What's a scam that's so normalized that we don't even realize it's a scam anymore?

In the US - - taxes.

Things used to be a lot simpler & cheaper in the US, but then we passed the War Revenue Act in 1917 which drastically increased the budget & helped to pay for the war. They probably saw all that money rolling in & got greedy. What was initially designed as a war-time fund raising effort is now just standard taxation, it has gotten worse, and the people being born & working & dying nowadays don't know anything different.

The government wastes so much money. Whose money? They don't have any money! They're wasting our money, that they extract from us via taxation.

We are financially raped into the ground, not allowed to enjoy the fruits of our own labor.