At 09:48 PM 5/5/96 -0400, Alan Horowitz wrote:
<< " I paid approximately 60%...." >>
didn't the feudal vassels only pay 33% ? To paraphrase - I forget which Presidential candidate of yore - "are you better off than you were a thousand years ago?"
I asked my wife about this (she is a midaeval history buff) and her response was "depends on the time and king". She proceeded to list off the long list of taxes that vassels could be expected to pay. The current taxes in California do not come close to the arbitrary and intrusive taxes imposed in feudal times. Taxes could be levied at any time the lord demanded. (Check into the custom of "Tallage".) Of course this did not include the tithes to the church (which were manditory) or any of the special taxes for wars, ransoms, and the like...
ANd that's not even counting the interest you pay on your mortgage. Count that, and the vassels were head and shoulders above Californians.
I suggest reading what life in that time was really like. It makes California seem like a Libretarians paradise in comparison. (For example, unmarried villein women were taxed due to the assumption that their being unchaste lessened their value to the lord. Sounds like something Pat Buchannon would like to bring back...) --- Alan Olsen -- alano@teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano@teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon