According to the Tax Foundation, this year U.S. citizens will pay more than $4 trillion in total federal, state and local taxes. That sum “is $152 billion, or 3.9%, more than they will spend on housing, food, and clothing combined. The data shows that from 1929 to 1980 tax liabilities grew from $10 billion to $751 billion. But expenditures on housing, food, and clothing still was more than that final sum, growing from $41.6 billion to $775.7 billion.
The trend held until it started to flip in the early ‘80s, then it really changed for the good in 2000, when “the gap between tax collections and expenditures on essential goods reached a maximum in 2000, when Americans gave 19% more to the government than they spent on these items.”
According to the Tax Foundation, in 2012, the US citizens will work 107 days just to pay for federal, state and local taxes.
