That's the line they feed us, for sure. But if you ever actually added up federal income tax, state income tax, state and local sales tax, Social Security tax, property tax and assorted taxes for any instance in which you might come into additional money (capital gains, interest, prize winnings, inheritance, etc. etc. etc.) most Americans would probably be shocked to learn what real percentage of our income we actually pay to the government.

No - they just pretend taxes are lower to justify not using the tax money responsibly to provide social services.

Between federal income tax, social security, and medicaid my taxes come out to about 40% off the top. Then I have to pay state sales tax, local taxes, and in many states people also have to pay state sales tax.

No see when people produce things they need to get taxed a lot so we can pay for the things they need like prisons, cops, anti homeless architecture, and the military.

But when people collect stock dividends or realize gains they only need to get taxed a little to cover the contracts they get to provide squalid food to public schools, fill textbooks with revisionist history, and prevent humanities education.

And of course the true patriots who get loans against the majority stake shares that they manipulate to steal the retirements of prolls and bribe politicians are welcomed to write those incurred debts off.

The biggest part of that is social insurance. It's called a tax (FICA) in America to make people hate it.

And here's the fun part: there's an annual cap which is about the same as a construction worker's salary. Once the cap app is reached they stop deducting it. So high earners only pay it for the first few pay periods of the year.

I remember the first time I earned more than the cap. I thought somebody had made a mistake when my take-home pay went up mysteriously in the middle of the year. So imagine: Bezos and friends are all done paying FICA in the first ten or fifteen minutes of the year.

That's the best part: We don't know! There are so many taxes and fees and BS spread over so many things that it is very difficult to calculate the total percentage accurately. 40% seems high, but it's probably not far off when you add everything up.

Multiple layers of tax:

• federal income tax

• FICA

• state income tax

• sales tax

• property tax

According to Tax Foundation, looks like it's actually about 30% on average: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day

Lower taxes (1-5%) is if you make more than 750,000 per hour or daily or weekly.