Pockets Picked?

Henry Holiday, Rework by DL5MDA

Tax Freedom Day is April 21st

It's the day when the nation has earned enough money to pay its bills, not counting the annual budget deficit. April 21st is the 111th day of the year, or 30.41% to be precise.

If you throw in the amount borrowed each year, Tax Freedom day advances to the 6th of May, 34.5% of the year gone by, the great beast Leviathan devouring a third of everything in sight.

Slaving Away

If I worked every day it would take me 67 days to pay off my tax bill, since I don't work every day that works out to my personal day of freedom being April 9th, so I'M A FREE MAN!!! Well at least until next year.  There are 251 workdays this year and and 27% of mine will be used to pay the piper.

Or maybe not. Throw in the state and you can add another 20 days to that total. 35% of all work I will accomplish will fill another's coffers. I won't be free until the 7th of May after over four months of servitude.

In counter-revolutionary France every man had to give three days labor or its monetary equivalent to be allowed to vote.  In Colonial Madagascar every free male commoner had to pay 25 Francs or give fifty days of labor (for which he was paid 25 centimes a day for food).  In the Spanish Philippines it was forty days for each male between 16 and 60, although in 1884 it was reduced to 15 days. In Romania prior to 1864 it was fourteen days. In 1797 Paul I of Russia declared 3 days to be normal and sufficient.

Bellatores, Labores, and Oratores

 

 Here below, some pray, others fight, still others work . . .

from the beginning, mankind has been divided into three parts,
among men of prayer, farmers, and men of war . . .

Isn't a truly wonderful thing to be free of feudalism?

 

Cheer up peasants the corvée is almost paid.

On a more positive note, I guess I have arrived.  The White House released the president's tax return last week. It shows he and the first lady paid $98,169 in taxes for 2013 on income of $481,098. That's an effective tax rate of 20.4 percent. Both yours truly and the president pay the same effective tax rate.  Funny, that doesn't feel like any sort of achievement, maybe I should find out who his accountant is.  NPR