Taxation Tyranny

Today I am hostile about our governments' (not a typo) use of the tax code to limit our freedom. Today I'm not even going to discuss the wasteful use of our tax dollars or subsidies. I'm focusing my hostility toward luxury taxes, sin taxes, excise taxes, or whatever name you call them. They all smell the same and are all means by which the government gently bends our will. Luxury or sin taxes are designed to increase the price of alcohol, tobacco, firearms, fuel, low mpg vehicles, jewelry, high-end automobiles or any other random item the governments think you shouldn't have. Our governments pass these taxes with the stated purpose of decreasing our consumption of these items. First, it's none of their business. To get dessert a child must eat his vegetables. For us to get the things we want, we not only have to pay standard sales tax and all the embedded taxes for that product, we also have to pay extra sales tax. That's like telling a child to get dessert he has to eat his vegetables and the mess the dog just made on the carpet. Oh, and by the way, dessert is just an old stale Oreo. What I buy is my concern, let me pay the same sales tax for everything, every time. Second, taxes don't decrease consumption, they just focus it. Fuel tax is a fine example. Hundreds of organizations are lobbying our governments (not just at the federal level) for massive increases in fuel taxes (just Google it). Let's say I'm a fool with a mortage payment I can't afford, two car payments I can't afford, student loans I can't afford, and my fuel and food expenses are going on credit cards I can't afford. What do I do when all of a sudden my fuel bill increases by $100 each month just for my daily commute (besides call Dave Ramsey)? Hell, what's an extra $4 minimum payment each month? You want an extra $.50 a gallon? Make it $.60. I'll declare bankruptcy on it all and get it for free anyway. Third, there's some mixed messages in this scam. If the governments decide something is bad for you, why do they seek profit from it? Let's say I have a daughter who began a new job as a prostitute. I sit down with her and say, "It is wrong to be a whore. So, I'm going to collect 15% of your nightly income and tell you when and where you will be whoring. I'm also going to regulate the standards of your performance. If you fall below those standards, I will fine or incarcerate you." Does that make me her loving father or her pimp? Does that make our governments our loving big brothers or our pimps? You decide. Another mixed message is that we are told to spend money to grow our economy and then penalized for spending this money. If spending will help, keep you stimulus package and cut these taxes. I'll buy my wife some nice jewelry or maybe my next car will be something really nice. Or maybe we'll just start paying our mortage payments with the money we save on gas, booze, and cigarettes. No bailouts, handouts, or refinancing needed. That means Wall St. and Main St. for all you liberals out there. Now I want you to picture the type of person who wants our fuel taxes increased. Picture your typical liberal whacko in Congress. If you need a name to put with this face, read this article. Now imagine that same whacko applying this tax to all things bad. Trans fat, fast food, paritally hydrogenated vegetable oil, anything. You could picture their support for those taxes, right? We're not talking about a ban on these things, just saying that they are bad and should be discouraged. Sure, it limits our freedom and our choices, but it's for the good of society. Now picture that same whacko's response to a tax on abortion. Not a ban, but just a tax. Stick it on as an amendment to the increase in the fuel tax. Make it $2500 per abortion. Or $250 per abortion. Or $.25 per abortion. Make the doctor pay it instead of the customer (patient isn't the right term). It won't matter, this whacko will not support it. Oh, tax the hell out of elective cosmetic surgery, booze, tobacco, gas, guns, or jewelry. Taxing those won't hurt freedom of choice. Just don't touch the murder of innocent babies. That's an issue of freedom.

Why I am here and what to expect.

I feel obliged to let everyone know how this pitiful blog came to be. On a summer night in 1998 I took a monument tour in Washington, D.C. I walked reverently into the Jefferson Memorial as if Jefferson himself lived there. I read the inscription in the statue chamber and I spoke them queitly, making the vow my own. "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." While my hostility has been strong, it has been been unfocused for almost ten years. Everyone that tried telling me what or how to think I viewed as a tyrant. That made college a difficult place for me, but I won't digress into that. Tyranny in Jefferson's time was easier to identify than it is today. To see his tyranny, one must simply read the Declaration of Independence. To understand today's tyrant, one must read Volume II, Part IV, Chapter 6 of Democracy in America by Tocqueville. In a nation of equality, tyranny does not break one's will, but rather softens, bends, and guides it. The daily exercise of free will becomes less useful and government covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that we become a flock of timid and hardworking animals relying on our government as the shepherd. This is the state of existence that makes me hostile. Every time I turn on C-SPAN or the news I feel like shouting, "Help! Help! I'm being repressed." Our will isn't being broken, it's being worn down. I'll let it be known right now that I can't fix it. That isn't my task. I'm not here to repair our broken government or replace it with something better. I'm not here to change the world or to save it. And I'm certainly not here to tell you what or how to think. I'm just here to be hostile.