If we had anything like equality of taxation in this country, it would completely wipe out roughly the first 41 million of 151 million total wage earners. That's how bad federal spending has become.
In 2011 the first 37.4 million individual wage earners had net compensation of up to $10,000. Add in those making up to $15,000 and you get up to 49.6 million wage earners. So the 41 million mark is reached roughly somewhere between the $11,000 and $12,000 per year level of earnings.
For fiscal 2011, federal spending came to $3.6 trillion, and US population came to 313.85 million people.
If we taxed everyone equally as the US Constitution called for originally (you know, "direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers", which is one reason why we must have a census every ten years to begin with), all that federal spending in 2011 divided by all those millions of population comes to . . . wait for it . . . $11,480 per person.
So federal spending in this country is so bad that we'd have to reduce the lowest paid 41 million Americans to what amounts to slavery, to be fair, because they'd owe everything they make to the government. Everything.
"How much government is spending is the true tax", Milton Friedman once said (quoted here). And also the true tyranny.
