A free-market think tank says on Sunday, Americans will have finally earned enough money this year to pay for government spending.
A number of organizations in the past have emphasized what they call "Tax Freedom Day" -- the day when American citizens are hypothetically finished paying their annual tax debts to federal, state, and local governments in the U.S. This year, Americans worked the equivalent of the first 100 days of the calendar year to pay for all those taxes. However, the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) estimates that it will take a total of 160 days this year for Americans to earn enough to feed the expenditures of government. AIER senior fellow Richard Ebeling says Tax Freedom Day does not reflect the full cost of government because the real burden of government is not just what it taxes directly, but also the amount of government spending undertaken in society. "The government, besides what it taxes, borrows money from the private sector to cover its budget deficits, and that's the total amount of dollars produced in the economy that, in total, the government siphons off from private sector uses for its own activities," Ebeling explains. "This year the what we call 'Friedman Day' -- that is 'Friedman Freedom Day' -- that is when we stop giving enough of our private sector income and wealth to cover government expenditures -- that will be June 7th, 2009." Friedman Day 2009, which is named after the late Nobel Prize-winning free-market economist Milton Friedman, falls 19 days later than it did in 2008.
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