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A comment on Being poor changes your thinking about everything. Parent comment

Re:Being poor changes your thinking about everything by sanderjd on Saturday September 14, 2013 @01:07PM (#6386243)
Well...sure it is. Obviously you can't add up the numbers (like your parent may or may not be implying you can), but if you really want to, you can look at all the dollars you have coming in, and all the dollars you pay to taxes of any kind, and determine a percentage. I have no idea if it would be anywhere near 50%, but I suspect it would be more than 35%.

(Which seems fine to me...)

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Re:Being poor changes your thinking about everything by phaer on Saturday September 14, 2013 @03:54PM (#6386851)
If you calculate like this you should count the roads and other public infrastructure you are using as income...
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Re:Being poor changes your thinking about everything by sanderjd on Saturday September 14, 2013 @04:16PM (#6386923)
...Why? The goal of the exercise is to figure out what percentage of your income really goes to taxes, not the amount of personal value you get from those taxes. That would be a really interesting thing to figure out too, but it's not what I was talking about. (If you read my comment as implying that I think the taxes I pay outstrip the personal value I get from them, you misread it - my only point is that you absolutely can figure out what your real taxation percentage is.)
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