The
following is a sample from my book: The Great Compromise: Getting Past the Emotional Nonsense Dividing America, which you can check out on the aforementioned link. It's
apparently of value to someone, because (although you can buy it at the low, low
price of $9.99) some second hand re-seller is asking $422.00 for it here: Buy it used
for an obscene price! I'm not sure
who is doing it, but they must have liked this book quite a bit to put so high a price on it.
But anyway, I need to pay my editor still, and I also need to start making some
headway on my student loan bills, and consequently need to sell quite a few of
these. Ergo, to encourage sales, and since Utah's State Legislative body has
brought up taxes, I thought this chapter from my book would be quite apropos. Hopefully this segment will serve both to encourage sales, and also our legislature to
behave themselves, and not, as George W. Bush warned against, balance the
budget on the backs of the poor. With that said, Enjoy Chapter 4.
Chapter
4: Government’s Job Is Not Wealth Redistribution.
Jefferson once bemoaned the fact that it is
“…a cruel fate that a rich country cannot long be a free one…”-1. It’s a lament
that I fear has roots in the simple truth that where there is wealth, arrogance
and lust for power inevitably becomes a part of the equation. Democrats see
this in corporations, but the irony is that they fail to see it in themselves,
let alone in the government. As a result the Democrats see their role in
government as trying to balance everyone out financially. The vast majority of
our leviathan government is welfare programs, but it isn’t working. People aren’t becoming more equal,
it’s just getting harder to get rich. It’s getting harder for the McDonald’s
employee to create his own burger joint to compete in the market. I don’t know
if you know this but Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s, was originally a chef
for KFC, but then he came up with an idea for “old fashioned burgers” and set
about chasing after his dream. It didn’t used to be impossible for that to
happen.
Today, if you want to start a business, you have to begin with a mountain of paper
work and wade your way through the suspicious eyes of the IRS. You have
millions of regulations to wade through as well. It’s an expensive and time
consuming process, which discourages
most people and forces them to accept their lot in life. We’ve already talked
about how this impacts the income gap, but it is important to point out that
although Jefferson was aware of the greed and corruption of corporations, his
solution to the problem was essentially to maintain the freedom of the
individual, and organizations of individuals working together for a common
purpose, or an incorporation, to pursue their interests and compete. The
Founding Fathers did not set up a system of wealth redistribution; competition
would keep the rich in check. These mechanisms didn’t enter the equation until
the Progressive era of the 20th century, which Republicans have
wanted to scale back, but have been too afraid to.
Morally speaking, the idea of wealth
redistribution is reprehensible, and it’s not new. It’s been around since the
dawn of time and quite frankly, it is one method of making a slave out of an
individual. Now, taxes are a necessary evil, but there comes a point where
enough is enough. I live in Utah where the spineless rule, so we have very
heavy taxes here, albeit a lower income tax rate. We’re in a pickle because we
have high property taxes, moderate sales taxes, income tax, payroll tax, and
the federal income tax. Oh, and in some areas our Unified Police Department charges
a Progressive service fee on top of everything else. We are taxed enough
already here, but if you say so the Salt Lake Tribune will call you an
extremist. We have a Progressive Healthcare exchange, they were working on it
before Obama Care. Also, 100% of our income tax, and a huge chunk or our
property tax, funds our Progressive education system. Now, bear in mind I am
poor. By the time all the taxes are done
with me, more than half my income is eaten by the greed of government so that they can pay for someone else to have
services they would likely be able to pay for themselves, if the government
would just stay the heck out of our wallets. Ironically, services I am having a hard time getting when
I need them, so I don’t exactly feel like I am getting a return on this
investment I am being forced into.
Remember I said that charity is one of our
most noble aspirations next to liberty, but charity is voluntary, not
government force. I have a problem with the philosophy of altruism for this
reason. I look at how much better my life would be if I could just be allowed
to keep my money, but because of altruism (an obsessive compulsive need to engage in helping the poor at
someone else’s expense rather than your own) it’s harder for me to engage in
charity. How do I give my 10% when 50% is already gone, taken by force not by
my choice?
What I am about to suggest here is very
controversial in Utah and will ensure that no Republican will ever elect me to
anything ever again, I think states like Florida have the best solution for
paying for education. Ready for it? Let’s ditch the state income tax and
install a state lottery. Yes, the poor buy lots of lottery tickets when they
should buy food, but right now I have to drive to Idaho to buy them, and that’s
a lot of gas! Here’s the deal, don’t tell me you don’t want a lottery because
you are worried about how it will hurt the poor, when you are willing to take
money out of their paychecks before they even get it, and charge them an arm
and a leg just for owning a house or a car! The fact is that Florida has this
right because they have developed a system of collecting state funding that is voluntary, and if you can collect funds
for the state through voluntary measures, that is within the confines of
natural law, whereas a tax, as we mentioned previously, violates it.
That is the entire method by which
government can honorably acquire the means for whatever ends it desires. I’ve
also argued for a marginal Fair Tax to replace the 16th amendment
previously, this is the moral argument for it. If a tax is attached to
consumption, then it is collected in a voluntary transaction. However, if it is
taken by force, out of a pay check, it is stealing the fruits of one’s labors
much as the Democrats did to the African Americans in the early days on the
United States.
When the fruits of your labors are taken
from you without your consent, what else could it be but slavery? Especially when
you have so much being taken! A lot of these individual taxes seem small, it’s
when you add them all up you see how you’re getting screwed. While you fret
about this program or that being shut down, ask yourself this question: what
could you afford if you didn’t have to worry about the difference between gross
and net? Just imagine for a second, a full paycheck… A full paycheck! Then the
fruits of your labors are yours and yours alone. You want to help the poor? Go
right ahead! If you want to fund education, buy a lotto ticket. It seems
callous, but it is working in other states, and it has been working better than
what we’ve been doing here in Utah.
The thing is that taxes collected should be
voluntary. Taxes collected in any other way its theft and theft is immoral.
America needs to embrace volunteerism rather than altruism. Trust me, people’s
lives will get a lot better a lot quicker if they can keep their own money.
Moreover, if you Democrats and Progressive Republicans agree to stay out of my
wallet, then my compromise to you is that I will stay out of your bedroom, but
we’ll get to that later.
Ultimately, the government’s role is not to
provide equal things at the expense of only a few. There is a uniformity clause
to the Constitution, which is always ignored, that is supposed to ensure everyone
is treated exactly the same by the law regardless of class, creed or race. In
order to ensure equality under the law in our society, we must ensure that the
law does not treat anyone different regardless of race, creed or income. Our
current welfare state does
discriminate. We’ve just convinced ourselves that hate is okay… if it’s directed at the rich (or Christians,
and especially rich Christians.) Our country’s past failings have been a direct
result of failing to live up to that higher ideal of equality under the law.
Should the government want to get into those kinds of redistributive services,
then it must fund them only by voluntary measures.
Chapter
4 references
1- The
Writings of Thomas Jefferson Albert Ellery Bergh ed. Vol. 17:162 (1787)
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