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Taxing the “Rich”
November 24, 2014 incentives

Since 2006, as my real income has fallen by 25%:

  • I have paid about $45,000 in property taxes to our local communities and school districts
  • I have paid over $50,000 in state income taxes
  • I have paid over $110,000 in federal income taxes
  • I have paid over (via not just my share, but the real incidence) $200,000 in payroll taxes
  • I estimate that I’ve paid over $35,000 in sales taxes (likely higher)
  • I’ve driven myself about 150,000 miles. My cars have averaged about 25 miles per gallon. This means I’ve burned 6,000 gallons of gasoline in my car (ignore my snow blowers and lawn mowers and chain saws). At about 43 cents per gallon on average excise taxes at state and local level, I’ve paid over $2,500 in gasoline taxes.

This says nothing about how much higher my costs are due to regulations. Environmental regulations are though to cost 3% of GDP per year, or about $1,400 per person per year, so one can only wonder what the real costs of regulation are, and what the embedded excise taxes are that I pay on things over and above sales taxes. For example, I drink something like 200 pints of beer per year. at about a nickel per beer, this is another $10 in taxes per year. And so it goes.

So, a lower bound estimate for what I’ve paid in taxes, during a time when my real income has “stagnated” and actually fallen by 25% is $465,000. I would note that I am nowhere near the top 1% of income nor do I have any legitimate prospects of reaching that airy ground. I would note that we have two children who do not go to “free” government schools. We probably claim as little a share of government “benefits” as does any family in our situation, which is to say, none – just whatever our share of “public goods” we are getting from our government such as use of some roads, shares of national defense, drug safety, food safety, and so on. Given my affinity for competition protecting me and providing almost any of the things that I could ever imagine wanting, despite you wanting to claim that I get SOME benefits from the FDA, USDA and so on, I do not believe I would voluntarily pay anything near what I pay them to have the services they deliver me delivered to me – I am pretty confident Wegmans and Tylenol and everyone in between would have a strong incentive not to kill me.

Note, my wife resumed working three years ago and these figures do not include any of her obligations.

  1. Does anyone believe that I have received anything close to $465,000 of real, actual, benefits for this $465,000? Even assuming that as part of civil society half of this should be transferred to others, how much of my $465,000 do you really believe ended up helping people who need it? Compare that to what you think I personally do to help people that need it (it may be nothing, by the way).
  2. Think about ANY amazingly awesome government program that has happened in the last 9 years or that may end up coming down the pipe in the next 9 years. Do you think that any of those programs have delivered even a tiny miniscule fraction of $465,000 of value? For example, take ObamaCare. Its proponents believe that my premiums will fall by $2,5000 per year or some such nonsense. Of course my premiums are higher today than they were when the ACA was passed, but maybe they would have been $2,500 higher. Who knows? In any case, compare that $2,500 per year in “savings” with the annual taxes I am paying … it’s nowhere close. How many of you would pay $50,000 per year to save $2,500?
  3. Think about ANY of the awesome government programs that have been passed or will be passed in the future. Compare how much ANY of them could possibly change the life of me and my family as compared to even a ONE TIME reduction in my taxes. Imagine I’d been given a one-year reprieve in taxes – something in the $50,000 range. What would I be able to do with $50,000? We could save it and pay for both of our kids to go to a government university 12 years from now. We could replace every single window in our house, insulate every wall in our house, replace the old heating system in our house, and purchase some serious exercise equipment for our house. How life changing would that money be for our family as compared to anything our overlords do for us?
  4. Imagine I had not been taxed at all during the last 9 years. And imagine that I had the cash today and put it in the stock market. What would it be worth by the time I am 70 years old? If the market returns on average what it has since 2006, then I’d end up with just about $8 million from the tax savings alone. About half of that would be from the foregone social security taxes – do you think $4 million would be enough to provide for my retirement and elderly health care? How do you think that compares to what the overlords will have waiting for me when I am 70? Remember, this is assuming that I’ll pick up and keep paying taxes between now and then.

I am so very thankful for all of the wonderful things our government has done for me over these past 9 years, it has really made the “pain” of my lower real wages so much easier to bear.

"3" Comments
  1. Your compensation, and that of every other wage slave, can’t be considered to include taxes. If you’re supposedly getting $35 an hour, in reality you’re only getting $17 since the difference is being spoken for before it ever gets to you. Gullible Americans can reflect on their high wages but they’re really not that much higher than anyone else since they never get to spend the money themselves. In addition to taxes, Americans pay an incredible percentage of their income for two things, exorbitant housing prices, be it rent or mortgage, and transportation, mostly automobile, that leaves little for discretionary spending or saving.

  2. If you had $50,000 you could make a down payment on a Tesla, WC. It might make it to Saranac Lake, where you would surely find some place to plug it in, and when you return you might get invited to those great dinner parties, saving even more, enough for a sitter.

    Regarding real estate taxes, I think once you pass $1 million in 1990 dollars, you should be exempt, having paid for two of your own kids and at least a dozen others. OK, it is not just school taxes, but maybe the county could do its share by eliminating the county Health Department, for example.

  3. On point number 4, it has been suggested by some that a portion of one’s payroll taxes, at the option of the taxpayer be directed into an account which one would own and be invested in a limited way in equities, like an index fund of one’s choice. No naked options on corn futures, or even covered calls, and no investing in Uncle Benny’s llama farm.

    Whenever this has been suggested, there have been howls (can Harry Reid howl?) that we should not allow people to gamble on the stock market, which crashed when Hoover was President.

    I think all members of congress should be REQUIRED to put ten percent of their gross income, plus another ten percent of their present wife’s and former wives’ income into an index fund, with a clause that makes them or their estate hold it for thirty years. Then all of them would have, as they say, skin in the game. They might think twice about demolishing other people’s lives. To be fair, if their children wanted to buy naked puts, that’s their business.

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