How much money do you need to make to spend

[raulus]

Originally Posted by ValKehl

Nicolo, I see that you include self-employment tax. I may be naive, but I consider the self-employment "tax" to be your required "contribution" toward your eventual Social Security and Medicare benefits, as opposed to an income tax.

I suppose we can debate every tax, and whether we receive benefits from it that are commensurate with the price that we pay. In the case of social security and Medicare, I guess we’ll see whether I end up receiving any benefits when we get there. At the moment, I have some real questions in my mind.

Certainly some will suggest that even federal and state income taxes are the price that we pay to live in our society, and we should gladly contribute to such a worthy cause.

Whether you feel like it’s a good deal or a poor deal, it’s still a tax that we have the privilege of paying. As one politician famously said about another tax, “call it bananas if you want; it still felt like a tax to anyone who had to pay it”.

Personally, every dollar that I pay to the government sure seems like a tax to me. And so I’m not afraid to label it as such.