Many people believe that taxation is a fairly recent occurrence, but ever since governments have been around, taxation has been around right along with it. The difference that we have in this modern age is the forms of taxation that citizens are subject to, include as applicable: State, city, county, excise, Federal, property, and general sales tax. Also, it does seem rather incomplete whenever the price of goods we purchase does not include the taxes associated with it, which means that for many a purchase, the amount of money so expended is thereby greater than the retail price so listed.
When it comes to tax entities, we find that most of these, such as in individual States, are required to balance their budget, or at least have verbiage to that effect. However, the biggest government entity in America is the Federal government, and its budget is gargantuan, of which, in fiscal year 2024, that budget was $6.29 trillion and the federal government did not even come remotely close to balancing its budget, and has, in fact, in the 21st century, consistently run up huge deficits, nearly every single year.
‘All those folks and pundits that claim that federal budget deficits don’t really matter because we can simply print as much money as we desire are absolutely being disingenuous, for budget deficits most definitely do matter, and the greater and more persistent such a deficit is, hurts American citizens because those deficits will eventually have to be repaid, while also exerting stress upon the value of the dollar because of those deficits, in which, the greater the deficit, the more the dollar will eventually weaken, often demonstrated through inflation, which represents that the purchasing power of the dollar has decreased.
All of the above basically reflects that while there are those taxes that we are quite aware of, and thereby pay, reluctantly or not – that there is another form of taxation, perhaps more insidious, which is the fact that how we typically measure our wealth, as in the dollars that we have, of which, we find that these dollars are progressively getting worth less and less, and because the value of the dollar is declining, this is in its own way, represents a form of taxation. So too, those who end up having to borrow money, through debts incurred on a purchase of a vehicle, or through purchases made through credit cards, in which, their net income is not keeping pace with the value of the dollar, are essentially suffering from a hidden tax because the money that they earn is purchasing ever less.
So then, a fiscal house that cannot keep itself balanced is going to burden the general population, by virtue of the coin of the realm losing its purchasing power, and thereby what people earn, purchases less product than it had before, which is essentially what taxation represents, for the people have been obligated to give up more of what they have to support a government that has not the discipline or the good character to balance its own budget, straining the pocketbook of the people, thereby, through the stealth taxation that the people are unfairly burdened with.