"53.9%? It ain't enough. We're shootin' for 66%."
Posted on 07/16/2008 10:22:30 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Cost of Government Day By Grover Norquist
This year Americans have worked until today, July 16, to pay for the total costs of federal, state and local government. This is 197 days of the year consuming 53.9 percent of national income. Over the past
22 years, in only four years (1982, 1983, 1991 and 1992) did Cost of Government Day fall later in the year.
Federal spending will consume 83.7 days. State and local spending will consume 50.5 days effort. Federal regulations cost 4l.7 days and State regulations cost 20.9 days. The spending data is precise, the regulatory burdens are understated.
Compared to when George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 200l, federal spending now consumes an additional three days of your life in 2008. The burden of federal regulations increased by one day after having remained stable as a percentage of the economy for the previous four years.
State and local spending increases cost Americans six additional days since 2003. Since the election of more liberal governors and state legislators in 2006, state spending has increased by 13.5 percent relative to the general economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
And I am reminded that when the income tax was first proposed, people were ridiculed for suggesting that, if enacted, it could someday grow as high as 4%!
Instead of “cost of government” maybe it should be referred as how much is taken away from the average working American and shamelessly given to others in return for their votes.
This is all totally unacceptable and unconstitutional. It is truly sickening. This “legalized” consfiscation of proptety is just as immoral as a criminal thief.
Or else Warshington will have a big party, and the remaining jack from the big bust will be used to hire more IRS revenooers & enforcers to squeeze even more jack out of the American serfs.
Woo-hoo!
...and those people were mocked as "Kooks," "Taxtards," "Nuts," etc., but in the vernacular of the day.
If conservative groups really cared about winning the day, they'd be sponsoring "polling" and advertisements asking the trivia question:
"What was the top federal personal income tax rate 100 years ago?"With today's educational systems, I bet few Americans would come close.
The way to look at it is how many days of your life are being confiscated by the government. Some could equate this to being in jail.
Hauser’s Law.
no matter how high the tax rates are the government will only take in under 20% GDP. Even when the top marginal rate was 90% in 1950, 60% in 1960, and 35% in 2004, the revenues were around 20%.
America's Berlin Wall
...not since 1913.
A previous 2% tax on the rich (>$4,000) was struck down, so the 16th Amendment was passed and ratified.
The federal side of the equation (and the state side for me, in California) does not take into account deficit spending. So I’ll effectively be working X days next year to fund this year as well.
I guess Americans have really turned into pu$$ies and will just accept whatever big government shoves down their throats.
The founding fathers and signers of the US Constitution would be shocked and aghast at the size/taxes of Govt.
Insane isn’t it?
Apparently this isn’t enough. Americans seem to want more taxes, more government and less liberty.
We live in a Tyranny of the Stupid.
ping
If conservative groups really cared about winning the day, they'd be sponsoring "polling" and advertisements asking the trivia question:The answer is 'zero'."What was the top federal personal income tax rate 100 years ago?"
With today's educational systems, I bet few Americans would come close.
but...where does is say that the federal government’s role is to make some citizens provide for other citizens’ food, housing, education, health insurance, etc? Where does it say it is supposed to provide for art, radio stations and the myriad of other “worthy” causes.
While it has the power to tax, if it was spent only on common defense & general welfare, they wouldn’t be taking as much from us by force. The 16th amendment did NOT provide for a socialist state.
Shameful, at what point will people say “ENOUGH”. Seems as though the citizens of this great country just don’t care. In the very near future we will have Nationalized health care, energy and probably banking. I was born a free citizen of America but will probably die a slave to the American Socialist State.
Sad days for our once great nation!!!
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed freepmail me or post a message here.
Ping!
I didn’t realize we had crossed the 50% threshold. That’s pretty alarming. The problem, everybody wants a piece of the pie; as soon as one state/industry/company/etc. get special favors, everybody else wants them, and it all comes with the deadweight of government overhead.
We should focus on repealing the 16th Amendment.
But wait Gondring, we’re told by the MSM these days we all have iPods and air conditioners and they didn’t have them in 1906 so life is WWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAY better for the under and middle class. We’ve just about there on the gods and clods system the Founding Fathers envisioned (sarc off).
