An interesting fact: All annual federal spending is less than 6% of US wealth.

[reformist2]

And the effective tax rate on wealth is even lower, only 4.5% of net worth.

2013 US Federal Budget (est'd): $3.8 trillion (Office of Management and Budget)
2013 US tax receipts (est'd): $2.9 trillion (Office of Management and Budget)
2012 US Household Net Worth: $64.8 trillion (3Q 2012 Federal Reserve 'Flow of Funds' Report)

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What's the upshot? Two observations:

1.) The US government is hardly the giant behemoth some make it out to be, and
2.) When you consider how many middle and upper-middle class people are paying tax rates well over 10% of their wealth (you can do the math to see if this is true in your case), it becomes quite clear that the upper-upper class - the so-called 1% - are paying practically nothing by comparison.

[drm604]

1. Do you have links for this?

I'd love to be able to use this in arguments.

[reformist2]

5. Yes! Here you go:

OMB report (2013 budget numbers are listed in Table S-1 - search for 'Budget Totals'): http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/tables.pdf

Flow of Funds report (Household Net Worth figures are in the Summary Statistics section at the beginning, and then in detail in one of the tables at the end - search for 'Balance Sheet of Households'): http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1.pdf

[HiPointDem]

2. +1

[slackmaster]

3. Comparing an annual rate with the dollar value of a group of assets?

Does it mean that the federal government spends the equivalent of 6% of the assets owned by all of the people in the USA every year?

That sounds about right to me - It's a believable but unremarkable comparison.

[reformist2]

4. It's a measure of how much of the wealth is recycled each year - or as some say, "redistributed."

[One_Life_To_Give]

6. For Capital assets that would be high

Monthly Rents would shoot up to cover 10% of asset value. Boston area rentals might start at $4000 per mo and up.

[Romulox]

7. Massive logic problem: people are taxed on their *income*, not their *wealth*. nt

[reformist2]

8. It shows how unfair the tax system is - net worth is the best indicator of ability to pay.

And when you consider that the average middle class worker forks over 20% of his net worth every year, whereas the typical billionaire only pays 1% of his net worth, it ought to make you wonder why we tax income and not wealth. At the federal level. We tax wealth (real estate) at the local level, and that has worked out fine.