Banking and Finance in Fantasy Settings

[BreaktheStatue]

I'm working on building an elf who is a white-collar criminal/information broker, and it got me thinking about how finance and banking might work in your average fantasy setting.

In most fantasy settings I've come across, the various races have very different lifespans. In 5E (where I am building this character), humans get your average 75-100 years while elves get 750. Knowing that, I would think it would have a pretty strong influence on attitudes toward (and the value of) money.

How would this impact interest rates? Inter-racial lending? Savings? Taxation? Credit? Futures contracts for merchants? How would speculation work in a world with divination magic? Is there a Waterdeep SEC?

I realize that for the most part we're talking about "fantasy medieval times" and that a lot of the complicated financial instruments we have now just wouldn't exist, but most of the basics of finance are old enough that I think they'd exist in many settings - whether or not they're ever articulated. I'm not looking for a specific answer, it just got me thinking.

[gkathellar]

Nobody actually understands how the sum of those things works in the real world, so it's probably safe to assume they'd be a barely-comprehensible mess in a Standard Fantasy world, too.

Also: modern finance depends on the existence of trusted, stable institutions (states and banks) capable of backing (a) loans and (b) currency. The knights templar were among the first and most successful bankers in Europe because they were a military organization where individuals swore vows of poverty - as poor men of the cloth they were expected to be trustworthy with money, and as soldiers with experience as caravan guards they were expected to be able to prevent their vaults from getting knocked over. In the absence of those kinds of institutions, there's a general complexity threshold on financial operations.

[zlefin]

I'd say the biggest changes don't come as a result of simple differences in lifespans; the big differences come frmo the effects of magic, or the effect of deities.
actual differences in lifespan shouldn't have much of any effect on interest rates, savings, taxation, or credit.

ofc fantasy economies are never designed that thoroughly and there's no proper way to rigorously test them, so who knows what it'd really be like. one could make a set of assumptions and run some simulations, but I doubt the results would be that useful.

in general, finance gets bigger and more important when in a larger nation, and in more stable situations. an empire that has lasted many generations has a lot more room for institutions.

the biggest lifespan effect would be that, generally speaking, an individual won't make loans that last more than half their lifespan (unless there's a sufficiently complex market that selling the loan instrument is feasible, then there's no real limit).


as guidelines, I'd assume most people would look to Venice and other bankers as being a suitable analog for what financial instruments exist and such.

[Knaight]

Interest rates being used for anything other than loans is a pretty new thing, and lifespans aren't necessarily the things that pushes for shorter loans - not when on the long term they could go for generations anyways, and on the short term there's questions of instability, such as "will the political entity I'm loaning to still be around for the loan duration", which tends to just get more pronounced for smaller and smaller groups, especially individuals.

In any case you can probably just steal wholesale from historical banking institutions. Medici banks, for instance.

[lightningcat]

I believe that Forgetten Realms has a god of banking, and iirc they are the only international bank. Any other banks are local affairs and backed either by merchants or the local crown. Intrest rates are generally closer to loanshark rates then modern bank rates.

[Florian]

Golarion offers two oddities, when it comes to the topic.
- The temples of the main god of civilization also double as banks and vaults.
- The nation of Druma makes a fortune with their merchants and mercenary business. It´s rules over by the Prophets of Kalistrade, a sect that could also be termed Prophets of Wall Street, as they worship the bling.

Banking and such are basically as old as our civilization. I once heard a joke that the first three widespread and fully recognized professions were whore, pimp and money lender.

Looking for historic examples is helpful, when translating to the faux medieval of a fantasy setting.
- Knights Templar for being a knightly order that started by protecting caravans.
- Medici and other "Merchant Dynasties"
- Speculation has always existed. It mostly did take the form of financing caravans, ships and mines, tho.

The real issue is, that we're talking about a pre-fiat-money situation, meaning it is impossible to translate our actual understanding of how banking functions over to a fantasy setting, that literally uses a hard gold standard.

[The Glyphstone]

I could see some dragons being willing to operate as banks. Extremely low interest rates, possibly even zero - but it's an easy way to grow 'their' horde with minimal effort and the attendant psychological benefits, as well as providing reciprocal security. A dragon who's known to be protecting the savings of wealthy+powerful people might seem like a juicy target, but robbing them means A) fighting a dragon, and B) angering all the people whose money that dragon was watching over. Some of them might even be adventurers or ex-adventurers.

