In the USA, how many hours do you have to work to earn enough to pay someone of your profession for one hour of work, after your taxes and everything? Where I live it's between 3 and 4 hours. So to pay an electrician for 1h of work, an electrician needs to work 3-4 hours.
I think this is a very simple way to figure out the cost of society - how much of your efforts are spent for the government, and how much for yourself.
Sadly the truth is that the federal reserve currency that we use today is worth relatively 3 cents on the dollar. That is a direct cost of having government. It means that they have been stealing from americans by taking the buying power out of the dollar through inflation. When you add that in your talking days of work to support government and corporations before you get to spend a dime.