Serf or Slave? The Tax Man Cometh - Intellectual Takeout

Serf or Slave? The Tax Man Cometh - Intellectual Takeout  link

• On April 13th I sent a whopping check to the federal government and a lesser one to the government of Virginia. The total of these two checks equaled about 25 percent of my income.
• Throw in sales tax on food and goods, the tax on gasoline and heating fuel, the property tax I pay through my rent to my landlord, sundry other taxes, and the money I now pay annually for a business license—yep, you read that right, a guy sitting at the dining room table tapping a keyboard is a business—and I’m guessing I pay 35-40 percent of my money to local, state, and federal government. 
• Throw in the hidden tax of inflation, which has risen now to staggering levels, and I’m probably waving goodbye to 50 percent of my earnings.
• That’s interesting, because as several online commentators point out, a medieval serf paid his lord between 25 percent and 33 percent in labor or in crops. Most of us, particularly those in the dwindling middle class, shell out more than did those European peasants to their masters through the many hidden taxes that Americans pay...