During this awful week when hardworking American taxpayers
struggle to comply with a burdensome, oppressive, and indecipherable U.S. tax
code, it’s worth examining the root of their fiscal pain: the fact that the
majority keeps voting for a government whose size and scope are far beyond all
rational (and Constitutional) limits. Our government should only pursue
its one valid purpose – the protection of our right to
life, liberty, and property - through its three main functions (police,
courts, and military), but instead it now routinely violates each right, at
nearly every turn. These violations are fueled by a now-widespread mentality
that derides individualism and claims that we’re duty-bound to help strangers,
that we’re “our brother’s keeper,” and that those with less are “entitled” to
free goods legally and electorally fenced by corrupt politicians.
Tragically, both abject dependency and a general
collectivist-statist trend have been building in America for most of the past
century, after corrosive ideological premises were imported from Europe
starting in the 1880s. At this time a century ago there was no federal income
tax, no Federal Reserve, and no huge regulatory bureaucracy; government
spending in America (at all levels) was a mere 5% of total GDP. Precisely
because American government a century ago was restricted to its one proper
purpose and three functions, America’s productive prowess was unmatched,
and living standards sky-rocketed during the laissez-faire half-century
known as the “Gilded Age” (1865-1915).
Today government spending (at all levels) is seven times what it
was a century ago – 35% of GDP, versus 5% – but what’s been gained by it? Are
government goods and services seven times better than a century ago? No. In
fact, government service today is worse, since much of it entails an unjust
taking of wealth from earners for receipt by the undeserving, even as
government bureaucrats rake off perhaps a quarter or more of the transferred
loot.
The American revolutionaries of 1763-1776 were officially British
citizens and didn’t revolt against taxes per se. They knew that even a limited
government required some revenue if it was to effectively perform its (limited)
tasks. What they rebelled against was “taxation without representation.”
Only later did (male) colonists enjoy local representation, in the Continental Congress (1774-1789), which levied some taxes; but no
colonists ever enjoyed direct representation in Britain’s Parliament, which
began to impose harsh taxes in the mid-1700s, in order to pay for the French
and Indian war (1754-1763).
America today is in the opposite position from the mid-1700s, for
instead of a populace that wants a fairly limited, laissez-faire government,
most Americans today prefer a bigger, ever-more invasive government (as evidenced
by election results) and don’t want to pay for it. Instead of a fair system of
taxation with representation, Americans increasingly endorse greater
representation without taxation. This evil and ominous trend – troubling
at least for those who are wealthier, hence most prone to the legalized looting
has spread since the 1960s, when the American welfare state began its most
explicit expansion.
In 1960 only 15% of federal income tax returns had a zero tax
liability, due mostly to low taxable income, a standard deduction, the personal
exemption, the dependent exemption, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (a direct
subsidy to people for being poor). But recent data reveal that nearly 50% of
Americans now pay no federal income taxes. These people are getting
representation without taxation; many of them probably feel righteous in their
power to vote away the rights and property of others.
Ben Franklin is reported to have said: “When the people find they
can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.” Democracy
is a vicious political scheme that tends to institutionalize robbery. We’ve
already lost much of the original American republic, but things can get worse
still.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardsalsman/2012/04/18/representation-without-taxation-so-wheres-the-outrage/#2a30e6fe24da
No comments:
Post a Comment