I, for the life of me, can't understand how people can look at their W2s
01-31-2010, 01:58 PM
#11
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In Europe, most countries are socialist so of course they have high taxes.
Income tax was only instated in the US in 1862 to help support the Civil War. Before that there was no income tax. It was eliminated in 1872, before being reinstated in 1894 and then deemed unconstitutional by the supreme court in 1895 and again canceled.
In 1913 the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was passed and since then the income tax as we know it has been with us.
The federal income tax is responsible for the bloated monster we live under today. Infrastructure is a nice thing to have, but spending 5 times the design/build cost to run construction projects through bureaucratic red tape is hardly the way to get a good return on investment.
The federal government employs 2 million people directly, along with 1.5 million in the armed forces, and 850,000 postal workers. Aside from that 4.35 million employees you also have 2 other groups to consider. Those working for state and local governments and those with jobs directly created by the government. Jobs resulting from federal government contracts, grants, or mandates account for another 8 million jobs. State and local jobs combined employ about 4.7 million people. Altogether government accounts for around 17 million people out of the 100 million total workforce in the US. 17% is a very large amount of people working doing the government's bidding, nearly 1 in 5. Higher if you count state and local government contractors.
So what's the point? Less than half of those 17 million people have jobs that we actually need. If we trimmed things back to the minimum of what we need we would all pay a lot less in taxes. Simple idea, but tough to get done. We lived like that for the majority of our history though, so it can be done.
Income tax was only instated in the US in 1862 to help support the Civil War. Before that there was no income tax. It was eliminated in 1872, before being reinstated in 1894 and then deemed unconstitutional by the supreme court in 1895 and again canceled.
In 1913 the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was passed and since then the income tax as we know it has been with us.
The federal income tax is responsible for the bloated monster we live under today. Infrastructure is a nice thing to have, but spending 5 times the design/build cost to run construction projects through bureaucratic red tape is hardly the way to get a good return on investment.
The federal government employs 2 million people directly, along with 1.5 million in the armed forces, and 850,000 postal workers. Aside from that 4.35 million employees you also have 2 other groups to consider. Those working for state and local governments and those with jobs directly created by the government. Jobs resulting from federal government contracts, grants, or mandates account for another 8 million jobs. State and local jobs combined employ about 4.7 million people. Altogether government accounts for around 17 million people out of the 100 million total workforce in the US. 17% is a very large amount of people working doing the government's bidding, nearly 1 in 5. Higher if you count state and local government contractors.
So what's the point? Less than half of those 17 million people have jobs that we actually need. If we trimmed things back to the minimum of what we need we would all pay a lot less in taxes. Simple idea, but tough to get done. We lived like that for the majority of our history though, so it can be done.
01-31-2010, 02:23 PM
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You are either abusing the word "socialism" (like so many lately) or smoking crack.. if EU countries are not capitalist, i don't know who is
01-31-2010, 07:37 PM
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Aside from Sweden and Norway which are pretty much universally socialist, several other European countries have over half of the GDP "redistributed" by the government, which I suppose call it what you want, is socialism in my eyes. At least they have social programs to reflect the massive taxation, all we have to show for it is red tape and high prices of services if you don't qualify for government assistance.