Pretty simple question, it's estimated that American's pay about 50% of earnings towards taxes and fees.
Where exactly are you getting such a silly estimate?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...hats-the-average-americans-tax-rate/98734396/
USA Today Article said:
the average American's effective tax rate is 29.8%. This is in addition to any consumption-based taxes paid, such as sales tax, property tax, or other taxes on specific items."
Of course, this is skewed quite a bit as well given that most Americans pay almost no income tax at all, and Social Security taxes are paid back in retirement.
At what point is it too much?
Depends on who you are, and what you make. If you're poor then you're clearly not benefitting very much at all from the government. If you're wealthy then obviously the system that our society has built is benefitting you greatly. As a result it would only make sense that you pay significantly more.
There is an old saying in the legal profession that, "Possession is 9/10 of the law." Well if that's true what good is the law if you don't have any possessions? The reality is that about 90% of what the government does is protect wealthy people from poor people. It insures that all property is transfered in an orderly and non-violent manor that radically favors the person who already has the property.
So the question you need to ask yourself is if the government disappeared tomorrow how much of your wealth would you be able to keep? No more police, no more military, no more national guard. FDIC doesn't exist any more. Even if you can get your money out of the bank what good is it? It's really nothing more than green paper without the government to back it. The deed to your house? Burn it. The title to your car? Shred it. They're not worth anything anymore.
Poor Americans and lower income Americans likely wouldn't loose much at all. They probably don't own a house or a car, and even if they did there's nothing fancy about it that would make it worth trying to take by force. Conversely if you have a mansion on the beach what's to stop a group of homeless people from just taking it over? Are you going to risk your life fighting 10 homeless people to death to keep your house? You could maybe hire private guards but that would cost you a lot more than what the government was charging you for police, and in the end you'd have no guarentee that those private guards wouldn't just say **** it and decide the house belonged to them now.
There's a lot of rich assholes who have been living in a civilized society for so long they've forgotten why we created them in the first place. So long as you're able to retain more wealth and secure a better life as a result of the government than you could without it you have realistically no right to bitch about taxes.
When will you say, enough already, you (the govt.) needs to stick to an income level. (Keep in mind that, every time you or I get a raise or earn more money the govt. gets an increase too. If we must stick to a predetermined budget why should we not expect our govt. to?
The government is not an individual. The government is of the people, by the people, for the people. If there are more people, and those people make more money, then it only makes sense that it would cost the government more money to help protect the additional people, and make sure we have the infrastructure necessary to support them all. Inevitably that government's budget should always grow larger over time.
Now what is the exact % of your income that should be contributed to the central pot is diffcult to know. But given that wealthy assholes who should be contributing the most to government are generally paying lower tax rates than that of much of the middle class and lower income Americans something is definately off in our system.