I'm not sure what your income is, but I can guarantee you I have NEVER voted to pay $35,000 in tax per year. I'll bet if you excluded the 49% of Americans who pay ZERO income tax and let the rest of us vote, you would see some changes happen in short order.
Yikes...too much Fox News or Mitt Romney luncheons. US work force participation is near all time high of 62.4% of population. You may mean income tax but everyone, even those on Social Security disability pay sales taxes, property taxes directly or via rent etc. And since income has shifted so that the top 10% have 46% of the income. Yes we do pay 65% of the INCOME taxes but only 42% of all taxes. We stop paying SS taxes on our income over $120K while the bottom 90% pay 100% of the SS tax and that is not counted in the "65% of income tax" which, if counted would reduce it to 58% of INCOME taxes.
US is one of the lowest tax nations among liberal Western democratic advanced economies, around 25th. The low taxes mean we have 37th ranked health care system that costs twice as much and public education system that ranks 25th. Add in, since this is a car place, poorer road system and poorer mass transit systems.
I also hate the phrase that "Taxes are the price of civilization" That is such a load of crap, and the same thing tyrants have been telling the sheeple since the days of Rome (and before)
Well Rome, like the US, was founded as Republic and US Constitution was created by the founders so we had a strong national, Federal government with POWER TO TAX. US revolution was not about no taxes but about representation to determine the taxes. One of Washington's first acts as President was to lead the Federal militia to put down a tax revolt. I'd suggest a read of Chernow's "Hamilton", topical and fun with "Hamilton" the big show on Broadway.
100% of the money I earn belongs to me. Period, end of story. The government takes what they want from me and I either choose to comply, or I'm put in a cage. Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%
See civilization note above. Don't think you'll find your utopia in any human society. Societies don't exist without government, government's don't exist without taxes...ergo the basic truth of taxes being the price of civilization. Tesla for example was founded on Federal government tax loans, regulatory policy that required EV's, tax policy that subsidies EV's...all good works to good effect for common good.
Now that this has gone political I think it's probably time to retire this thread.
Thread is about EV Federal tax subsidy which is entirely political. We voted to have it because it is good use of tax dollars for common good in national interest. We should vote to increase the EV subsidy to $10K, make it an earned income tax credit so even if one had less than $10K in taxes, the credit would pay to the EV buyer in first year to help buy an EV. We need to convert 11 million cars to EV's in 10 years. Government tax policy is a good way to do it as Tesla demonstrates.