[Mechalich]

The real issue is, that we're talking about a pre-fiat-money situation, meaning it is impossible to translate our actual understanding of how banking functions over to a fantasy setting, that literally uses a hard gold standard.

In addition to this, most 'quasi-medieval' settings should be cash-poor. In an agrarian economy the most valuable economic element is arable land, and in most pre-industrial agrarian economies the value of said land was vastly greater than the total value of currency in circulation. As a result there simply wasn't enough money to buy the available goods. Feudal Japan, for instance, spent decades trading with China for currency - they needed to literally buy an increased supply of coin to keep up with economic growth.

Taxation and many other common payments in a quasi-medieval setting would likely be in kind, not in currency, much of the time, especially when it comes to peasants and small artisans paying their lords. In fact one of the entire reasons feudalism as a system even happened was to produce payments of military service in kind rather than in coinage the king or other ruler simply did not possess, as the need to pay one's armies in wartime was historically crippling for many a pre-industrial empire if you had to try and actually come up with bullion to do it.

In terms of preserving the 'medieval stasis' aspect of most fantasy worlds, you probably actually want to limit banking as much as possible. Restrictions on the availability of capital restrict economic development, as do legal and or religious regimes (such as the traditional Catholic restrictions on usury) that prevent the issuing of loans for interest. The tendency of monsters like dragons to periodically take huge quantities of currency out of circulation would only exacerbate this.

[Florian]

I realize that for the most part we're talking about "fantasy medieval times" and that a lot of the complicated financial instruments we have now just wouldn't exist, but most of the basics of finance are old enough that I think they'd exist in many settings - whether or not they're ever articulated. I'm not looking for a specific answer, it just got me thinking.

Most things that deal with accounting, banking, money lending and such are really old.

The important difference between then and now is how fiat money (aka giral money, book money...) works in comparison to gold standard money.

In the short form, fiat money is based on a system of mutual trust. A regular bank account is nothing else than an entry in a ledger tracking how much money the bank owes you. When paying for something with a debit/credit card, what we do is transfer part of this obligation (me - bank) over to the shop (shop - bank). So, now for the fiat part of it. When going to a bank and asking for a line of credit (say, 50K), the thing that really happens is that the bank simply adds two new obligations into the ledger, one that I now have 50K, the other that I owe them 50K plus interest. Right now, this is not even money, it´s just accounting, so it was possible to more or less create it out of thin air. It will only ever be real money if I either opt to get the sum in cash, or decide to pay it back in cash.

We used to have a thing called gold/silver standard. For example, a bank had to be able to exchange any obligation in their ledger for the daily rate in gold or silver. That's the reason bank notes and such could become common in the first place, because the note was equal to a receipt for gold and silver, so convenient to carry around and trade with.
Banks used to have a serious rush hour on certain days, when they exchanged accumulated bank notes and settled their score in hard currency.

In a faux medieval world, all of that will become major issues.

Coinage comes in the form of various metals, not because it is important what their face value is, but they are rated on the worth of the raw material used. Think about it: One copper kettle costs 20 copper pieces because that is exactly the amount of raw material used in creating both. The early german-speaking/Alps region actually used salt as a payment, being of incredible value as a preservative. The name for soldier, mercenary and payment have their roots in salt (Soldat, Söldner and Sold.)

Most of the population will never be mobile in any relevant way, so something like a bank note or script is totally useless to them as they lack the means to verify it, check the ledger or trade it in for cash. That would require an extensive bank network, but that doesn't really work until the raise of true national states that can introduce and back the concept of face value over material value.

As a side note, that made mercenary work and looting so damn important.

The only meaningful difference here can be in settings that have true divinities and where the divine is a fundamentally accepted and understood part of everyday life. In this context, true divinities means that they are not just powerful individuals, like for example the Greek Pantheon, but rather more akin to the intangible state as we have it in the Abrahamitic religions. he church of a, say, God of Civilization could possible be the only global institution that could generate enough trust to be the corner of something that comes a little bit closer to modern banking.

[BreaktheStatue]

Thank you everyone for the input. At the risk glossing over everyone, my main takeaways are:

1. There is a reason that this stuff is rarely emulated, either because it's impossible or unfun.

2. If you want a historical example, look to the Medicis (or use a dragon).

In retrospect, since my charcter is more of a white collar *criminal* and not necessarily a finance professional (is there a difference, har har), I think my best route will just be research actual grafts and ask permission on those.

