re: #226 sagehen

Yes.

And for that $11k per person, you get:

the food you buy at the grocery store, and the water that comes from your tap, is safe. The money you put in the bank will still be there when you go to withdraw it. The only wars our nation fights are far away, there’s no air-raids in your town, there’s no artillery battles or foreign soldiers between your home and your workplace.

If you hold any copyrights or patents, they’re enforceable. If you own your home, you *own* it. The roads are pretty good. And you don’t have to pay tolls on most of them.

There’s free weather information, hurricane and tornado warnings, rebuilding help if one happens to hit your area. Airplanes are mostly safe. If you need a part for the engine you’re rebuilding, and it’s not in-stock a couple miles away, they can get it delivered within a day or two. The phones work. Electricity works. If you get hit by a bus, somebody will come to scrape you off the road and deliver you to an emergency room, and they won’t even ask about your ability to pay until you wake up all stitched and medicated and on the mend. If you get in trouble in a foreign country, there’s somebody from your government whose job it is to help you.

If your boat flounders in the surf, there’s someone whose job it is to rescue you, at no charge. If you get lost on a mountain, there’s someone whose job it is to rescue you, at no charge. There’s an internet. If you get some weird new sickness that nobody ever had before, there’s a whole big building full of people whose job it is to find a cure and tell your doctor what to do.

etc.

I’d say we’re getting pretty good value for the money.

Ok, so the math is right. Now factor in revenue from Corporations, tariff’s fees, fines etc and the actual number of people paying taxes (households).

Even if 1/3 of the population pays taxes and we don’t factor in non-individual income tax revenues, social security, medicare collections, that would be $33,205.12 per person.
right?

Not unreasonable for some people, Very unreasonable for many.

My point is that I don’t understand why there is a deficit. The IRS should be able to collect the equivalent of 11K per person with all the different income sources.

There are so many ways of looking at this.