May 19, 2008
By Delroy Murdock
Today, Americans finally will start working for themselves rather than for their government masters. This milestone arrives two days later than in 2007, clearly proving that the era of big government is back with a vengeance. This is Friedman Day, when the Great Barrington-based American Institute for Economic Research calculates that citizens finally will have toiled long enough to fund local, state and federal spending.
This is not the Tax Foundation's Tax Freedom Day, when Americans' aggregate income collectively finances all municipal, state and national taxes. Tax Freedom Day fell on April 23, three days earlier than in 2007.
"Tax Freedom Day shows that Americans are working fewer days to pay their taxes now than they did in 2000," AIER's Kerry Lynch wrote last April 15. Tax Freedom Day peaked on May 3, 2000, near the end of President Bill Clinton's administration but before President George W. Bush signed multiple tax cuts.
Lynch added: "Friedman Day shows that it is not because the government is spending less, but because it is borrowing more, in the name of tomorrow's taxpayers."
The late, great Nobel-laureate economist Milton Friedman would be pleased to see Americans devoting less wealth to tax payments. However, the man for whom Friedman Day is named would be saddened, but probably not surprised, to see Americans dedicating more blood, sweat and tears to finance government spending.