“...and half the nation favors slavery.”
It appears that a sufficient majority of the nation favors *tax* slavery, much as 5 wolves and 3 sheep would vote on what to have for dinner.
Even worse, with the fiat money, central banking system that every nation on earth employs, governments enjoy the self-appointed right to counterfeit private wealth by ‘borrowing money into circulation’ which is used to purchase goods and services. Even our own Fed openly sets a target of inflating the currency by 2% per year. Every single dollar they borrow into circulation is one dollar of value they did nothing to earn, and is nothing less than a proportionate dilution of the private wealth.
It is a parasitic system of theft from which there is no escape especially when coupled with an tax on worldwide income expressed in nominal dollars. If slavery is defined as theft of labor by the threat of deadly force, and where the slave cannot leave the master without his permission, this is the pure form of slavery yet devised by mankind.