You have to be careful if you start thinking that way. It&#x27;s a good way to think, but it takes care. I can just as easily draw diagrams that prove that all the money ends up in government&#x27;s hands: 25% of your income is tax, %X of your spend goes to cover taxes paid by various corporations which have to cover the taxes of all their corporations which are covering taxes of all those corporations all of which have to pay their employees who pay taxes so all labor costs are also hidden taxes, my gosh, everywhere you look it&#x27;s just money going to the government! The solution is that at each step, <i>other</i> money is also coming in, diluting the &quot;tax&quot; flow in various ways before everything ends up there. Likewise &quot;advertising&quot; and &quot;inefficiencies&quot; and &quot;the pockets of the 1%&quot; and all sorts of other things like that.<p>I doubt very much of the cost-of-living delta between a city and a suburb or the country has to do with advertising.