How much blood can a leech suck?
Boorts spells it out, just in time før April 15:
Total federal income taxes collected last year: $932 billion. That works out to $6,650 per employee.In addition to income taxes, the federal government collected another $1.286 trillion in taxes, mostly Social Security taxes.
The total state and local tax burden amounts to $1.14 trillion.
The grand sum here -- paid by employees and proprietors -- is $3.358 trillion. That's $3,358,000,000.00
This works out to $24,000 per employee.
In terms of Federal expenditures you have:
* $495 billion for national defense.
* $272 billion spent by the federal government for the purchase of goods and payment of employees
* $1.69 trillion sent to someone else. $1.69 trillion in income redistribution.
Put another way, if everyone paid their fair share in taxes, many Americans would have incomes in negative figures.
Comments
Posted by:
Posted on: April 14, 2006 09:16 AM
I guess that is why "fair shares" are calculated by percentage of income earned, and not by "per person" as these numbers have been derived.
Posted by:
Posted on: April 14, 2006 10:09 AM
I am a product of public education (which I believe Boortz digs at in the article), so maybe you could tell me...what does Boortz mean by income redistribution?
Does "income redistrubtion" include building rodes, student loans, scientific research, farm subsidies, public education, etc?
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: April 14, 2006 10:43 AM
I notice that in political discourse, theories of equity or justice are not usually specified (as in fact I didn't specify). So "fair" generally defaults to "what I want", and we'd might as well just strip the moral veneer off of what is generally greed.
Six guys share a table at a restaurant. What is the "fair" way to split the bill?
Not so easy, is it?
Their first example would correspond to laissez-faire capitalism, the 2nd to the system I intimated where each citizen pays a per capita share of the cost of government (which would be quite workable in a minarchist state...children could be charged to their parents, or exempted). The 3rd scenario is a system-neutral application of private charity, and the last is socialism (though a more accurate description would be that the 4 poor guys, or their leader, draw down on the 2 guys with money and make them pay the bill.)
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: April 14, 2006 10:47 AM
Well, no-name hider, you'll have to ask Boortz yourself what he means by income redistribution. I would consider most if not all of your examples to have an income-redistribution component, whether or not that was the primary intent.