> With compounding, the potential earnings of someone who is taxed but invests over 50 years of work compared to someone else that isn't taxed but does the same

> With compounding, the potential earnings of someone who is taxed but invests over 50 years of work compared to someone else that isn't taxed but does the same investments comes out to about 50% gains of the second over the first. It might be too complicated to say. Someone who doesn't pay income tax, maybe. Depending on assumptions. But I worked out at some point that >50% of my time spent working was being redirected towards the tax office - my income because it was taxed when I earned it (+ any stealthy payroll taxes), taxed again when it was spent and if it was invested in the middle it got taxed a third time for fake "capital gains" from money creation. When you look at government spending (typically 40-50% of GDP in the West) and consider that most of that is probably malinvestment (by lack-of-alternatives-to-tax they're taking from the most economically productive members of society) you've probably lost more than half your wealth vs a no tax society. There is friction everywhere.