On Freedom and Taxes

In one of the Tax Day Tea Parties in the United States, a CNN reporter annoyingly asked a participant what taxes had to do with freedom. In a word: everything.

Taxes determine how much of our hard-earned dollars we get to keep. They are a cap on our spending and our progress. Taxes are anti-freedom. They place a limit on how much you can save/spend. And judging by the tax rates, you do not keep a whole lot of what you make regardless of how much you earn. Even a $40,000 salary could mean that after different levels of government have reached their hands into it, you come out with around $22,000. And that is hard to live on.

So what does the government do? Throw you a bunch of little crumbs like a child tax credit or a tax credit on your bus pass. This alters your behavior pattern all because you are programmed to get the small tax refund that should belong to you in the first place. Oh and when they cut your taxes, it amounts to little more than $300 a year. Gee thanks!

And where do your tax dollars go? To keep the poor perpetually poor by throwing them crumbs. It's called redistribution of wealth and we've been told that this helps society. No it doesn't. It chains the taxpayers and the welfare recipients in a viscious circle.

I once was told that socialism creates equality: everyone equally poor. It couldn't be further than the truth. That's what our redistribution system does.

Still not convinced that freedom and taxes go hand in hand? Ask yourself what led to the American and French Revolutions? Taxes! The people revolted because their property was being seized by unfair taxation. Well did the people really have a say when it came to income taxes? Income taxes were meant to be merely for the two World Wars. But they stayed on because the money was too enticing. By then, nobody had the appetite to stand up to it.

Don't get me wrong. Governments need to be a certain size in order to protect people and their properties from others. Governments maintain police and the army. They build roads and enforce ports of entry among many other things. But governments have a moral duty not to overtax and overspend. It is outside of their mandate. And also, governments do not have the moral authority to take from one and give to the other. That does not create prosperity or grow the pie.

I should not say that they take a dollar from one and give to the other. They take a dollar from Joe taxpayer, keep 80 cents to themselves (bureaucratic salaries) and give 20 cents to Jim the welfare recipient. That is redistribution and theft. I have a better idea. Have Joe spend that dollar and many other Joes so Jim can get a job and get 40 cents on that dollar. It's just crazy enough to work.

We need the Lockean approach. If a tax dollar isn't allocated to the preservation of liberty and property, then it ought to be returned to the taxpayers. It should never be spent frivolously. And no government dollar should be spent unless it is universally applied (read no earmarks).

Anything else is a restriction of freedom and ought to be opposed with vigor.