Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes

["Jon Leonard" <jleonard@divcom.umop-ap.com>]

James A. Donald wrote:
> At 11:16 PM 5/5/96 -0700, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
> >On Sun, 5 May 1996, Alan Horowitz wrote:
> >> didn't the feudal vassels only pay 33% ?
> >
> >Actually, no.  When I used to edit a magazine, I commissioned an
> >article about how much "tax" slaves, serfs, etc. paid.  That is,
> >how much of what they produced, did they get to keep; how much
> >went to their masters.  The surprising, cross-cultural answer my
> >researcher/writer found was that they got to keep everthing they
> >produced except 5-10%.  That's a lot better, percentage-wise,
> >than for modern "tax slaves."
> 
> In the early feudal period, ordinary knights did not live well.  
> They were only moderately better off than peasants, and yet to support one 
> knight, you needed a startlingly large number of peasants, a fact
> that kings were continually unhappy about and continually trying
> to fix.
> 
> While it is difficult to assess the tax rate, because taxes were
> in kind, it was clearly very low by modern standards.

Things are sufficiently different that such a comparison might not be
meaningful anyway.  For example, subtracting subsistence level food, and then
figuring tax rates would give a different answer. 

The amount of work it takes to provide basic needs now is clearly
very low by historical standards.  Government is big by historical standards.
I'll object to only one of those.

Jon Leonard