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"With two-thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal Government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government." - from the Grace Commission Report famguardian.org...
From the Bank of England forward all the governments of Europe had central banks for a very good reason. The kings and princes of Europe had learned from hard experience that they could raise the taxes of their subjects only so high and then they had a revolt on their hands and they tended to lose their jobs (and heads). It appears that that natural level was about 40-43%; people will tolerate taxes up to about 40-43% and then they start digging in their heels and they just won't allow it to go any further. But with the central bank mechanism in place the lid was off. Now these governments could tax their people 50%, 60%, 70% and in some cases 80% of everything they produced and they did not have a revolt on their hands. They did not have resentment because the people didn't know that they were paying a tax. They knew that prices were going up, but they didn't understand why, they didn't know who was getting their lost purchasing power.
It was a nifty arrangement for these governments. It was at that point in history that governments' wars began to heat up. They always had wars but they were relatively small things because wars are expensive and the people won't pay more than 40% for everything including wars. But now that they had a way to tax higher than that, they could engage in very expensive wars. It's at that point in history that Europe plunged headlong into continuous war and big, very, very expensive wars. The people paid for them uncomplainingly through the process of inflation.
www.bigeye.com...