How do people survive without living entirely within the official system?

Jim 9 Planets, at Fr33 Agents, noted some interesting numbers in a recent blog post:

Here’s an interesting factoid. About 131 million people voted for any candidate in the 2008 presidential election. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008 and gross up the figures on McCain and Obama by a bit more than 1.6 million other votes. Which compares very closely to the number bothering to file taxes.

In other words, non-participation in government, by choice, seems to be the American way.

That’s something that got my attention. At TaxFoundation.org there is an article titled “Number of Americans Outside the Income Tax System Continues to Grow.” They wonder how this system can continue to work when “America has become divided between a growing class of people who pay no income taxes and a shrinking class of people who are bearing the lion’s share of the burden.”

This made me think of how earlier this year there were numerous articles about people who are openly proclaiming to “Go Galt.” That is, they are deliberately removing themselves from the system, either by refusing to pay taxes or by reducing their reported income to drop into a lower tax bracket. This was during the tax revolt that went well beyond the normal April month grumbling.

Clearly, there is an increasing number of people who are openly shunning the Federal State, and even openly holding the Political Class in complete contempt. But back to those numbers that Jim pointed out.

That article from the points out some numbers from the IRS, that include the number of total tax returns filed in 2004, estimated to be at 131,113,969. Election turnout for 2004? A little more than 122 million. And we should keep in mind that the 2004 was exceptionally high, along with the elections in 2008 and way back in 1968.

50 – 60% of us are bothering to vote? 50 – 60% of us are bothering to file income taxes? It’s a reasonable assumption that most of the 40 – 50% who aren’t bothering to file income taxes are the very same 40 -50% who aren’t voting.

Therefore, about half of us see no need for the Federal State, and wouldn’t care if all of Versailles D.C. just walked away.

So if 40 to 50% of us live out our lives as if the Federal State wasn’t even there, and most of the rest wonder why they even bother voting and filing tax returns … why do we have a Political Class? You cannot call it a government if they aren’t even governing half of us.