>That in itself is a simple fact that you can verify with basic publicly available government budget/taxation statistics numbers. There's a few problems here.

>That in itself is a simple fact that you can verify with basic publicly available government budget/taxation statistics numbers. There's a few problems here. Yes if you take total government expenditures per capita, he's not paying that much in taxes directly. But most of those costs are fixed. If a new person pops up in the US, it doesn't actually cost the federal government an extra $20k a year. Over a century ago we decided that the more money you make the greater proportion of our total fixed costs you have to pay. There are various justifications for this, the more wealth you have the more you benefit from those government services, diminishing marginal unity of money etc... But the point is if you're just going to look at total per capita expenditures, looking just at the federal level for simplicity, you need to make around $100k a year before your federal taxes exceed that. By your argument anyone not making $100k a year is consuming more public money than they are returning and are thus a burden on society. Your premise logically leads to that absurd conclusion. Obviously the rest of society is necessary in order for the people who do make $100k a year to exist. By your logic someone who lives on $5k a year but who writes open source software for free that some company uses to make $100 million dollar a year is a burden on society. Someone who creates art that inspires millions of people, or someone who makes articles, games, or videos that provide millions of hours of entertainment, is a burden on society if they give away their work instead of sell it. My mom was a burden on society because she raised children instead of working outside the home--even though she now has 3 adult children paying hundreds of thousands in taxes per year. >It only really works out okay because not everyone is doing what the author does. That's true of nearly every lifestyle you could recommend. Or hell even every piece of good financial advice. Having 6 months of savings is almost universally considered sound financial advice. But if right now every consumer in America cut all of their discretionary spending to build up a 6 month cushion, it would completely destroy the economy. That doesn't mean that it's not a valid recommendation for a financial advisor to make. The author isn't recommending that everyone in America live this way, he's saying that if you can learn to live without all the things you think you need, this is an alternative. If you are the type of person who can't stand the idea of working a 9-5 for 40 years, this is something you can do. Most people will never do this, but just the fact that it's available as a relief valve is I pretty amazing I think.