Taxes

Fifty | Garden | Ninety | Twenty-Five

28 June 2022

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I've been reading a biography of Ronald Reagan lately, slowly. I'm about halfway through his life where he's a divorced has-been, and I have to say I can relate. But I already reinvented myself in my 20's and in my 30's, so I can probably do it again in my 40's. There are a number of directions life could take me, but the financial drain of the divorce continues to weigh me down. Of course Ronald Reagan was a wealthy movie star, but his earliest writing against taxation comes from this period and I can relate to his feeling of injustice at paying 91% of his income to the government. In Norway I paid nearly 80% and what I had left certainly wasn't enough to live on there. And it was all the crazier since as an immigrant I didn't qualify for the supposedly great Scandinavian social services. As Reagan was wont to say, the nine scariest words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help". He was the president of my childhood and stared down the evil empire, so he'll always be a larger than life character in my head, but reading about his life I can get to relate with the man as well. Slowly.