On Fri, 2 Sep 2005, Michael Torrie wrote:
On Fri, 2005-09-02 at 15:42 -0600, Ross Werner wrote:
probably pay between 30-40% of their income to the government. More
socialist countries have a much higher rate, sometimes above 60-70%. But
Americans historically paid far less than 30-40%.
Having lived for 20 years in Canada and then here for more than 10, I
can say that when all is said and done, we pay almost the same amount
for all our services as they do.
I'm not saying that Socialism is more expensive than Capitalism or that it
is less desirable. All I was saying is that a good measure of how
socialist a country is can be found by looking at the level of taxation.
And, if one accepts that this is a decent measure of how socialist a
country is, one can look at the level of taxation over the history of the
United States and map quite successfully whether we're becoming more
socialist or not. Of course, whether or not becoming more socialist is a
*good* thing is quite an important issue as well, but not one I was
addressing :-)
~ Ross
"There is death in the hane."
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