I recently tried to figure out what Brianna and I paid the government last year. It turns out it’s impossible to calculate.
$ 5,124.00 Federal Income Tax
$ 4,828.72 Social Security
$ 1,129.32 Medicare
$ 1,211.00 Property Tax
$ 120.00 Wheel Tax (2 cars)
$ 599.04 Gasoline Tax Estimate*
$ 0.00 State Income Tax $ 4,162.50 Sales Tax Estimate**
$ 17,174.58
Don’t forget the tax on your phone bill, the tax on your cable bill, the tax on your utility bills, the fees you pay your school, the fees you pay to renew your license, the money you put in the parking meter. Who knows where the nickels and dimes go?
I’m confident the government charged me and Brianna over 17 thousand dollars last year.
But don’t take my word for it. Try it for yourself. See if you can come up with a more accurate picture of what was slipped out of your pockets.
*(Federal Gas Tax 18.4cpg + TN Gas Tax 20cpg) x 15 gal x 2 cars x 52 weeks
**about 45,000 spent x .0925 sales tax in Knoxville, TN
Ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment specifies that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Translation: Thousands of federal programs are unconstitutional and should either exist at the state level or not at all.
How about looking at it this way? The US government presently collects revenues that are about 25% of the GDP. Roughly, the US government collects 25% of every transaction. If I pay you a dollar, you get 75 cents and the US government gets 25 cents. You pay John Foss the 75 cents, he gets 56 cents and the US government gets 19 cents. John pays Gilby 56 cents and Gilby gets 42 cents and our helpful friends get 16 cents. Three transactions and the US already has close to 60% of that dollar and Gilby only has about 40% of it. Another three transactions and the US has 82 cents of the original dollar. After the tenth transaction our wise friends have about 94 cents of the original dollar. Look around. They’re doing splendid things with it.
The 10th amendment has to be the most ignored and abused of all the amendments in the Bill of Rights and otherwise. In instances where the Brady Bill was struck down as unconstitutional, it was the 10th amendment that was cited because it was so much easier and more obvious than the 2nd amendment.
How about not posting all this personal financial information in a public forum at a time when identity theft and internet fraud are on the increase? I write as one who spends his working life investigating fraud.
So the government got 94 cents of the dollar, but Kevin (“you”), John, and Gilby got $1.73 of it with the other 7 payees in the total 10 transactions also getting some of it.
No. But you can get some of the products or services that were purchased during those transactions. You could buy some crack from Foss or a gun from Kevin or hire Gilby to burn down Billy’s garage for example.
Now do the harder calculation of benefits received from the government since it’s hard to determine a speculated value for things like having a road to drive on, not having been robbed or having a road to drive on, not being killed in a foreign invasion, or many of the other quality of life increases you have because of government services that may have been paid to someone else that provide only indirect benefit to you.
Sadly, as Tennessee public school teachers our pay and federal taxes are already a matter of public record. Ridiculous, I know.
Notice what a small fraction of my money was for wheel and gas tax
I’m a do-it-yourselfer in this area. Remember I like firearms. People get robbed all the time. Do they get a tax refunds?
Notice most of my federal taxes were for social security and medicare, not military support. I’m also a do-it-yourselfer when it comes to foreign invaders.
I’m a school teacher. Of course I’m not against all tax. I want the government to provide for education, provide for the common defense, provide a system of justice. The problem is it’s trying doing to do and control so much more than it’s mandated to in the constitution. The constitution evens says don’t do anything your not told to do in here. (Ammendment 10)
The new 1 Trillion dollar stimulus will cost each of the 304 million Americans about $3300 each. For a family of 4 that’s an additional 13 grand EXTRA! Think how much better the economy would be if every family of 4 had an extra 13 thousand more dollars.
Kevin is a Tennessee Public school teacher, so he’s on Taxpayer Welfare. Along with the other teachers in that state, he is being charged with Conspiracy to Defraud the Taxpayer while Providing Services Far Below Par. THe evidence is:
According to U.S. KIDS COUNT data (Annie E. Casey Foundation) Tennessee ranks
42nd overall indicators of child well-being
47th infant mortality
45th low birthweight babies
41st teen birth rate
36th child death rate
45th high school dropouts
42nd teens not attending school and not working
29th percent of children with parents without full-time year-round employment
37th children living in single parent families
36th percent of children living in poverty
Still, since we know that there are good teachers in Tennessee and we don’t know that Kevin is not one of them your blanket accusation simply isn’t cricket.
Look up Conspiracy Law, and you’ll see how irrelevant that is.
kevin lives off our tax $.
Of course he doesn’t pay sufficient to use the roads, because big oil has always been covertly subsidized.
He can’t keep out foreign invaders.
Kevin and the other teachers are basically getting our tax $ for a near zero contribution to society. Tenn Teachers should get the salary and benefits of babysitters in Tenn.
