There's a big, public debate going on right now about whether or not to keep the "Bush era" tax cuts. The Democrats are claiming that anyone making more than a quarter of a million dollars a year should be taxed more to close the national deficit and the Republicans are claiming that these are the very people who need the money to create jobs and kick start our economy. By the way, they've been trying to kick start the economy for a couple of years now, even after they spent hundreds of billions or even trillions bailing out the mega banks and corporations.
As you may have guessed, I believe we should do more than just keep the "Bush era" tax cuts. I think tax cuts should be expanded. In fact, I think the income tax should be completely eliminated. It can be shown by looking through history that more government causes greater economic stress. It can be shown that fiat money systems inevitably collapse. That's because they are nothing but ponzi schemes. All the money flows to the top of the pyramid, the people who set it up. When it collapses, those at the bottom get hurt, those at the top still have all the money.
Before 1913, there was no income tax in the United States of America. It was, however, necessary to implement one in order for the Federal Reserve to be created. The Constitution of the United States of America had to be changed in order for this to happen. Back then, it appears, people still cared about what the Constitution had to say and about the protections it codified for the individuals residing in this nation. Some have made the case that the change made (the 16th amendment for those who don't know) was made illegally and was never properly ratified. Whether or not this is true I'm not entirely certain due to the obfuscation of the English language by the injection of Legalese into our lexicon, but in my opinion the confusion surrounding it should make the article null and void. There was certainly no meeting of the minds when this change was foisted upon the American people. It was fraudulent from its very inception.
So taxes were sold to the American people as a propaganda maneuver to sell them a system they wouldn't have bought into had they known the truth about it. They were told it was necessary to stabilize the economy. They were told it was necessary to keep the depressions of the past from recurring. They were told it was necessary to keep the specter of high unemployment from rearing its ugly head. They were told that only a small percentage of the richest Americans would be required to pay any income tax whatsoever. They were even told that the very people who wrote the Federal Reserve Act were against passing it, creating the illusion that an elite group the American public inherently distrusted would be adversely affected by the legislation. They were lied to. It is their progeny that now pays for their error.
The Federal Reserve has not done what it was set up to do. It did not stabilize the economy. In fact, in certain ways it made the economy less stable. Since its creation in 1913 the dollar has lost more than 95% of its value. Before that, from the mid 1700s to 1913, the dollar had actually increased in value. In other words, anyone who had saved a dollar prior to 1913, even if they had simply put the money away in a home safe, could buy more with that money after, say, 10 years, than they could when they first put it away. A retirement plan could have been as simple as a savings plan. After 1913, a dollar saved today was worth less tomorrow. Suddenly, retirement plans had to take inflation into account and it was necessary to find investments that grew or what seemed like a nice nest egg at the time might not be enough in the future. Investments also involve risks and can cost the investor a significant portion of the money they thought they'd have to retire on. Not to mention, many times that money is taxed once the investment matures, where the pre 1913 savings plan was tax free.
But I have digressed. The point is that neither income taxes nor the Federal Reserve which caused them to be created have done what they were originally supposed to do. Why do we continue to support failure? Is it any wonder our prosperity has been squandered when one considers the amount of failed institutions that have been propped up by our taxes? Why do we continue to pay?
Taxes are immoral. One can talk about laws, obedience, services that may or may not be rendered, contributing to society, etc. all one wants, but when push comes to shove taxes are theft. More accurately, they are the form of theft known as extortion. Face it, most all people would not pay their taxes if they had a choice. If there wasn't the threat of force, if there wasn't the specter of arrest and jail hanging over one's head, then most people wouldn't give their money to the government. There is, in my opinion, no difference between the government saying "Gee, I'd hate to see you have to go to jail for not paying your taxes" and some mafia thug saying "Gee, it's a nice business you have here. I'd hate to see something happen to it." The only difference might be that the mafia thug is a little bit more overt about his threat and does not try to pretend that he is something he is not.
If the services government offers are so necessary to society, why do we need such a threat to get people to pay for them? Wouldn't people who wanted such services be willing to pay for them? If they are doing such a good job, why do they have to force people to pay? Why won't they allow everyone to vote with their dollars? Perhaps it's because the services they offer aren't so necessary, or because they aren't doing a good job providing them, or because they have a monopoly on such services, they know they have a monopoly, and they don't want to relinquish that monopoly because they know their competitors would do a better job and they wouldn't be able to stay in the business of providing those services when their competitors would take their market share from them by providing better service at a lower cost.
Taxes also punish success. Who wants to make more when it just means the government will take more? Who wants to produce when more than half of what's produced is taken away by the faceless bureaucratic institutions that rule over our lives? The more successful you are, the more you have to pay, the more you have to carry the rest of society, the more you have to bear the burden of big government. It just makes no sense. It would be a much fairer system to not tax anyone and let everyone decide for themselves which goods and services they want to pay for, what they can and can't afford, and what charities deserve any extra money they may have.
There is no doubt that taxes help some people, but I don't believe taxation is the most efficient way of doing that, and I certainly don't think that government bureaucrats are the best people to determine where the money should go. One can and should question the wisdom of trying to redistribute wealth, of taxing the rich to help the poor. As the income tax was originally supposed to tax only the wealthiest one percent of Americans, it has morphed into a burden on all of us, even the poorest and least able to pay. My personal experience is evidence of this.
I have been without a job for some time now, and looking for work. While I have made a little money here and there, I have been mostly surviving off of unemployment insurance and what was left of my 401K plan when I was laid off. Little did I know that I would have to pay taxes on these money sources. When I filled out my 2009 tax returns like a good slave, I was surprised to see that I owed several hundred dollars to the feds and a couple of hundred to the state of Illinois.
Having no money to spare, I wrote to both the feds and the state, explained my situation and asked for a payment plan. The feds sent me a payment plan so I wouldn't take a big hit in a month and charged me a little bit of interest. The state of Illinois, on the other hand, demanded their money in one lump sum and fined me for not paying my taxes on time. There's your compassion. There's how much the state "cares" about the poor. They talk about taxing just the rich, but one way or another taxes are eventually paid for by even the poorest amongst us. The only real solution is to completely eliminate taxes and fund government services in a voluntary manner.
Taxes create victims by robbing the taxpayer. They will tax the rich until the rich are poor and not bat an eye. They create criminals by making it illegal to withhold payment when one feels that the services rendered are less than satisfactory. This monopolistic system is antithetical to the principles upon which this nation was built. Income taxes are exceptionally abhorrent since their enforcement intimates that government owns a portion of your labor. It's not enough to simply keep the "Bush era" tax cuts, the time has come expand income tax cuts and end the extortion.
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