And if you insist on getting stuff for free you are an altruist.

Greed is such a boring bogeyman, as if greed doesn't exist in socialist or communist societies.

if you had told a guy in 1870 that 42 workers would support 1 retiree he'd claimed that this is impossible and will destroy society. Increase of production efficiency makes more than up for it.

The Employment rate in most western countries is higher than it was 20 years ago :

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/24/38335554.pdf (its only from 1992 to 2005 but it shouldn't have changed too much recently , even with the rise in unemployment as historical data in western societies shows that there is only a very small correlation between unemployment and employment ratio, unemployment is largely irrelevant to the economic success of a society anyways, the employment ratio is what is important)

You can also see that countries with a universal social security system don't necessarily have a lower employment ratio (Island, the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland have very high employment rates for example)

for the USA I also found a graph showing it back to 1966 :

http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/16959/umfrage/usa%3A-beschaeftigungsquote-15-64-jahre/

(its german but its easy to understand it shows the % of people between 15 and 64 who work)

I have no real clue about the US tax system but I am quite sure that all those people who don't pay income taxes have still to pay a lot of other taxes and taking just a single tax to show that they don't contribute seems a bit unfair for me.

Unfortunately the document titled "EMPLOYMENT RATES BY GENDER" has no statistics for employment rates by gender. So we cannot easily see how many women joined the workforce.

Here are the links again, this time correctly marked as links and clickable:

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/24/38335554.pdf

http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/16959/umfrage/usa%3A-beschaeftigungsquote-15-64-jahre/

They are still not relevant though.

He wasn't talking about the unemployed.

He was talking about those who merely use services provided by the federal government and those who actually pay income tax.

The "takers" here are not (just) the unemployed people but all those who don't pay federal income tax.

The percentage of employed people is here quite irrelevant as he was not talking about WHY they don't contribute just about THAT they don't contribute.

Then don't do it.

But coming back to what Brad quoted, those people who pay the income tax are "the people who pay the bills" and the people who use government services but do not pay for them are "the people who live off of the fruits of their labor".

I find it disturbing that you apparently cannot say anything about the actual point (some pay, some don't) and instead keep referring to another issue (some produce, some don't).

Have you ever tried this in real life?

Go to your local supermarket and tell them that you won't pay them for the goods you took because it doesn't affect your wealth or society's if instead you pay the money to somebody else.

It doesn't work that way.

The way I read it it sounded to me as if those who don't pay income tax but still demand payments from government (financed by those who do pay income tax) have already given up the American dream and are destroying it for those who still believe in it.

I don't think distribution of the money is the problem here. This thread was about whence the money comes, not whither it goes.

If you have a sociological education, you can certainly understand this example:

A school has an annual party for all kids.

Half the kids bring candy and soft drinks for everybody.

The other half do not.

All kids regularly bring candy and soft drinks for their own consumption.

And all kids regularly bring candy and soft drinks for class parties (to which kids from other classes are not invited).

Questions:

1. Would it be fair to say that for the school party half the kids have contributed and half the kids have not?

2. Should the kids who haven't brought candy and soft drinks complain about the fact that there is not enough candy and soft drinks for everybody because the other half have not brought enough?

3. Does it matter whether a kig usually contributes candi and soft drinks to class parties when we are determining whether they have contributed to the school party or not?

Leauki, the working people produce goods and services, those things are what make up the economy not some income tax. By providing those goods and services they contribute to the wealth of society (and no they don't work for themselves as they don't consume those goods or services themselves) and the whole financial system around it is just a way to increase the efficiency of trading. You also have to ask yourself the question if those who pay income tax would be able to do so without the paid work done for them by those who don't pay income taxes - surely there would be some people still making the same income but if you theoretically eliminate a large portion of the working force I am sure it would have a quite negative effect on the income of the remaining people.

Economy is not about fairness it is about growth and even more about stability and who is more likely to cause unrests? A small group of people who have to pay income tax yet are still better off then the majority or a large group of people which has less to lose and more to gain?

Your party example is flawed as in your experiment one group doesn't provide anything at all to the whole system, while in reality the working part of that group called "takers" here just doesn't provide something to a part of the system. In the party example it is more like one group just bringing candy and no softdrinks. ( excise tax is federal isn't it? , the tax the employer pays for the medicare is as kryo said as well a tax on work hence on the worker and it is just a arbitrary construct that the employer and not the employee pays it)

We went from 16.5% to 40% in 25 years because the majority of full time employees make between 30,000 and 40,000 and 25 years ago this group was paying taxes. Twenty five years later this group has far less taxable income, a family making 40,000 with 2 kids pays no taxes and in fact gets a refund. The main cause of this is the increasing cost of living, deductions and tax credits, not a declining work ethic.

I've been a contractor in Florida for more than 25 years and in the time housing has more than doubled, property taxes and all forms of insurance have gone through the roof but my payroll has only increased 10 to 15% since the mid 80’s. The government has had to increase credits and deductions so the largest sector of the work force can continue to support themselves.

This was inevitable because this sector has the largest pool of workers and that keeps their salary down, there’s always someone there that will work for less. Service, manufacturing and construction companies have been able to take advantage of this so they should take on the increased tax burden, or they could give their employees a cost of living increase and let them pay taxes again, whatever works for them. I honestly can’t see a solution to this. Sucks for technology companies because their labor pool is much smaller. 

That would be fair, but it is a vote killer. You know political survival trumps fairness.

All I can say is Wow Richard, totally different from what I'd expect you to propose. I agree, everyone should kick in something, even a small amount. Currently there is little ownership or responsibility. Too many leave it to others.