In Response to Anon's Last Comment on Jimbo's Tax Thread

Answer to Anon’s straw-man question at the end of Jimbo’s post about how much he pays in taxes, which was “How much should you pay for living here?”:

How much should I pay for the privilege of living here? In Federal Tax - exactly as much as it costs to maintain a Federal Government that is constrained within the bounds of the Articles of the US Constitution and not a penny more. I am not discussing a strained interpretation that capitalizes on the word “welfare” that is written in the preamble (which was a concern for many of the people that wrote it, if you read the federalist papers) and uses this one word for an excuse to do all sorts of unConstitutional things, but a direct interpretation as it is directly constrained in the Articles.

Not billions from the pockets of single mothers to aid farms that cannot make it on their own for some reason (could it be because prices are held artificially low because of government mandates? Naw, couldn’t be). Not billions from the pockets of hard working middle class men who want to put food on their family’s table to boondoggle foreign aid and the corruption of the UN. Not billions from my pocket to pay for my neighbor’s vices and necessaries, or for mine, as I think we would all be better off if we were allowed to take care of ourselves (just as we were when that was the case).

It is amazing to me that before about 1920, when the US Government operated at least nominally within the constraints of the Constitution, and even before 1913 when there was no direct federal tax levied upon the people, income or otherwise, that not only did our government function perfectly well on an eighth of it’s current budget, even adjusted for inflation, but it did so with a nagging, annoying BUDGET SURPLUS every single year with the exception of a few right after the Civil War. As soon as the purse strings opened up, though, it seemed that the Feds never could get enough money because they always found something else on which to spend it, and always something else after that. Starting in 1913, when the income tax was added and ratified as an Amendment to our Constitution (and no, I’m not saying the income tax is not Constitutional, as it was, indeed, ratified as an Amendment, and therefore is exactly that – Constitutional) as something like a 3% income tax (flat, across the board), that taxation has skyrocketed, and real, actual utility of government to the people has not kept up with the amount that they are taxed.

In 1913, when the income tax was ratified, there was one congressman who, in the register kept of the debate, worried that some day, this tax might go as high as (GASP!) TEN PERCENT! A proponent of the tax responded that “The people, sir, would never allow that.”

But we have, to this point, and now some of us are drawing the line in the sand and saying “ENOUGH!” (I, for one, paid alarmingly close to 50% of my salary to the government this year, which means that I functioned as a slave for the first 6 months of 2009, and am once again a slave until June, as I labor but am allowed to keep none of the fruits of my labor for that period of time). This doesn’t make us evil or greedy, it makes us smart. We have watched as more and more of the reward for our efforts (the dollar, is, as it were, simply a vessel in which we can store our own expended energy and sweat) gets washed away by a massive Federal juggernaut, to be spent recklessly on things that we don’t care about or disagree with without a say in the matter. You of all people should understand this – how much does it hurt you to know that by paying taxes, you directly financed the Iraq war against your will? How much good could you have done had you been allowed to keep that money for yourself? Spent it locally to support an artist that you liked, or a restaurant that employs people and supports their family?

Jimbo, for instance, employs several people. $50,000 dollars is enough to hire another person. Feed another family. Keep someone who wants to work from being unemployed and destitute, but that ability was taken from him by the government so that they can give the money to bankers and auto executives that couldn’t compete within the markets anymore because of their own bad decisions. And someone, somewhere in Jimbo’s town is without a job because of it. So much for the caring, benevolent government, eh?

My next question is does Jimbo, to continue the example, receive $50,000 worth of utility out of the government per year for his part in paying his taxes? I cannot imagine what $50,000 worth of utility per year looks like – that is considerably more than I make in my salary. I can imagine what the $16,000 I paid in my federal taxes would have done for me and my family, though, and I just don’t see the payout coming back. Government is a horrible middle-man. They cost 75 cents on the dollar to get things done, with their b-cracy and b-shit. They are not the answer.

What is amazing to me is that I pay a much, much smaller percentage of my taxes to the State and City where I live, and the return to me is excellent – my kids get good schools, I drive to work every day on well-maintained (okay, occasional pothole, but well maintained) roads, I get all the clean, fresh water my family can drink, and our refuse is hauled and sewered away very cheaply. So I get a lot more from my local government, yet pay much less to them. I wonder if maybe that is why the Founding Fathers set the Constitution up the way they did – because centrally-located power is incapable of efficiently and fairly governing? Nah, couldn’t be.

Of course, I don’t expect that you read any of this, and fully expect that you will insult me for being a stupid mindless Neocon in 3…2…1…