THE SINGLE PAYER HAS TO BE PAID. Professor Munger discovers how much.

They took 52% of my paycheck. FIFTY TWO percent, for taxes, health insurance, and social insurance. In other words, respectively, to pay for fat ass bureaucrats who do nothing, for fat ass civilians who don't take care of themselves, and for fat ass civilians who refuse to work. I pay this money, at gunpoint, for the privilege of serving the welfare state. Why does anyone work?

Now, the university assures me that this will be refunded to me, but that is not the point. If I were a German worker, then I would be working for less than half of whatever pathetic salary der Staat saw fit to pay me. That is appalling.

No wonder young people are pissed off. Most of them won't get good jobs. That may be true in the U.S. also. But at least in the U.S. if you get a good job you will be able to keep some of your salary. Here, if you work hard and get a good job, you are definitely going to get the red hot tax poker, right up the gozatch.

A few years ago I spoke with some Australian expats, residents of France who were touring the Semmering Pass, who couldn't understand why U.S. taxes are such an issue. To them, the availability of medical care trumped any tax bill. The real action, however, goes on at the margins. The employee of a legacy car company, for example, was taking home less than half of the approximate marginal revenue product of his efforts, but he'd be sure of medical coverage right up to the end. But not everybody in the Rust Belt had a job with a legacy car company.