Had “screw the Constitution” and “borrow and spend to fund an undeclared war” George W. Bush never been elected, the country probably wouldn’t be heading in direction it is now.

It may be that the process of ever increasing goverment control of the flow of money may level out on some niveau which may be similar to the situation in Europe.

Why will it level out?
My Answer: There is a certain percentage of people who want to be producers and who love freedom even if there is a high level of inconvenience associated with that.

If this percentage in the population is large enough then the system stabilizes at some level.

The European Level (in Austria) is as follows:

Middle class income people pay about 2/3 of their income to government and to its agencies like social security.

About 1/3 is to keep for yourself.

It works as follows:
About 60% of a middle-class income is to be paid for income tax and social security. (the exact percentage depends on the income. The percentage peaks at about 66% for yearly incomes of EUR 60000-80000. For higher incomes it gradually goes down to 50%. For incomes below EUR 40000, it gradually declines down to about 25%, which is the approximate percentage for social security payments without income tax.)

If you spend the amount which you are allowed to keep from your income, then you pay a 20% sales tax ( called VAT ). Some goods like food and renting an appartment for private use have a 10% sales tax.
In total this means about 2/3 of your income goes to the government. ( If you are in the peak payers group, about 3/4 goes to government and 1/4 is to keep for yourself. )

Now, most people don’t realize how much they are paying to government because a significant part of the payments is hidden from them in some clever ways:

1. The sales tax is hidden in the prices. ( It is displayed on invoices etc but most people ignore that… )

2. For employees, the income tax and social security payment never hits their bank account but is deducted from the salary before it is payed out. Each employee gets a sheet every month where these deducted numbers are shown. (I guess many of them ignore this sheet.)

3. About half of the social security payment is not even shown on this sheet because it is not deducted from the salary but has to be payed by the employer. Essentially this is just a way of lowering the official salary in order to hide a part of the social security payment from those employees who dare to read the sheets where their payments to government are shown.

So, the end result is that people don’t realize how much they are paying.

They just complain about low salaries and high prices … and blame business owners for it.

Why do we still have entrepreneurs and employees who are producers in Europe?

My guess is, that having 1/3 of your income to use as you please is still enough incentive to be productive. And being productive is the only way to get some level of freedom, which is generally true, and is even true in a system like that. The price of 2/3 of your income to pay for freedom is very high, but freedom is so valuable that many still pay the price.

My personal experience is that every Euro which you accept to get from government comes with some severe reduction of freedom.

Therefore there are many people in Austria/Europe who would have the right to get government handouts but they refuse to apply for these handouts because they love their freefrom more than some short term increase of their financial situation.

E.g., I know about several single moms who would have had the right to get financial help from government due to their challenging financial situation but they refused to apply for those handouts because they want be self-reliant and independent.

I, myself would probably have the right to get financial government support for my psychotherapy but I refuse to apply for that government support because I don’t want to give the government (nor anybody else) any information related to that. The deal from the government would be: We give you money and you give us information. I don’t like that deal, so I think: No thanks, I pay full taxes and you, the government, keep the money while I keep my information in order to protect my privacy.

Again, freedom is so valueable, that many people are willing to pay a high financial price for it.

When I look to the US, I see that it is fast heading towards the European model. Therefore the US becomes less and less attractive as a refugee place for successful European producers and/or for European capital.

This will keep happening until there is simply no producers left, which may take many turns of this painful cycle. For example, I am still trying to grow my business and live the American dream by working hard and saving. I just don’t want to believe this still can’t happen. As long as their are people like me there will always be looters willing to take what I create and produce “for the common good”.

At the beginning of your article you said the people had to rise up in peaceful protest. The problem is as long as most people are on the dole and don’t have to work to realize a reasonably decent life, or work very little to live a pretty darn good life, the number of protesters and their voices will get quieter and quieter until you can no longer hear them complaining any longer. Remember if you are robbing Peter to pay Paul you will ALWAYS have the support of Paul. Get enough Pauls in the world and the votes, voices, and outrage of the Peters will no longer make a difference. When that happens peaceful protest won’t be an option. It will be time for armed revolution because the process of removing corrupted officials and handout happy politicians will be permanently broken.

The question I have is how close are we to needing an armed revolution and not simply a peaceful protest any longer?

Fewer and fewer cannot support more and more for long.

The scavengers are standing by to glean the results.

Robert