Thursday, March 20, 2008

Maybe the Old Days Weren't So Bad

Check out what your taxes were in 1913. Notice the entire 1040 was only 4 pages long in 1913. Today, the 1040 Publication is 155 pages! Comparing 1913 to 2007, I paid over 8 times more in personal income taxes. Throw on the FICA taxes and the difference gets even more obscene.

So what benefit have we gotten as taxpayers with our higher income taxes? I am not sure, but I do know that government is much bigger. We certainly have a better military. We have better roads, but that is really a function of the gasoline tax (Oh yeah, another tax!), not the income tax. Have we got better education? In many cases I would say it is very debatable, but then that is a function of local property taxes (yet another tax).

What we have gotten is a bigger and more inefficient government. This is the ideal machine for taking (aka stealing) tax dollars and creating little to no value for society. I am sure John Adams would be appalled at what has become of the government he worked so hard to create.

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