>As soon as you have enough money to afford it

Well it must be an obscenely large amount of money. My wife (a college professor) and I (IT Manager) are nowhere near being able to take advantage of these amazing loopholes. We pay federal tax, state tax and 2 local taxes (one for the village we live in and one for the village where my wife's college is located). Don't forget sales tax on literally every item we purchase. Property tax is a killer as well. Then there are the payments that are deducted from our paychecks to go into Social Security (which we have no guarantee will even exist by the time we retire). We also pay an enormous amount for medical care, fees for our kids public primary school costs, huge amounts for our son's college, etc.

So, we pay a large number of taxes (I didn't even touch on all of them), risk catastrophic financial collapse if we get very ill or badly injured, have to spend obscene amounts of money on education and do NOT have access to whatever loopholes you imagine we have (well, probably someone like Donald Trump does but not normal people, or even slightly better off people).

> Let's be serious here. I'm French, all for high taxes and all but please let's not delude ourselves thinking that American people pay "around 50%" taxes. As soon as you have enough money to afford it, you'll pay a tax lawyer to get that down to about 15% or something, thanks to a bajillion hidden tax system loopholes allowing the rich to get an advantage on the less fortunate.

This is false. Once you account for all the various levels of taxation (federal, state, local), there is no possible way wealthy people have a tax rate around 15%.

> And even if you take into account the price of college, health care and everything, you'll get to about the same amount but the whole point in the US system is that you do NOT have to pay for other people, cause who needs solidarity in a society.

If I wanted solidarity then I'd have stayed in my home country. I like the idea that I am free(er) to chase my dreams and suffer the consequences of my actions. More importantly I like the idea that there are other people who think like me in this country.

> As soon as you have enough money to afford it, you'll pay a tax lawyer to get that down to about 15% or something

You need a lot of money before that's an option. By that point, you have enough to be one of those citizen-of-the-world globe-trotting types with vacation homes that double as convenient tax shelters.

That is to say, the American middle class pays quite a bit in taxes. Even the poor working class pay a flat 12.4% in payroll taxes, maybe 7-8% in sales taxes (depending on locality), and varying amounts in service taxes (fees, tolls, etc.). That's assuming they make too little to pay income tax.

Working poor also get the earned income tax credit which mostly offsets their payroll taxes.

Which is a subsidy for low wage employers

> And even if you take into account the price of college, health care and everything, you'll get to about the same amount but the whole point in the US system is that you do NOT have to pay for other people, cause who needs solidarity in a society.

You seem to be angrily agreeing with the person you replied to.

Paying money to the government or a private monopolies that are heavily, and often bizarrely, regulated by the government is basically comparable.

Any sense that you "do NOT have to pay for other people" is mostly fictional.

You have a very distorted view of the American system of taxes and the American systems of wealth redistribution. It appears you've learned most of it from popular culture.

I think they where adding the cost of equivalent health care one guy I know who worked for citi bank in the usa was paying well over 15% just for his healthcare (his wife is a fed so that wasn't covering his family)