I ask [my kids]
to tell me how much they are paying in taxes, and we look at things
like receipts and cell phone bills. Then I tell them about property taxes,
income taxes, excise taxes and the like. If the people ever really figured
out what they paid to the government, there would be another revolution.

Actually, inflation creates many of the taxes by itself. If you buy an
investment property (or stock or gold or anything), and inflation
happens, then even if that property has not changed its value with
respect to salaries, bread, land, and other "cost of living" things, it
will have gone up in price. When you sell, you reap what is erroniously
called a "capital gain", even though you haven't gained anything. It
should more correctly be called a "Capitol gain". You get more dollars,
but you need more dollars to pay the same rent.

If you just keep your dollars, their value goes down. If you put your
dollars in the bank, you get interest (to keep up with inflation) but
you get taxed on the interest. The way out of it is to simply do all
your financial transactions directly in gold.

That's against the law. I wonder why.

Jose
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where
it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
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