Clifford A. Brown, at Ricochet:

Collecting Taxes

About $6.23 [$147 in 2016 dollars]: The amount of state and local government taxes collected per person in 1880.

About $4,951: The amount of state and local government taxes collected per person in 2016.

Note that these are not federal tax dollars, but the real growth in the scope of state and local government. In part, federal taxes could not be compared across the same interval as “per person” because the federal income tax was not ratified until 1913. This points to all of us, collectively, voting over and over again for more and more government at every level, in contradiction to the basic assumptions expressed by both sides of the debate back in 1787-1789. We may truly get the government for which we vote!

RTWT

Add the roughly 40% of your income you pay to the Federal Government if you are even moderately successful in life. And don’t forget to add in your own currently $67,000 share in the Federal Debt.