[lightningcat]

In retrospect, since my charcter is more of a white collar *criminal* and not necessarily a finance professional (is there a difference, har har), I think my best route will just be research actual grafts and ask permission on those.

On a related note, The Lies of Locke Lemora is a novel about white collar criminals in a fantasy setting. The primary job is about getting a noble to invest in fake wine.

[Kaptin Keen]

Short trading in adventurer futures. That's how real villains work.

[Segev]

The lifespan thing would make it more likely that you'd see investment bankers and brokers and investors in the longer-lived races, since giving an investment seed to your kid when he's a 15-year-old elf, and keeping him on Mommy and Daddy's expense sheet until he's an adult 100 years later, means that he'll be a trust fund kid with enormous wealth compared to other starting-out types. This will lead to a dichotomy of the wealthy and successful investors and the layabout lazy types who wind up broke from squandering their trust funds as the two typical stereotypes of elves and dwarves, financially speaking.

Being medieval, investment is riskier, and thus interest on loans is typically higher. Though it also often is FLAT interest, not compound, so a loan of 100 gp might expressly have a payback amount of 115 gp. Typically, as well, loans didn't have payment plans, but due dates. Borrow 100 gp today, and owe 115 gp in two months' time. Pay it in installments or pay it all on the last day, and it makes no difference. Usurers would usually have "late fees" but "generously" permit you to pay in part to avoid getting the greater cost (debtor's prison or confiscation of all your worldly goods or broken knees or what-have-you), just counting the remainder plus the penalty as a new loan, which, of course, has its own payback cost greater than the amount loaned. But at least it has a later due date!

Investment, too, will rarely involve brokers and the like, and will be more direct. You're actively buying into a venture by talking to the venture captain, who will be running and managing it and who will be responsible for paying back out profits in the appropriate amounts. Venture captains can be of any race; longevity isn't an aid nor detriment here. Might tend towards the shorter-lived, though, just because they have less time to make the big score, and rarely start with the leg up that the longer-lived ones do. This also would be a good job for an adventurer: leading an expedition for trade with investors' money will be risky, but high reward, and you'll doubtless face hazards on the journey.

That may also be where longer-lived races join in: to help protect their investments, they also travel. You could have a fun campaign based on mercantile ventures where the PCs are guards or even captains of the expedition, fighting off bandits, engaging in trade, and taking side quests to investigate ancient ruins to further pad the profit margins.

[RazorChain]

On a related note, The Lies of Locke Lemora is a novel about white collar criminals in a fantasy setting. The primary job is about getting a noble to invest in fake wine.

This is exactly what I was thinking, the best way to try to be a white collar criminal is to be a con artist and get rich people to invest in ventures that won't pay off.

Just like the movie The Producers where they get a lot of people to invest in a theater piece that must fail because they have too many investors and if the theater piece is profitable then they have to pay them back

[JeenLeen]

If you have anything like a magi-mart in your setting (as some D&D games do, at least in major cities): I like to envision it as, not the magic items held by that shop itself, but that the shop is part of a chain of shops linked to another plane. They have active portals (or daily teleportation available) for their goods or coin.

Such could also double as a bank. Drop off 20k gold coins between missions, and be able to retrieve it next time you are at a shop.

(I thought this up, or borrowed the idea, when we wanted a magic-mart idea but also wanted some realistic-enough way it could operate without being constantly robbed or every city having massive magical defenses/nigh-epic shopkeeps.)

[Max_Killjoy]

There were some posts about this in another thread in the last couple months, I'll try to find and link that discussion.

Edit -- here we go, it was in the Planescape thread.

That's generally useful for many settings -- and there's nothing about banking that hard-locks it to some particular "tech level" or "real history timeframe equivalent".

What's really needed is an institution that's trusted enough for people to hand over their hard coin for a piece of paper and a ledger entry, that's also got enough clout of whatever sort to maintain its independence and integrity from other powerful actors, or backing from powerful actors with a long-term interest in its success.

In a setting I worked on, there was a powerful international traders/transporters "guild" that pushed for standardized coinage and rates, offered basic banking (deposit here, withdraw there, etc), and would collectively refuse services to polities that interfered with its members (all the way to embargoing them).

You can go to that post and read from that point on.

Short version, banking dates back at least to ancient Greece and Rome in some forms, and by the times and places that inspire much of "European medieval fantasy", there are many entities engaged in banking proper, as noted here.

