

You Can't Keep Your Money Because It Belongs To The Government - elfinlike
http://www.professorhollybell.com/2012/12/03/you-cant-keep-your-money-because-it-belongs-to-the-government/

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runarb
I think the author has a funny perception of what a government is. The
government is not a truly separate entity. We the people are the government.

Then we have decided to create money to help bartering.

~~~
elfinlike
Same problem though. Other people deciding how much money an individual gets
to keep.

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lmm
It's only a problem if you have this absurd, artificial, ahistoric notion of
private property that seems to be popular lately.

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Torgo
You're right, when private property included people, nobody questioned the
right of the owner to take 90+ percent of what his serfs produced.

I'm being sarcastic of course, I know what you meant. But after you've crossed
over the 50% threshold, it feels more like your arrangement with the
government is to be milked for tax rather than consensual mutual agreement to
protect my rights. I'm working for the government instead of it working for
me.

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eli_gottlieb
Pretty much nobody has an effective tax rate of 50%.

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elfinlike
Here's an article that shows that in several states the total income tax rate
will meet or exceed 50%
[http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2012/12/06/study_50_...](http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2012/12/06/study_50_tax_rates_coming_for_california_and_new_york)

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eli_gottlieb
That's not income tax. That's income tax added to payroll taxes added to
capital gains taxes added to dividend taxes.

If you're making enough money from dividends and capital gains that you have
to pay taxes on them, great! Pay your fucking taxes and don't complain,
because most of us don't have investments at all outside our retirement
accounts. Ha, that's if we're even fortunate enough to _have_ proper
retirement accounts!

And payroll taxes are more or less flat, or even regressive, yeah.

I say all this as someone who already looked at his paychecks once and found
that after all the income and payroll taxes came out I was only getting 2/3 my
nominal salary in take-home pay. You know what that taught me? Negotiate for
_net_ salaries.

You know what it didn't teach me? To complain about how a fortunate person
like me has to pay into society to get the public sector out of debt and
enable it to afford to help society again.

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eli_gottlieb
This is such a piece of trivial dreck that I would downvote it if I could.
There's barely even enough of a real idea for the few paragraphs actually
written.

