If you haven’t figured out the game is rigged against the middle class in America by now then you never will. The middle class in America pays some fifty percent of their income in taxes and somehow stays docile. Half of what you “earn” given to the government.
And for so many programs, ideas, foreign nations, and expenses you’d never “approve” were you the US budget director, that it boggles the mind that the middle class isn’t in the streets in mass protest of where half of what they earn is going.
Whenever I am asked what the greatest invention has ever been in America I always answer “payroll deduction”. Meaning that the greatest idea the government ever came up with was taking the tax money from us all before we ever even see it. It is a sleight of hand that has beguiled the American people to feel as if they aren’t paying any taxes at all. You never “feel” ownership of something you never get. It is all numbers on a pay slip attachment. Or today numbers on a computer file.
Somehow the human mind is just naturally geared toward “take home pay”, ignoring the top line completely.
Oh the average middle class dolt will use the top line to brag to friends and family. I made a hundred-and-forty-thousand dollars last year. Of course after Social Security deductions, healthcare deductions, and state and federal tax deductions the actual “take-home” pay is about ninety-six thousand. No one ever stands by the Christmas Tree and says, “I had a great year Uncle Buck, took home ninety-six grand”. No, no, no, they use the one-hundred-forty-thousand number, it all sounds so much better.
I’ve said to anyone who will listen that if we abolished payroll deduction, and had Americans send in the money on their own, you know, at the end of each month calculate how much they are supposed to pay to Social Security, state tax, federal tax, and to write checks back out to these three entities and mail the money out of their own account back to the government, that in one pay cycle we’d have a riot and very real insurrection and overthrow of the US government.
I’ve said that to anyone who will listen, but no one listens.
And here is the insane part of this subject. After “Joe Average” middle class American clears this ninety-six grand guess what happens? He pays property tax, he pays sales tax, gas tax, taxes on every cell phone in the family, taxes on every streaming service, taxes on the car, taxes in every direction. Which eats another big chunk of pay.
The oil companies get a lot of shit for that three dollar a gallon fee but they aren’t getting all three dollars. In most states one-third goes to taxes. A buck a gallon every fill-up, once or twice a week, Mo’ taxes, Mo’ taxes, Mo’ taxes.
If “Joe Average” middle class American sat back and looked at all the taxes he actually pays out of that one-hundred-forty-grand in “earnings” he makes he would find that taxation is thieving half his earnings. I say “thieving” because “Joe Average” has no real say in how the money is spent. “Joe” doesn’t overspend the family budget, or randomly send family cash overseas to Ukraine and Israel, but his tax money ends up in both places.
The politicians are keenly aware that “Joe Average” is being taxed and that they are seizing half his income. Their only concern is whether or not they can push it to sixty percent, or even seventy percent without “Joe Average” finally revolting.
Today’s politician is like that old agent joke from Hollywood. The singer is on stage belting out a number and the agent is in the audience and says “look at that, ninety percent of my money up on that stage”. Politicians today see us all and think, it’s all our money, we will decide how much we allow you to keep.
The poor pay no taxes. Mitt Romney acknowledged as much when he blurted that out at a fund raiser, saying that forty-seven percent of Americans pay no Federal Income Tax. Which is true. We have an entire segment of Americans who have no investment whatsoever in our nation as a whole. The poor not only skate on federal taxes, our government created the “earned income tax credit” which actually pays out tax money back to people who didn’t pay anything into the system. They get an unearned refund. How nice for the poor. Pay nothing in, get something back. Only in America.
The rich have loopholes. Which is not to say they don’t pay their fair share, the top one percent pay some fifty percent of federal taxes in total. But the rich can afford to pay their taxes. There is so much left over afterwards you can buy yachts, Bentleys, and even fifty million dollar mansions in Palm Beach.
It is the middle class in America who is getting the shaft. Getting screwed over.
And yet some half of them will vote “D”, and endorse an even bigger chunk of their pay going out in taxation.
If you really stop and think about this, it is amazing. All you have to do as a Democrat is to scream “Bodily Autonomy” and every single female between the ages of twenty-one and forty will pull that “D” lever and allow over half their paycheck to be taken away. Cause, cause…..abortion!
As if their vote is disconnected from taxation completely. Struggling as a single white female in the big apple, NYC? Making big bank, two hundred K, and half goes to government? Blame those nasty Republicans, cause, cause, cause bodily autonomy!
My body, my choice. My paycheck, no choice, they take 1/2 away. Cause I’m a middle class social climber trying to rise up and out and living in an over-taxed blue city. But, but, but don’t blame the “D’s who control taking over 1/2 my paycheck, it is all those rascally Republicans.
You know that old saw about the greatest trick the devil every played is making you think he wasn’t real?
The Democrats through payroll deduction have convinced their voters that half their paycheck isn’t “real”.
“Poof”, it is gone before you even see it.
If I never had it in my own hot little hands, it didn’t exist.
I am making a hundred forty a year, oh what? I only get to play with roughly eighty-eight of it. Oh boy, I’m successful, I’m on the ladder and on the way up Uncle Buck.
When half of my effort goes to our wonderful government system.
At what point does the middle class rise up? Sixty percent? Seventy percent?
I can tell you this, we have Dem politicians right now serving in Congress who think all the money is theirs, same as that. agent sitting in the audience of the singer. And that it it up to them to decide how much of what you earn they let you keep.
They are trying to crush the middle class. They’d prefer a nation of poor, and themselves at the top running everything. Where we are all poor and reliant on their hand-outs. Which they think would make us a grateful people. Thankful to the elites they provide a living wage, a universal basic income.
They haven’t read much about the French Revolution if they think they can create a reliant underclass of grateful subjects who appreciate their elite leadership.
Wonderfully to the point. Anyone who ever thinks back to their first paycheck will remember reacting in shock when they saw the FICA deduction. Little did we know that it was only the beginning.