Phone your

friends in New Jersey and tell them to celebrate. Today

is the day they stop working for government and start

working for themselves.

For the

Jersey-ites, today is Tax Freedom Day.

The average

nationwide Tax Freedom Day was May 3, and we in Georgia

are a bit better than the average when it comes to taxes

- we should have celebrated April 29.

If you've

never heard of it, the concept behind Tax Freedom Day is

simply to make people aware of just how much we are

paying in taxes. The figures are compiled by the Tax

Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that

has monitored fiscal policy at the federal, state and

local levels since 1937.

So many of

the taxes are hidden in the costs of things we buy or

disguised as user fees. And, of course, even the income

tax is sneaky. Most people have no idea what percentage

of their incomes they pay in income taxes.

In fact,

many are so dumb that if you ask them how much they paid

in taxes, they'll say, "I didn't pay any. I got some

back."

Anyway, for

those who can understand what I'm saying,

congratulations. You are now working for yourself.

The Tax

Foundation simply does the math, figuring up how much the

average person pays in state, local and federal taxes and

then representing that in terms of the number of days you

have to work to pay those taxes.

In Georgia,

that's 120 days. We're ranked 31st among the 50 states.

The highest taxes are in Connecticut, where they'll be

working for the government through next Thursday.

The figures

are broken down a dozen ways at the Tax Freedom Day web

site, www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday.html#states .

Check it out and see if it doesn't get your blood

boiling.

For those

who can't do that, I'll lay out some of the facts for you

here.

For

instance, the federal income tax bite is broken out. Of

the 120 days you work for the government, 83 of those are

for the federal government, including both income tax and

Social Security/Medicare. State and local taxes take 37

days to pay.

You work 50

days to pay individual income taxes and another 30 days

to pay payroll taxes, which fund social insurance

programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

You work 16

days to pay sales and excise taxes, and 10 to pay

property taxes (these are national averages, not broken

down by state).

There's

also a great pie chart that presents the same figures in

terms of hours out of an eight-hour work day, comparing

the tax figures to what you spend for everything else in

your life.

I love how

the Clinton crowd anguishes over health care costs,

although I'm sure they know that we work less than an

hour a day, about 55 minutes, to pay medical costs, while

we work an hour and 52 minutes paying the federal

government and 50 more minutes paying state and local

governments.

If they

cared so much about "our children," maybe they

would do something about the biggest problem families

face - the cost of government.

And while

they accuse us of wasting too much of our money on

riotous living to provide an excuse to take more and more

of our incomes, they blithely ignore the fact that only

27 minutes of the average person's work day goes to pay

for recreation.

We have

only ourselves to blame for the fact that we manage to

save only eight minutes' worth of income, although, if

our taxes were lower... who knows?

In case you

were wondering whether things are getting any better,

they're not. In 1980, Tax Freedom Day came April 21.

During the first part of the Reagan years, it dropped all

the way to April 17 before starting its steady rise to

where it is today.

And with

Democrats blocking any attempt at a "risky" tax

cut, I don't expect to see TFD coming any earlier in the

near future.

Here's one

more piece of information for you. All of the taxes

together take more of your income - more of your

sweat and toil - than what you spend for housing,

food and clothing combined.

If by now

you are not looking up your elected representatives'

addresses in an uncontrollable rage, I suspect one of

three situations exist:

1. You

aren't reading this column.

2. Your

political philosophy is that people are too stupid to

choose how to spend their own incomes and that the

government should be as large and as controlling as

possible.

3. You're

being loaded into a coroner's van with a copy of the

paper clutched in your fingers.

I often

implore those who disagree with me - and I know

you're out there - to write in and refute what I

have to say, but I'm usually disappointed.

But if

you're in that second group and not ashamed to admit it,

please write in and tell me why it's acceptable for

Americans to spend from 114 to 139 days every year

(depending upon what state they're in) working to pay the

government.

And please

tell me where you think it should stop, if at all. Is

there a limit to how large the government should be, how

much it should control our daily lives and how much of

our incomes should go to it? If so, what is it?

As far as I

can tell, the national Democratic Party doesn't believe

in any limit at all.