Not just them, but they were big in it. So were a lot of the free cities in Germany and the Netherlands. The Hanseatic league and the Fuggers were active after about 1300. And the Templars issued letters of credit to pilgrims since around 1100: you could pay in your money in Europe, and then get it back in Outremer when you arrived there on your pilgrimage, so that you couldn't be robbed on the way.

(Bold added by me in both posts.)

[Darth Ultron]

In most fantasy settings I've come across, the various races have very different lifespans. In 5E (where I am building this character), humans get your average 75-100 years while elves get 750. Knowing that, I would think it would have a pretty strong influence on attitudes toward (and the value of) money.

How would this impact interest rates? Inter-racial lending? Savings? Taxation? Credit? Futures contracts for merchants? How would speculation work in a world with divination magic? Is there a Waterdeep SEC?

Elves....and dwarves.....would offer very long term money related things. A 100 year loan, for example. And they can do the fun trick of have a contract with a human for 50/50, for the life of the human....then just a bit less then 50 years later, they get the full 100%.

Of course, most elves would not even use 'money' and have no need to such human/dwarf things....

Well...interest rates way back when were like 1,000 % if you were lucky...or worse, like your family being sold into something....or worse

Well...taxes way back then where like ''everything you own", or worse...or worse then that.

[Erulasto]

I did up a homebrew setting where all the civilizations ended up living on floating islands, etc, because the surface became atrociously toxic. Since resources were scarce, I whipped up a banking guild that handled negotiations and trade deals (economic trade was the only way a lot of settlements could survive) and it ended up using writs of trade (IOU's) and the like instead of hard currency. The hard currencies and valuables were stored in special vaults, while transactions were done (including loans and the like) with the paper writs. Much like a real banking system.

Admittedly, the Banker's Guild ended up being one of the most potent organizations in the world....

[Kaptin Keen]

Elves....and dwarves.....would offer very long term money related things.

What - because they live long?

I imagine a dwarf loan shark to be the meanest, nastiest piece of work imaginable - lending out at extortionate rates, short term, "and if you can't pay on time, I'm taking your house!"

I imagine elves frankly not using money at all - but they might have a system of lending magic of some sort. And since elves are fundamentally evil, I'd say they takes interest rates in your soul.

Or something. How would that work?! Say ..... you must carry the leaf of the Ever Tree next to your heart, and until it whithers, you'll have another spell for each spell level you can cast. However, using the leaf binds you to the tree, and once the leaf has withered, you pay back - with interest - losing one spell per level until you've repaid tripple the spell levels.

That sounds elfin to me.

[snowblizz]

Well...interest rates way back when were like 1,000 % if you were lucky...or worse, like your family being sold into something....or worse

That's completely untrue. It would be almost impossible to run a loan system on rates like that. The funny thing is, rates were not too unsimilar to today. They were generally a bit higher because there was more risk in the system. As today you had tiers to it too. Established people could get fair rates from a merchant/banker/moneylender, probably 15-20%. Those with less good creditscores were then as now subject to the payday loaners at similar rates of interest (in the hundreds of %).

Well...taxes way back then where like ''everything you own", or worse...or worse then that.

No, they were not. High oppressive taxes is an invention of modern times. Back in the day 1) you couldn't easily turn infungible assets produced by farmers into fungible assests. Most taxes were produced in kind and anyone expected to get taxes more than once knew there were limits to outtake. 2) The ability of taxers to excise tax was hugely limited. Push it too far and the taxcollector got killed and you got overthrown.


By and large communities were much more dependent on each other. The city moneylender couldn't suck the people dry because the relied on them to not just take it back. And defend the town when someone else attacked.

Taxation grew slowly out of communal obligations, usually mutual defence, that were turned into taxes instead of inkind or services.

[gkathellar]

That's completely untrue. It would be almost impossible to run a loan system on rates like that. The funny thing is, rates were not too unsimilar to today. They were generally a bit higher because there was more risk in the system. As today you had tiers to it too. Established people could get fair rates from a merchant/banker/moneylender, probably 15-20%. Those with less good creditscores were then as now subject to the payday loaners at similar rates of interest (in the hundreds of %).


No, they were not. High oppressive taxes is an invention of modern times. Back in the day 1) you couldn't easily turn infungible assets produced by farmers into fungible assests. Most taxes were produced in kind and anyone expected to get taxes more than once knew there were limits to outtake. 2) The ability of taxers to excise tax was hugely limited. Push it too far and the taxcollector got killed and you got overthrown.


