Leading Humanity Out of the Darkness, Part 2

Ever since it was established the income tax has constituted an ever-growing assault on income, savings, and capital, which are the keys to a prospering nation, one in which the real standard of living is growing generation after generation. 

Here is how this corrupt and sordid process works.  All year long, and especially on April 15, people send to the IRS portions of their income, on pain of harassment, liens, garnishments, fines, and imprisonment for failing to do so. All that money, along with all the payroll taxes that people also pay, goes into a giant pool of cash, ready for distribution in the form of both welfare-state and warfare-state largess.

It is a dream come true for statists, especially those working for the government.  Here are vast sums of wealth that they haven’t produced but that they now have the power to give away to their cronies, friends, influential and powerful people, and so many others.  This welfare-warfare largess goes into the pockets of recipients of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education grants, SBA loans, state and local governments, welfare, food stamps, bailouts, corporate grants, military personnel and contractors, and even to foreign dictators.  Of course, lots of money finds its way back into the pockets of many public officials in the form of bribes, campaign contributions, junkets, and the like.

That giant pool of wealth inevitably attracts lots of people, who end up fighting their hearts out for their “fair share” of the loot.  “It’s mine!” “No, its mine!” Everyone on the dole, both welfare and warfare, comes to think that his particular share is the most important of all and, therefore should never be reduced, much less ended.

Even worse, everyone convinces himself that it is his “right” to continue receiving his dole.  In the mind of the dole recipient, he’s entitled to a portion of the wealth that has been produced by others and sent to the IRS.  That’s what is meant by the term “entitlement.”

Inevitably, the segment of society fighting to get its dirty little hands on the loot gets bigger and bigger.  After all, why go through all the trouble of producing wealth when you can simply get it from the government?

Worse yet, the amount the parasitic sector of society ends up demanding invariably exceeds the amount the IRS is seizing.  What to do then? Unable to let go of any portion of the dole, the statists will cry, “Tax the rich! Tax the rich!”  But the problem is that ultimately even the rich cannot handle the ever-growing welfare state.  The sector of the rich starts to cave in on itself, as it has now done in the welfare state of Greece….

Of course, increasing taxes on the middle class remains a possibility.  The problem there, though, is that governmental officials know that, historically, over-taxed people in the middle class have a tendency to revolt against higher taxes, a phenomenon that governmental officials have feared of.

That is where borrowing comes into play.  To get the excess money that is needed to fund the ever-growing, voracious wants of those receiving largess in the welfare state and the warfare state, U.S. officials simply go out into the capital markets and borrow the money, which they then distribute to those in the parasitic segment.  Everyone seems happy in the short term because the ever-growing number of recipients continue receiving their dole, while those who are funding the welfare and warfare aren’t faced with the short-term prospect of paying higher taxes.