In 2020, the Government will take:
15% of your income for Federal tax
6% of your income for SS
1% of your income for Medicare
5% of your income for state tax
3% of your income for property tax
2% of your income for sales taxSo, 32% of your Income is already gone
Damn 2020
— Libertarian-In-Chief (@ToddHagopian) January 1, 2020
“No politician is ever benefited by saving money; it is spending it that makes him.”
H. L. Mencken
“The common denominator in all government activity is the use of force: Government either forces you to do things, forces you not to do things, or forces you to pay for things.”
Doug Newman
“It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.”
Robert A. Heinlein
Doug Casey’s Note: I’ve been emphasizing the importance of making the world your oyster for many years. Most people—and this is especially true of North Americans—tend to stay pretty much where they were born. Acting like medieval serfs or even vegetables rooted to where they were planted. Neither is a good strategy for a person. Certainly not today.
You want to broaden your horizons and keep your options open. Like Gert Mulder.
Continue reading “On Becoming a Permanent Tourist, a Perpetual Traveler, and a Prior Taxpayer”
International Man: Before 1913 there was no income tax, and the United States was a much freer country. Initially, the government sold the federal income tax to the American people as something only the rich would have to pay.
Jeff Thomas: Yes, exactly. It always begins this way. The average person is always happy to see the rich taken down a peg, so this makes the introduction of the concept of theft by the government more palatable. Once people have gotten used to the concept and accept it as being perfectly reasonable, then it’s time to begin to drop the bar as to who “the rich” are. Ultimately, the middle class are always the real target.
International Man: The top bracket in 1913 kicked in at $500,000 (equivalent to around $12 million today), and the tax rate for it was only 7%. The government taxed those making up to $20,000 (equivalent to around $475,000 today) at only 1% – that’s one percent.
Continue reading “The Greatest Swindle in American History… And How They’ll Try It Again Soon”
“Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors… and miss.”
Robert A. Heinlein
“All government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer.”
Murray Rothbard
“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”
John Adams
“The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice.”
Henry Hazlitt
From Birch Gold Group
Retirees have enough potential problems to deal with when it comes to providing security for their retirement, including the disturbing fact that 42% of Americans may retire broke.
You can see in the GoBankingRates chart below that 61.6% of retirees have less than $100,000 saved for retirement, which is far from the amount some experts claim is needed on average:
Continue reading “The “Hidden Tax” That Could Hurt Your Retirement Savings”
“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe
The quote above captures the current Fourth Turning perfectly, even though it was written more than a decade before the 2008 financial tsunami struck. With global debt now exceeding $250 trillion, up 60% since the Crisis began, and $13 trillion of sovereign debt with negative yields, it is clear to all rational thinking individuals the next financial crisis will make 2008 look like a walk in the park. We are approaching the eleventh anniversary of this crisis period, with possibly a decade to go before a resolution.
U.S.—In a stunning new poll, Americans indicated they are OK with a 70% marginal tax rate, indicating that since the hefty taxes would only apply to other people and not themselves, they are alright with the extremely high taxes.
“See, a lot of people think the proposed 70% tax rate is way too high,” said one woman in California. “But what they don’t understand is that the 70% is only on really rich people—in other words, not me. Let’s crank it up to 90, 100, or 110% even. I don’t mind in the slightest.”
Continue reading “Poll Finds Most People OK With Raising Taxes On Other People”
“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”
Robert Heinlein, Logic of Empire
“‘Need’ now means wanting someone else’s money. ‘Greed’ means wanting to keep your own. ‘Compassion’ is when a politician arranges the transfer.”
Joseph Sobran
“The state always poses a greater threat to society than whatever problem it purports to solve.”
Lew Rockwell
“Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
George Orwell
“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
Winston Churchill
Guest Post by Eric Peters
There’s one very persuasive reason arguing against the purchase of any new car – regardless of make or model:
The property tax you’ll be forced to pay . . . forever.
Ot at least, for as long as you “own” your car. Which (like your home) you don’t really – because you’ll never stop making payments on it. Not to the bank – but to the government.
Guest Post by Michael Snyder
The left wants to raise your taxes, and most Americans are okay with that. I was shocked by the numbers that I am about to share with you, and I think that you will be shocked too. Once upon a time, being labeled as a “tax and spend liberal” was one of the worst things that could happen to a politician. During the presidential election of 1984, Walter Mondale was very honest about the fact that he wanted to raise taxes on the American people, and Ronald Reagan absolutely crushed him with that. In the end, it was one of the greatest election night landslides in history. But this time around we could potentially see the opposite. If things go badly for Trump, we could actually see a “tax and spend liberal” turn the map mostly blue in 2020. I know that sounds very, very strange, but the latest poll numbers show that the American people strongly support raising taxes on the wealthy.
Guest Post by Simon Black
Every so often throughout history, the peasants grab their pitchforks and come for the elite. It happens when the wealth gap grows too extreme… when people feel like they are getting left behind, with no opportunity to advance.
Central banks around the world have printed trillions of dollars over last decade, and pushed interest rates to zero, and sometimes below. And all of that stimulus went directly into the pockets of the wealthy.
Since 2009, the world’s billionaires more than DOUBLED their combined wealth. All the billionaires in the world had $3.4 trillion in 2009. By 2017, they amassed $8.9 trillion.
Mark Zuckerberg multiplied his wealth almost 20 times over, from $3 billion in 2009, to over $58 billion in 2019.
$8.9 trillion is a massive, almost incomprehensible amount of wealth.