By and large communities were much more dependent on each other. The city moneylender couldn't suck the people dry because the relied on them to not just take it back. And defend the town when someone else attacked.

Taxation grew slowly out of communal obligations, usually mutual defence, that were turned into taxes instead of inkind or services.

Not to mention that periodic loan forgiveness was a critical part of many premodern societies and frequently one the prerogatives of the monarchy or other ruling body to prevent things from getting completely out-of-hand.

[Darth Ultron]

What - because they live long?

Yes? A human gets a 40 year mortgage, to pay off right before they retire. A long lived race would have a longer time.

That's completely untrue.

No. Even in modern times you can be ''taxed" everything you own. Debtors Prison, for a example.

Yes, you can say in one play at one time taxes were 'perfect' or 'good'...but very often they were very, very, very bad....or worse then bad.

[JoeJ]

Not to mention that periodic loan forgiveness was a critical part of many premodern societies and frequently one the prerogatives of the monarchy or other ruling body to prevent things from getting completely out-of-hand.

And when taxes get to the point that people can't pay them they'll leave their farms and become bandits, living as a merry band in the greenwood where they'll survive by poaching the king's deer.

[Knaight]

No, they were not. High oppressive taxes is an invention of modern times. Back in the day 1) you couldn't easily turn infungible assets produced by farmers into fungible assests. Most taxes were produced in kind and anyone expected to get taxes more than once knew there were limits to outtake. 2) The ability of taxers to excise tax was hugely limited. Push it too far and the taxcollector got killed and you got overthrown.

Calling them "everything you own" is ridiculous, but taxation in kind has absolutely been done to extremes historically. For instance there's a case in Song China where a lot of provincial administrators were essentially trying to cover up a famine, and so taxed grain at levels slightly above non-famine times, to make it look good to the central government. That famine suddenly got a whole lot worse, and while this was a short term situation that inevitably backfired there have been a lot like it.

A similar thing applies to the ability of tax collectors to collect taxes. While people can and did kill tax collectors it was also a pretty common historical practice for their pay to be the difference in what they're able to squeeze out of the populace and what they owe, a practice that absolutely led to excess at times.

[Kaptin Keen]

Yes? A human gets a 40 year mortgage, to pay off right before they retire. A long lived race would have a longer time.

Well, I don't disagree they live longer. I'm just not convinced that has any bearing on their financial systems. Financial systems are governed in equal part by greed, practicality and psychology.

Greed governs that you basically want all the money in the world - but that's not possible in practice, so you settle for as much as your customers can pay.

Practicality governs how much you can take over how long. A mortgage has precious little to do with the lifespan of the loantaker, and everything to do with the lifespan of the asset in question: You don't get a 40 year duration for a car loan, right?

And psychology governs everything else. Markets swing based on mood - it's not the news as such, but how the news is received, and that reception is a result of a context of millions of other data points, other news.

So ... applying this to elves and dwarves, to my mind you don't simply get 'longer loans'.

Dwarves: Very greedy, so you get higher interest rates. Very practical, so they'll get the math right - they'll squeeze you just the right amount. They're rich, so they can afford to just not do business with you if you can't afford them. In terms of psychology, they're hard and unyielding, they'll make ironclad contracts. If you can't pay, they're unlikely to cut of your fingers; the only way for you fingers to be translated into income, is by putting them to work. They'll enslave rather than physically harm or kill you.

Elves: I doubt elves have much use for money. They live in the trees, off fruit and sunshine, song and dance. They trade in kind or barter, or services, or magic. They are naturally evil, their self-centeret egotism so natural it's like a rare and beautiful flower in a secluded garden, guarded by unicorns. So: Elves are greedy enough, though ironically maybe less than other races. They may want a nice poem more than a bag of gold. Conversely, a poem that pleases an elf may be harder to come by than a bag of gold. They're not particularly practical, but they do know what they want. And unlike dwarves, they're impulsive and emotional: If you fail to deliver, they may well decide that it's only fair to turn you into a badger. In terms of practicality, they'll insist on receiving what was agreed upon (a poem to span the ages), and figuring out how to pay is entirely your problem. When it comes to psychology, elves are, by and large, insane by human standards. That's not necessarily to say they're irrational - but where a human nation might go to war over natural ressources or for the 'glory of god', elves might do it over a wager, or because they deem human cities ugly, or simply to create a legend for themselves. To have something to write that poem about.

