Publicani

 Iraq… world’s highest percentage of people in prison… warrantless phone and email searches… Fed printing money as if there’s no tomorrow… state prevention of medical use of marijuana and other drugs… suspension of  habeas corpus… searching your shoes at the airports… government’s new authority for taking private property from one citizen to selling it to another for profit because of the “public benefit” in higher tax revenue…

…these are examples of the modern state of the USA. 

Those are just some examples: not necessarily the best examples, just indicators pointing to a rotten state.

Before we discuss what is the root of these problems, who do you think the enemy is?  The lobbyists? Potential terrorists? The rich?

It feels like a seven-headed dragon is conducting a full-scale assault on our life, property, and liberty, attacking us from the left and right - both Republicans and Democrats voted for the Iraq war and the Patriot Act.  Attacking us from above and below - both the government makes laws assaulting our liberties and the people keep voting for such a government.

How do you fight a dragon? Face to face, or rather face to seven faces fighting will not work: even if you are successful and you cut one head/government program, two others will grow in its place right away. The right approach is to hit the red bird with the silver arrow to start a needed chain of events: the bird will drop a key from a lockbox with a magic sword that you use to fight a tiger guarding bottle with the dragon’s heart …

So, where is the red bird? What is the single target I should aim at?

My answer is: Income Tax.

Just hear me out. I know there is a social perception that taxing the rich is fair. Try to say in front of your friends, “I hate the income tax.” You’ll feel uncomfortable because the social pressures for taxing the rich are too high. To say “I hate the income tax” to other people is as hard as in the famous psychological experiment to ask strangers in subway to give up their seat for you.

I don’t want to argue that the income tax is illegal or unconstitutional. Such arguments have been made and even recently have been tried with partial success in the court of law. But the laws are made by the people and could be changed by the people.

Also, let’s put aside for a moment the belief that without income tax we are not able to function. The highways. The schools.

Because actually, we can. Income tax is about one trillion dollars a year. This is as much as we spent every year in Iraq. We could do without Iraq, couldn’t we? Even if we couldn’t, one trillion dollars is about as much as we spend every year on our foreign bases in Germany, Japan, and hundreds of other places. We could do without them, couldn’t we? Even if we couldn’t, one trillion dollars is about the difference between the federal budget now and the budget ten years ago when the government was of a reasonable size, well-funded.    

The income tax is immoral and is the source of all evil facing Americans. Deep inside, everybody knows what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong, and here are seven reasons why the income tax is wrong and evil:

1.      Income tax steals from others

Stealing means taking by force from others what belongs to them.

This definition opens three ways of attacking the uncomfortable truth that income tax is stealing: a) it’s not by force, b) it did not belong to others, and c) the end justifies the means.

Argument a) is the weakest. People who say that paying income tax is a volunteer action assume that they can talk on behalf of every tax payer, and they cannot. If a single tax payer does not want to pay income tax and has to anyway, it means that the income tax is collected by force.

The second argument, b), is also in my opinion not very strong. Proponents say that people owe part of their income to other people in the country for the opportunity, safety, and infrastructure. If this is true, then this price for these services should have been announced in advance and the tax payers should have been given a choice, whether to pay for such services or not, and the decision of how much they are willing to pay should have been theirs. 

The “end justifies the means,” argument c), on its face sounds reasonable. If society wants something strongly enough, then why can’t it ask all its members for small sacrifices? The right answer is: if many people in the society want that, let them pull their resources together voluntarily and achieve that goal for themselves or their beneficiaries without forcing anybody else to participate in their saving of the world. If they are not able to convince that part of the society essential for their project, then their project is not worth it and it’s not up to them to claim that the project is so important as to force others to participate.    

2.      Income tax identifies you

It’s impossible to have privacy in a society where the government is able to uniquely identify you and keep a file on you. You may not care so much that there is a unique number that identifies you.  You may even think that that’s the cost of living in society.  But again, by following these laws, you are inadvertently forcing your neighbor who may not want an identifier to have one.  In the US, it is done by the number which is erroneously called the social security number (SSN). In actuality it is the income tax number. You can not drop out of social security and ask the government to dismiss your social security number.

Soon, the Federal ID is coming. It will be based on SSN.  The draft and government healthcare will be obviously based on SSN.  Personal number gives the ultimate control. In Nazi camps, identification numbers were tattooed on the forearm of the prozoners.

3.      Income tax corrupts you

Income tax seduces people to form groups to make political cases to rob other groups. Why should people be subsidized in any activity by somebody else? Farming, buying a house, healthcare, having children? Why should somebody else be forced to assume this responsibility for the subsidies?

Also, about 50% of the wage-earners don’t pay income tax at all. This means that only a small part of the population is paying income tax. Why? Noisy majority free-riders will say: “Yes, it’s fair, because the rich can afford it.” Do you think it’s fair?

4.      Income tax slows down your path to success

The rate of income tax, considering state, federal, and local income taxes, is about 50%. It may appear to be less, but if you take into account that you pay a much greater price for your goods and services to compensate the producers for their income tax, 50% is actually a conservative estimate.

Given this rate, it means you have to work twice as long to achieve your goal. So if you started working at 20, and could have achieved financial success at 60, without income tax you could have achieved it by 40. That argument alone should be enough to convince anybody that income tax is evil.

5.      Income tax ruins your family

Because of income tax, both spouses have to work in order for your family to make as much money as if one spouse worked alone with no income tax. Then, your kids don’t have enough supervision. Then, they might not study as well, and might get into bad influences and end up on drugs.

A non-working spouse at home could be a ticket to a financial freedom to the entire family by going into a real estate, developing a small business, or writing a book.  

Because you don’t have time for house/family management (financial decisions, home improvement, medical appointments, vacation planning, dealing with mail), something that non-working spouse could have taken a lead, you are both under a greater stress.

6.      Income tax is insulting

It’s demeaning to keep receipts if you have a dinner with a business associate to claim it on your tax return in a few months. Regardless of the government’s low time estimates, filling taxes is a hard, stressful job and takes a lot of time.

7.      Income tax claims all your money

The fact that somebody else decides what part of your income you have to pay in taxes means that this somebody has 100% control of money you “earned.” So your money in fact belongs to this somebody who then decides how much of it to give you back.

Next time when people around you discuss any political topic, have the courage to say: “I hate income tax!”

Because I hate income tax, I wrote “Publicani.” You can read it for free on http://www.publicani.com/book. The word “publicani” originally meant the same as an IRS agent during biblical times.