Sunday, August 29, 2021

The American Political Class: Taxing Us Into Economic Slavery While Giving Us Nothing In Return

Far too many times we have made the case that the American class does only two things very well: taking and spending a lot of our hard earned wealth via excessive and burdensome taxation and then spending those tax dollars on government programs and projects that don't work anywhere close to what those same politicians promised. In just three recent posts, we found this to be true:
  • A recent research report found that the Federal government annually loses $129 billion in its social support programs to criminal fraud.
  • The cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco together put together $1.5 billion in taxpayer wealth to try to help the homeless populations in their cities and audit reports and reality have shown that they failed miserably in doing so, resulting in far fewer housing units than promised being established and those that were established were done so at an astronomical cost per unit.
  • And of course, the biggest waste and failure of government expenditures, the 20 year fiasco in Afghanistan. The American political class placed our armed forces in the country in 2001 to rid the country of terrorist cells and remove the Taliban from running the country. Twenty years and one trillion tax dollars later, the Taliban are back in control and the country is now the home to terrorist cells.

Another post discussed a study done by using Department of Labor Statistics tracking and found that in many states across the country, long time residents of those states pay almost 50% of their earnings to taxes at all levels of government. Think about that relative to my original home state of New Jersey: the study found that long time New Jersey residents can expect to handover over 49.5% of their earnings to cover their local, state, and Federal government tax assessments and that they will pay, on average, almost a million dollars during their working lifetime in taxes. I can guarantee you that those New Jersey taxpayers are not getting a million dollars back in benefits.

Paying half of what you earn in taxes is a form of economic slavery. Plus, paying so much in taxes reduces your economic freedom which impacts your quality of life. Think about what a New Jersey resident could have done with that near million dollars in taxation:
  • They could have sent their kids to better schools.
  • They could have started their dream business.
  • They could have contributed more to their favorite charities.
  • They could have gone on better vacations, ate better meals, lived a better life.
Those options would have been better than having government entities and the politicians that operate them waste that money on bad programs and lose it to criminal fraud.

Charlie Reese was once a writer at the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. He once wrote a long essay which laid out how only 500 or so members of Congress have screwed up this country and have increased the taxation burden on all of us with few benefits in return. We have already posted that essay in the following post:


What we did not include in that post was his comprehensive list of taxes that the American political class has imposed on us over time. Remember, many, if not all, of these taxes did not exist a hundred years ago. And you know what? The country and government got along quite nicely without these taxes.

But over time, the American political class, in their never ending quest for power and control, came up with dozens and dozens of new taxes, all of which sounded good at the time, and most, if not all, never lived up to the benefits we were promised but the taxes never went away despite those failed benefits.

Review Mr. Reese’s list and count how many of these taxes you pay every year:
  1. Accounts Receivable Tax
  2. Building Permit Tax
  3. Federal Capital Gains Tax
  4. State Capital Gains Tax
  5. CDL license Tax
  6. Cigarette Tax
  7. Corporate Income Tax
  8. Dog License Tax
  9. Excise Taxes
  10. Federal Income Tax
  11. Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
  12. Fishing License Tax
  13. Food License Tax
  14. Fuel Permit Tax
  15. Gasoline Tax
  16. Gross Receipts Tax
  17. Hunting License Tax
  18. Inheritance Tax
  19. Inventory Tax
  20. IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
  21. Liquor Tax
  22. Luxury Taxes
  23. Marriage License Tax
  24. Medicare Tax
  25. Personal Property Tax
  26. Property Tax
  27. Real Estate Tax
  28. Service Charge Tax
  29. Social Security Tax
  30. Road Usage Tax
  31. Recreational Vehicle Tax
  32. Sales Tax
  33. School Tax
  34. State Income Tax
  35. State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
  36. Telephone Federal Excise Tax
  37. Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
  38. Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
  39. Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
  40. Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
  41. Telephone State and Local Tax
  42. Telephone Usage Charge Tax
  43. Utility Taxes
  44. Vehicle License Registration Tax
  45. Vehicle Sales Tax
  46. Watercraft Registration Tax
  47. Well Permit Tax
  48. Workers Compensation Tax
Unfortunately, since Mr. Reese came up with this list, politicians have created new taxes. Just in New Jersey there are two new taxes:
  • If you sell your home in New Jersey, you pay a tax at your house closing.
  • Also in New Jersey, you have to pay a climate tax based on the area of your property that is non-porous, e.g. the house itself, the driveway, and any other paved areas.
I am sure that other taxing jurisdictions came up with other, non-listed taxes. So, how many of the above taxes have you paid for over the years?

The bottom line is that we have been economically raped by the American political class over the years and received virtually nothing in return. And the sad thing is this will continue to happen until we vote career politicians out of office or impose term limits on them, politicians that always seem to get very rich while in office while the rest of us face almost slave levels of taxation.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

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