Page 318 - Beers With Our Founding Fathers

Beers with our Founding Fathers

found in these countries. These are standard tax rates for all income

earners – not some income earners, after adjustments or tiered
(sans England, which has tiered rates).

Denmark 55%, Finland 53%, Italy 56%; England has rates -- 20%,
40% and 50% with most in the 40%, Norway and Netherlands over

50%, France and Germany over 40%. In comparing dollar for dollar
of income tax paid, United States taxpayers (the 40% that do) pay

about one-quarter to one-third the percentage Europe does. In
Europe, seventeen of forty-three countries are below 40% and nine
th
th
are in the 50 percentiles, leaving seventeen in the 40 percentiles;
twenty-six are 40% or more. Those below 25% are mostly former

Soviet bloc or less advanced countries and are 'fixer uppers' relying
extensively on foreign aid (mostly the United States). The United

States, through historic privatization, has had cost-effective
healthcare at a lower tax rate, and funds foreign socialist healthcare

through extensive foreign aid.
Our Founding Fathers, in supporting the ratification of the

Constitution, had this to say in Federalist Paper Number Ten and the
destructive role of factions [my term is ‘cult’] in breaking apart the

republic. The question being how to eliminate the negative effects
of faction. A faction was defined as "…a number of citizens, whether

amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united
and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest,

adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and

aggregate interests of the community." The author identified the
most serious source of faction to be the diversity of opinion in
political life which leads to dispute over fundamental issues such as

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