It is a naive notion that the government can be a source of funding, can provide various services for free and is somehow able to generate unlimited revenues that never impact anyone or anything negatively. This notion is a fantasy that needs to be analyzed and rejected.
To start at the beginning, let’s suppose a country recently formed, decides to formulate a government. This formulation is needed to protect the citizens from the initiation of force by criminals and foreign invaders, settle disputes and create laws that are consonant with protecting individual rights. This means the government is limited and cannot just go wild with regulation and spending. So what does this newly formed government have to offer the citizens that formulated it? Without a source of revenue…nothing Only by taking from those who are producing and trading can the government get anything unless the government is willing to seek voluntary payments just as all businesses must do. A businessman who provides a good or service knows that he must compete and he must earn a reputation to be successful. He does not expect that no one will want his goods or services and act like a criminal requiring customers to pay for what they do not want. But the governments that have been in existence from day one dismiss the notion of voluntary payments because they know what they decide to deliver must be paid for whether it is wanted or not.
With the initiation of a tax to fund the government ( i.e. a mandatory confiscation) the door is opened to tax for whatever a government official may decide to offer. Having a representative to ensure nothing superfluous is enacted can be proven historically to be ineffective. Therefore the power to tax should not be granted to the government. To think that taxation can be limited is to defy the logic of the action. If money can be taken by the government for any purpose it is only so long before another purpose arises which can be rationalized for a new tax.
To limit entitlements, subsidies, grants, foreign aid etc, the source of these injustices must be revoked. The government must rely on the voluntary just as all other rational human industries and organizations do. For if the gasoline industry cried that no one would buy their product unless forced to do so, it would not be long before whatever the gasoline industry produced would fall under the same mandate. And like the growth of government the gasoline industry would be the industry that squelched all other economic activity. In the case of the government, nationalization is the road to conquest of the economy but any industry could be in a controlling position if it too could require payment for its goods or services. Eventually an industry with such power would be the government. For he who can tax will eventually rule.
A government that has to rely on voluntary payments must justify every penny received. It cannot operate on a budget that says we have to have so much. It has to operate on the principle that says,” I must live within my means” ( which means what I can earn). If what is being offered is inadequate then don’t expect unlimited confiscated payments to cover deficiencies. Private security services do not operate this way nor should the government.
The notion that confiscation of wealth is okay for government has unleashed a herd of criminals cloaked as politicians. Once a person enters the current political arena they realize they are in a different world where money can be taken from those earning it, where manipulation and conniving are necessary for survival and unless one has power one is at the mercy of the person who acquires the most power. This is the kind of world a tax generated revenue system creates. The offshoot is a bundle of services that have no concern for customer satisfaction. There is no competition to worry about. You can sell stamps for whatever you need to meet your costs which are magnified by the desire for the latest technology and the newest gadgets. So what if a passenger is not satisfied with his trip on your railroad? What other rail service has he got to turn to?
Without the ability to tax the government has nothing to give. What it has by taxation is merely redistribution of some people’s money ( those taxed ) to political favorites that translate into votes for ongoing power. This is a zero sum game where the ongoing confiscation eventually stifles economic activity to subsistence level where the politically favored become the haves of what is available and the non-politically favored survive as slaves.
We are seeing the results of the power to tax fully implemented in a country designed for the freedom of the individual to prosper. Government has reached the level of fiscal crisis where taxation is becoming increasingly burdensome. Government borrowing is saddling the country with unfathomable debt. The currency is deteriorating under the weight of inflation and assets are increasingly becoming foreign owned. This trend is blatantly visible and the endpoint is not too difficult to visualize. This from granting the power to tax to government.
A politician that would buck this notion of mandatory confiscation doesn’t exist. There are only politicians who believe they can get away with it before the collapse. Their main defense is to point to the private sector just as they are now doing in the credit crunch. Ignoring their requirements that unleashed a bunch of poorly qualified home buyers who inevitably would default, they point to the lenders as the culprits. If the lenders didn’t fail before ,what caused them to fail recently? What changed can be traced to the politicians and their faulty ideas.
To ask the government to take from the people earning money so that some of that can be redistributed is to ask for thievery to become legal, for industry to be punished and lethargy to be rewarded. The government has nothing to offer until it takes and what it takes is not ethically its to convey. The twenty first century has the opportunity to become a futuristic progressive era or a descending slide into the political abyss of chaos and civil war. The positive step is a limitation of government. The descent is paved with
rampaging power lust in the form of destroying individual liberty and the rights of man. This choice is what government has to offer and can only fulfill a promise of a better life by becoming a limited agency relying on the benevolence of those willing to voluntary contribute to its limited functions.
Tags: government
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