potus, please take this chart to ND today when you claim US is most highly-taxed country in world

[sandensea]

18. But you do get so much more for your tax kroner.

Because apart from Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, we in the U.S. are practically on our own as far as social protections.

If you're doing well or has family who is, you're sitting pretty (more or less); but for the 40% who have no assets, and another 40% who have very little, life can be frightening. Come rain or shine though, that 20%+ is deducted from one's paycheck - plus health insurance, which is hundreds a month for something that only rarely covers you.

And heaven help you if you have little ones that would like to go to college. Megabucks - unless you don't mind them settling for an unaccredited podunk U from which they'll almost certainly never find gainful employment.

It certainly didn't have to be this way, as rich as the U.S. is. But the John Birchers figured out how to keep the voters fighting each other over petty ethnic, cultural, or opinion-based differences.

I gotta hand it to them: if you can con people into giving up so much just by getting them to obsess over abortion and gay guys who need a wedding cake, that takes talent.