Not all of us :)
No, some of us will go down fighting them and as this next civil war begins and starts draining the entire nations focus and resources, our pals in Russia and China will make there next debut. The fifth column idea works now. It didn’t work as good in the fifties, too many Patriots who fought in WWII and was watching each other’s backs. The commie’s investment in propoganda in the 1960’s for the counter-culture is now paying off in spades. But I daresay the Russians and Chinese will rue the day when they begin the next step of there game. They must have forgotten we will atomize the entire world before they get to run this nation.
Do you recall this in your history book which is not longer taught?
Yep..although there had been federal income taxes at times prior to that, it had been found unconstitutional.
I think that when a good system gets set up, it degrades over time...like a ratchet. If there are moves to return to the better system, they are small...the moves toward socialism are more numerous.
I hope that the inevitable fight to return to liberty occurs while I’m young enough to help fight it and see the other side.
"consumes an additional three days of your life" says it pretty well...but your way is stronger.
They would be labeled whiners and unappeasables by this government, and then jailed for being subversive radicals.
Entrenched big gov career politicians would spend hours attempting to discredit them.
That's a somewhat different issue. It's one thing to bitch about the cost of government, but when he simultaneously advocates policies that massively raise the cost of government Norquist graduates to singular hypocrisy.
Of course, one could argue that by marrying an Islamist one is also raising the cost of national defense, but that's a bit of a stretch in an individual case.
Agreed. But since when does that stop people? :-)
MIght have something to do with paying it to a then “Superpower” that nobody wanted to be a part of.
Don’t get me wrong.. I hate it as well as you... most conservatives hate the situation but they love their America.
No, it is slavery; something done away with in a rather large, bloody, costly civil war.
Maybe it is time for another one.
Those two positions are completely consistent.
Taxation with representation hasn't turned out all that well, either.
In taxation, we have tyranny of the majority, a situation the founding fathers feared. The rats are openly buying votes promising to take money from the productive part of society to reward their friends and supporters. The majority has realized that they can just vote themselves someone else's money. The situation is not far from mob rule.
The only problem with this situation is that the productive part of society will resist and reduce production. The rats think that the productive part of society will just accept their fate and continue at the same level of production. Anyone with an option will respond to the rat punishment with evasion and less production. As long as the public thinks there is a free lunch, the rats will continue to dominate elections. The public has now become deeply skeptical of markets and economic freedom so the rat message of economic tyranny will win the day at least in the short term.
Agreed.
Buy lots of ammo...today.
I believe we shall see it in our lifetime. The world has accelerated. Bad things happen very swiftly in an interconnected world but then so do good ones.
While I agree generally with your statement, as I do love America,...I can only say that "freedom" has been the very foundational stone that has made this country as great as it is. When we are taxed by a bloated, socialist, globalist federal (and state) government to the point well beyond 50% of what we work so hard for (with the threat of prison if we do not pay),...then we are no longer a "free" people.
Something has to give.
I suppose it’s better than under sharia, which may be what Mullah Norquist really wants.
I am surprised the earth over their graves doesn't look rototilled the way they must be doing cartwheels...
In today's political climate, they would be branded "haters", "kooks", and "right winged extremists", be besieged by the BATFE/FBI/IRS, and half the rest of the alphabet, and derided, even by alleged Conservatives on internet forums.
Why?
Consider the response to anyone who would propose a return to the Gold and Silver standard, slashing the size of the federal government, a vast reduction in military posture abroad, the securing of the borders, removal of invaders--by force if necessary, the reinstatement of the death penalty including public hangings, advocate privately owned artillery and armed vessels, an end to abortion... the list goes on forever...
“the government.....consumes 59.3 percent of your national income...”
and some of those liberal democrat phalluses suggest that it’s still not enough.
(isn’t it amazing that liberals acquire amazing wealth after taxes are raised and stay raised?)
IMHO
btt
Mullah Norquist...anyone that thinks this traitor Grover Norquist gives a shitte about the US Taxpayer is living in a dreamland. Norquist is an open border pro-Islamic mole sitting at the table with the ‘Islam is Peace’admin of ‘Compassionate George’. I am so sick of these types I am getting a pitchfork!
Yet, if one holds to the original intent of the Constitution, the general government STILL has no legitimate authority to tax the People outside its areas of enumerated jurisdiction.
Yet most people rationalize it because they can't seem to see past their pet issues like 'better schools', more police', etc.
They'd never admit what a dismal failure the schools are, or that police have become defacto military units and revenue collectors instead of doing the serving and protecting of our grandfather's generation.....JMHO
They also insist on taking all the issues separately, instead of connecting the dots and see how issues interconnect.
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