The most expensive purchase you will make is your government subscription.

Excluding inflation (itself a form of tax), if you are a typical American, roughly 38% of everything you ever earn is taken from you in taxes. In the UK, 45%. In France, the figure is an eye-watering 57%.

Today taxes permeate everything we do. There is barely an activity that does not involve it in some way.

As a result, almost wherever you are in the twenty first century developed world, the most expensive purchase you ever make in your life is not your home, as many people think it to be, but your government.

For a typical British middle class professional over the course of his or her life, the bill totals £3.6 million ($5 million) – considerably more than the typical house.

You will spend a full 20 years of your life or more in obligatory service to the state. On a time basis,the state owns as much of your labour as the feudal lord did that of the medieval serf, who gave half his working week to farm the land of his lord in exchange for his protection.

In exchange, you receive the protection of the state and its services: defence, healthcare, education and so on, for yourself and others. Some people are content with today’s arrangement, others are not, but whatever your political leanings, you have no choice.

If you want to work to earn a living, you must work for the state as well as yourself. We are not as free as we may think we are.

What if you are opposed to the way in which the state spends your taxes – on a war in the Middle East, say, some wasteful infrastructure project, or enforcing a law you consider immoral?

No matter. Beyond a vote of questionable impact every four or five years, you have little say in how your money is spent.

‘Taxes are what we pay for a civilised society’ are the words inscribed on the outside of the IRS building in Washington DC, but is that civilised?

A form of forced labour for something against which you are morally opposed?

~ Daylight Robbery: How Tax Shaped Our Past and Will Change Our Future by Dominic Frisby.