But ... I know. I'm weird =)

[LibraryOgre]

So, I did some work on this. I have another version with altered mechanics for Castles and Crusades, as well.

I have the temple of local deity of trade (The Profitmaker in Tellene, Waukeen in the Realms, Zilchus or sometimes Fharlanghn in Greyhawk, Shinare in Draglonance) serve as a matchmaker, for a fee. Do you need an investor? They may invest themselves, or may be able to find other people with money who need a place to put it. And they'll collect from either end ("Give me 5 gold and I'll suggest some investors for you/Give me 5 gold and I'll suggest some investments for you.") They also have banking services, offering notes of credit that are easier to transport than bags of gold, redeemable at other temples for cash.

[Algeh]

The main problem is that the actual economy in generic-D&D-type settings is not modeled in a way that stands up to any detailed poking around at. There are many, many ways that a typical party can break most of the economy, and the settings generally don't try to explain why, say, gold-backed money doesn't have an inflation problem in a situation where adventurers are constantly dragging more of it in from sources such as ruins (or the elemental plane of earth, for that matter) that weren't previously part of the circulating money.

I would imagine that the magic parts of the setting allow for some things to be more like modern banking, but a lot of it will depend on the overall stability and trust levels in the setting. One of the things that magic could allow is more real-time communication, allowing bank branches in different locations to immediately check on balances rather than have to do some kind of reconciling each time the next messenger came. As long as those messages could be trusted, that makes it more likely that you could use a paper currency further away from the issuing bank since your local bank could confirm the value. Of course, that still relies on the banks themselves being trusted to be telling accurate information using those messages, which generally would involve some kind of oversight from a larger organization with some kind of enforcement ability.

It's also possible that there's some magical creature or spell that would allow for the same kind of calculations as a financial calculator with a lot less hassle than would actually be the case in a non-magical pre-calculator society, which could lead to more complex monetary instruments being practical. (Calculating compound interest by hand is possible, but tedious, which is one reason simple interest and lump sum payments would be more common in a society without calculation tools, although a sufficient amount of centralization and sophistication could certainly produce pre-calculated payment tables for various loan amounts, interest rates, and repayment periods for compound interest loans. You also need a certain baseline mathematical and financial literacy among the people offering and, ideally, taking out the loans to offer complex financial products, so this also ties in to how much education bankers get.)

[Segev]

While I will not dispute that, in your fantasy setting, you can set up your elves to have no need for money, or not to use it, or whatever you like, I do have to question why you'd assume elves wouldn't, by nature of being generic elves, use money.

Money is highly convenient, far more so than barter and favor-trading, especially for long-term storage of value and counting out investments. Elves would need to have particular and somewhat alien cultures and mindsets that go well beyond being "tree-dwelling ancients" to justify having no use for money.

{{Scrubbed}}

Keep that in mind when designing a medieval fantasy economy: it's not really about the percentages, when it comes to discontent, but objective amounts left and whether it's enough to thrive. Much smaller percentages than you're used to can be far more costly when they cut into subsistance necessities.

[jayem]

{{Scrubbed}}

Although other aspects come into play. We do live in a bigger society.
Roads were charged at point of use (there are lots today), but this was avoidable by not traveling, but this then raised the marginal costs. We get formalised education, (but we also need it).
We have to pay food health and safety, but then we save on not being poisoned, but we're partly in this position of having to trust others because the commons got stolen, but...
Then tithes were basically an extra tax, but covered a fair bit of what the welfare budget did.

[Segev]

Although other aspects come into play. We do live in a bigger society.
Roads were charged at point of use (there are lots today), but this was avoidable by not traveling, but this then raised the marginal costs. We get formalised education, (but we also need it).
We have to pay food health and safety, but then we save on not being poisoned, but we're partly in this position of having to trust others because the commons got stolen, but...
Then tithes were basically an extra tax, but covered a fair bit of what the welfare budget did.

There's a lot there that's kind-of off topic. I wasn't (in that post) challenging tax rates as they are now. I was pointing out that the reason we can be taxed so heavily is that we have that much more, and thus need less of our income to eke out a living.

I'm not going to get into a discussion of whether the higher tax rates are paying for useful things or not; that's politics that are off-topic and likely to derail heavily if we get into it.