Let’s go back to the original premise – Liberty and the pursuit of Private Property. If Government is taking 25% of your total income from all levels of government, isn’t that NOT protecting to your right to seek it and to have it? If I have $100, and have to give $25 off the top, that means I am left with only 75% in which to “seek Happiness”. Sure, with such a tilted Progressive income tax, the “rich” pay a much higher amount (you know, that old Marxist saw of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs) – sly dogs those Progressives behind the 16th Amendment:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. Passed July 12, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913.
There you go, key to the engine and off they went. Nowadays, the Dems are going full Socialist – they DEMAND a higher amount. Once again, the Rs merely act in the shopworn “Big Government? We’ll manage it better” without decreasing the size of it.
I’ve gone longer than I wanted – I’ll stop with this self-evident truth:
The Bigger the Government, the smaller the citizen
And the smaller our Liberties to decide for ourselves for it Govt is taking more and more from us, that diminishes the choices we can make for ourselves because our wealth is diminished. And isn’t that the full measure of Liberty – the quantity and quality of choice?
(H/T: Facebook)
