If you paid a single dime in personal income taxes, you paid about one-third of your income in direct taxes:
(This includes Social Security "contributions," which the Court has ruled are just another tax, and the Congress has no duty to give any of it back to you when you retire -- and are matched by more money taken out of your paycheck by your employer, who is required to match your "contribution.")
If you bought a new car for $25,000, you paid anywhere from $10,000 to $13,000 in corporate income taxes, which were levied on all the big, bad businesses which created the various parts of your car, and were passed on to you (because businesses have no income to pay corporate income taxes other than what they get in the price tag paid by consumers). YOU pay all corporate income taxes. About one-half of the price you pay for everything you buy reflects taxes and other government regulatory fees passed on to you by businesses which are attacked by government.
This means that the piece of the pie you get to keep for yourself is the one-third slice, while the government takes two-thirds.
Now consider another fact: For every dollar the government takes to "help the poor," about 50 cents remains in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats, while only one-half gets to the poor. This is the average for government "services" after "administrative overhead" is taken out. Some bureaucracies are more wasteful, some are less wasteful, but no government agency is as efficient as a competitive business or voluntary charity in the free market providing similar goods or services.
The government wastes half of everything it takes.
This means that if all government programs were abolished, and all taxes were cut, your disposable income would be 3 times larger than it is today. You could donate 1/3 of your income (only one-half of what the government currently taxes from you) to charities -- who would do a better job of helping the needy -- or you could buy government services on the Free Market for half the price the government now charges.
That would mean your disposable income would be twice as large as it is today, and your society would be better off: the poor would be better cared for, the roads would be better maintained, the next generation would be better educated.
Now consider this hypothetical:
If you could check a box on your IRS 1040 tax return that would refund every penny you paid in taxes (whether direct or indirect), on the condition that you promise to donate one-half of the refund to charities and organizations that benefit the public, would you check that box?
If you checked that box, would you keep your promise and donate one-half of the rebate to worthwhile public benefit projects -- or would you spend the money on middle-class bling? (HDTV, SUV's, RV, boat, cruise, etc.)
If other Americans were given the opportunity to check the box, would you trust them to keep their promise?
If the answer to those two questions is "no," then you live in a nation of slaves, not the "land of the free." You live in a nation of selfish people who cannot be trusted to keep their promises. You live in a nation whose people will not do good things unless threatened with violence by the government.
Will the government make us a free people?
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