Thoughts Aloud

It is past time to call BS on the Obamessiah’s damnable lies regarding taxes, which he forcefully repeated last night. He again told the lie that he was going to raise taxes on only the top two percent of earners and said everyone earning less than $250K would not pay one more “dime,” and would in fact be getting a tax cut. Many are quick to point out that an income tax “rebate” to those who pay no income tax is really a welfare payment; but the big lie is much worse than that.

Taxes can only be extracted from wealth. Wealth is created by the industry of productive private sector individuals. When someone applies their labor, talents, and intellect to producing a good or service desired by others, the earnings they receive for their efforts, beyond the very basic needs for survival, is wealth. The premise of capitalism is that individuals have an equal opportunity to create and amass as much wealth as their talents, industry, and personal ambition can muster.

What industrious individuals do with the wealth they earn is their business. They can spend it on luxuries and toys. They can risk losing it, by loaning it at interest to someone else, or investing it in hopes of a return. They can save it for a rainy day and their retirement; or they can give it away as charity to a worthy cause of their choice.

Then, of course, they can contribute some of it to pay their fair share of the costs of the infrastructure of their community, and the services they receive from public servants like fire and police protection. Few wealthy individuals begrudge these necessary public expenses, which benefit everyone; but many challenge the notion that they should pay more than their neighbors for similar benefits. Equitable user fees, infrastructure assessments, bridge tolls, etc. are seldom protested.

It is when individuals are taxed for unwanted and never used services that they balk. However anyone tries to justify it, coercing someone to pay an objectionable tax is arguably armed robbery. It is also akin to serfdom or slavery, since taxpayers are required to toil, effectively without compensation, to earn the confiscated tax money. The Progressives should be cursed daily for foisting the Sixteenth Amendment on an ill-informed public, to undo the wisdom our Founders demonstrated in Constitutionally preventing the Federal government from taxing American citizens directly.

Speaking of Progressives, the core of the aforementioned big lie is that taxes are “progressive.” The rhetoric is rooted in class warfare, and the demagogues are masters at convincing the public that they tax the “rich” at a much higher rate than the “poor.” Leaving aside the absurdity of calling any American “poor,” when the poorest among us is wallowing in an embarrassment of riches compared to life in many regions of this planet, this simply isn’t true. The vast majority of taxes collected in this country are ultimately paid by the Forgotten Man, not the so-called “rich.” Who is the Forgotten Man? He is the seemingly invisible working class stiff, who earns too much to be entitled to the welfare largess of the state; but not enough to afford the luxuries and lifestyle of the upper class elites.

He is diligent, reliable, and responsible. He asks little of government other than to be left alone to raise and take care of his family as best he can. Yet he is caught in the middle between the indigent victim class, demanding their “entitlements,” and the wealthy class, assuaging their guilt for their success, by pushing the notion of altruism for the “less fortunate.” Unfortunately, he ends up paying for the sloth and the guilt. How can this be if taxes are “progressive?”

It is elementary, actually, and it is amazing that the truth is so easily obscured by the politicians. The reality is that most all wealth flows from the sale of products and services. It matters not where the politicians pretend to extract the taxes; whether on income, profits, property, dividends, capital gains, etc. The money that is paid in taxes ultimately came from a paying customer. Taxes are just a cost of doing business to an enterprise. Raise corporate taxes, and they will have to raise their prices to cover the increased cost. It could not be otherwise.

Thus, it should be obvious that most all taxes are ultimately paid by consumers. When anyone buys a loaf of bread, every tax incurred by anyone or any entity along the entire chain of production – from the farmer who grew the wheat, through the truckers, mills, bakers, packagers, marketers, wholesalers, etc. all the way to the retail grocer who sells it to the consumer – are built into the price the consumer pays for the loaf. Even if your State does not add sales tax to food purchases, most of the cost of a loaf of bread is a well hidden tax on the consumer. That is bad enough for the Forgotten Man, but it is actually even worse, and getting more oppressive every day.

For a large and growing segment of our society pays no taxes at all, not even as consumers. Those who receive their income from a government check are tax spenders, not taxpayers. Only private sector producers really pay taxes. It is merely a charade for the government to pay public servant employees or welfare recipients enough extra cash, so they can pretend to give some of it back as their own fair share of taxes. This sleight of hand adds no new revenue to the treasury; it only shuffles real taxpayers’ money around between bank accounts. It matters not how useful or necessary the government employee’s job is to society, he is by definition a spender of taxes, not a taxpayer.

This is why the burgeoning rolls of public employees are so insidious to the Forgotten Man forced to pay for them. Every job that is removed from the private sector, where they would be taxpayers, to the public sector where taxes are only consumed, increases his tax burden. This is why New Deal style make work projects won’t grow an economy out of a depression. It matters not how useful some may find the infrastructure enhancements of WPA type projects; they only provide a measure of dignity to those forced on the dole. They do not create the wealth necessary to provide sustainable jobs in the private sector.

So, if you find yourself among the ranks of the Forgotten Man (or woman, of course), please realize that you are the one being saddled with all the expense and debt for the glorious Marxist revolution going on in Washington DC at the moment. Don’t believe the spin and outright lies being told by the silver tongued Obamessiah. The socialist utopia this man is peddling won’t work here any better than it has worked anywhere else, and for the same reason.

You, my friend, are the golden goose who pays for it all; and you just cannot afford all the wonderful programs he is promising. You will break under the load and our economy will collapse in a spectacular crash. Hopenchange may have sounded good; but the change he is bent on implementing will bury you in a hopelessly unsustainable mountain of debt, as he chokes the life out of the golden goose he doesn’t even understand.

His Marxist mindset thinks he will only be fleecing the fat cats, who can afford it and are not paying their fair share. He is wrong. They are not the golden goose… it is you; and you are paying far more than your share already. Buckle up, pay attention, and don’t be fooled… this is going to get ugly… and soon. â—„Daveâ–º

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