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Well, government at all levels spends 37% of GDP. Since that is the amount people are or will be paying for, we should consider that any single expense taking up 37% of one's budget is usually considered large and costly. By the standards we use to judge anything else government spending is high, and thus so is the cost Americans pay to support that spending. I might add that a lot of posters here are using figures from individual income tax, which is far from the only tax people pay; the chart cited by the OP itself implies federal individual income tax is lower than food, housing, and clothing combined. The figure cited by the OP and shown in the chart includes all federal, state, and local taxes, not just one tax.
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Originally Posted by pvande55
Including taxes therein, the two largest categories of spending are housing and transport. And taxes support both.
Most people have no support from the government for their housing, and since everyone pays property taxes on their housing that comes out to a large negative number for all but a small minority. As for transport, the transport costs exist and are so high precisely because those particular costs are not supported by taxes.
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You need the military and police to protect you, you need roads to drive anywhere and traffic control. Even food, a lesser category, depends on tax dollars for farm subsidies and USDA inspection.
For the military Americans only "need" to spend 1-2% of GDP on it like they did before WWII and Japan, Brazil, Australia, and China still do. All of these countries were/are obviously capable of defending themselves. Now perhaps you could use more for a better military, but we could say the same for transportation, yet we don't count building national high-speed rail, doubling freeway lane-miles in most cities (which would bring them up to Kansas City's figure) while putting all urban freeways in tunnels, and building the Bering Strait crossing as a needed expense even though all that would obviously be better transportation.
State and local governments spend $96 billion on police protection (source) and the federal contribution is less than $10 billion, so we'll just round it off to $100 billion; that's 0.6% of GDP. All levels of government spend $160 billion annually on transportation; that's 1% of GDP. Farm subsidies are of questionable net value to say the least so I wouldn't count those, and USDA food inspections cost $1 billion (source, p. 125)., which is 0.006% of GDP.
So, collecting all of your valuable government services together in one bundle we come to an upper estimate of what all levels of government need to perform all these vital functions: $577 billion, or 3.61% of GDP. That hardly explains why the American public are paying $5.6 trillion* more than that figure for governments today. The fact is the government services that are currently directly benefiting the entire population as opposed to certain sections are, measuring by spending, a small fraction of what the government is doing. The mathematics show that if those most popular functions (ex-entitlements, which are another kettle of fish) were the only thing governments did virtually no one would complain about taxes and these threads wouldn't exist.
If you ask me the entire government operates under Washington Monument Syndrome, saying the functions one likes can only be financed by a certain amount of money, which in truth is mostly diverted to other functions.
*That's the spending amount, which will have to be paid for by taxation, debt, and/or inflation, even if the tax burden is lower than that today.
Last edited by Patricius Maximus; 04-21-2015 at 09:32 PM..
Which is why my retirement will be living in a plane hanger at a drop zone and when I decide its time to check out, simply not pulling my rip cord and laughing straight into the ground.
Correct, I do not think 17.4% is that high. I not liberal, but even if I was, your accusation is void is logic, since I am a taxpayer myself.
17.4%? I personally pay an effective rate (when you include FICA) of about 30%. That doesn't include property taxes. Thanks for keeping the Republican Party in business though. As long as the American left holds the nutty view that 30% is low, you can expect the GOP will always be around
It means housing, food and clothing is affordable, and people are spending the rest of the money on something else. Hopefully they are saving too. Let's not pretend taxes are high, because they are not.
No, it means somebody is casually conflating the poor, the working class, the middle class, the UMC, and the rich. Half of all low-income renters spend at least half their income on shelter, which means that by American standards, housing is not affordable to them.
17.4%? I personally pay an effective rate (when you include FICA) of about 30%. That doesn't include property taxes. Thanks for keeping the Republican Party in business though. As long as the American left holds the nutty view that 30% is low, you can expect the GOP will always be around
17.4% is the average effective rate. I voted mostly Republican, but I appreciate your continued efforts at dividing everyone, and everything into two opposing camps. I guess I am one of the blessed ones, who don't need to cry about having to pay the services I benefit from. Can we cut spending? Military? Social Security? Sure, but neither party will actually make a difference in that area, so good luck promoting one party over the other as your savior.
17.4% is the average effective rate. I voted mostly Republican, but I appreciate your continued efforts at dividing everyone, and everything into two opposing camps. I guess I am one of the blessed ones, who don't need to cry about having to pay the services I benefit from. Can we cut spending? Military? Social Security? Sure, but neither party will actually make a difference in that area, so good luck promoting one party over the other as your savior.
17.4 + 7.65 (FICA) + 5 (average state income tax)= ~29%.
Also, do you think the average effective rate is low because 1/2 of the country (ie democrats) don't pay taxes. Yeh, I think so. I'm a CPA. I do this topic for a career. You aren't going to win this argument. Sorry
And yet the argument here is that we pay more in taxes than in housing, food and clothing put together
Because we do.
I posted the facts. Anecdotes do not refute the facts.
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