Here he is, for the first time, softens up his stance on not taxing anyone other than truly wealthy. Taxation is legalized plunder. The government takes something from you without your consent. That millions of people vote to have this theft put on them does not make it any less unjust. And what is this plunder done in the name of? War, paying off teacher unions, paying off rich bankers, playing with giant toy trains (light rail) and the like. I get virtually no benefit from what my state and federal government tax me for … but imagine instead that a thief pointed a gun at me, took my money to go buy a hockey ticket to a Sabres game, and then brings the ticket to my house to give to me. Did he NOT steal from me? He in fact DID steal from me, because he took my money and then made a choice about what would be best for me, rather than letting me decide how to do it.
In 1913, at the dawn of the income tax, there were no income taxes, no social security “contributions” (FDR was too timid to call a tax a tax), no corporate income taxes, no death taxes … now we pay over 30% on our top tax rate, 15.3% of payroll taxes on first $100,000 or so of income, etc … and as you will see in a future post, government has grown by a factor of over 200 since that time.
When the income tax was passed, it was promised that the top rate would never exceed 10% (it only took 5 years for that rate to reach 77%). When the income tax was passed, it was levied at 1% on incomes that would, in today’s dollars, be as large as $440,000 and the top rate of 7% hit earners after the equivalent of $11 million today. In fact, one reason that congress refused (it is said) to put a cap on income taxes was that it was feared that the cap would give them a “target” to shoot at and therefore would have taxes rise faster than they wanted them to.
You know what might be an option too? Ending the department of education, ending the department of health and human services, ending Medicare, ending Social Security, and also a little bit of that waste Obama keeps talking about. Even if benefits in every one of those programs was promised to someone – is taking those promises away any less THEFT than increasing taxes. The commander in speech might be right that some of this was inherited (the unfunded entitlement problem) but he can no way be exonerated for getting the ball rolling on this additional tax liability. Tell me sir, is there anything that is NOT already taxed?
