scribblings from a deist transhumanist libertarian minarchist citizen soldier

Theft, pure and simple

Posted by Trevor in under other on May 11th, 2007 | View Comments |

Government theft continues to grow in the United States. You might think that word is too strong a word for what government does, but that is what I consider it. The tax system we live under, where producers involuntarily relinquish a large portion of their resources to fund projects that may or may not benefit non-producers, but which definitely benefit politicians, is a form of theft.

Government is "that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else," wrote Frederic Bastiat, the great laissez-faire economist of Nineteenth-Century France. Of course, everyone cannot live at the expense of everyone else, but people who understand nothing about economics try, egged on by politicians looking for an election-wining coalition.
Government has no wealth of its own. Before it gives anything to anyone, it must take from those who produced it. But the taking could discourage future production, leaving less to be distributed by the politicians. Productive Americans have forged ahead despite a constellation of transfer programs, but how long will they continue to do so?
The European welfare states are learning that producers don’t leave themselves available for milking forever. Their economies are sluggish, and unemployment is high. Government promises exceed resources, and citizens who were guaranteed lifelong security find their benefits shrinking.

We have built a system of legalized theft that encourages large segments of the population to dedicate a portion of their time and energy to skirting or avoiding our system of taxation, or finding loopholes which partially or completely correct the financial imbalance artificially created in the name of "helping" people who will not or cannot help themselves.

John Stossel says that 52.6 percent of Americans benefit substantially from government theft. That is up from 28% in 1950. Such a growth curve is unsustainable.

At some point, the net production will not be able to sustain the net consumption. Systems that penalize producers and reward consumption lead to corruption (which is rampant in Washington) and encourage the producers to relocate to environments that are more friendly to them.

One day, the societal parasites that are sucking America dry are going to wake up to find that they are living in a dead husk that used to be called the United States of America. There will be nothing left to steal or control because the producers will be gone. The drug companies, the manufacturers, the technology innovators and the idea men will be in South Korea, or India, or somewhere where they are not as heavily penalized for producing more than they consume.

According to Michael Tanner’s "Leviathan on the Right," federal domestic spending under President Bush has risen 27 percent in real terms, while discretionary non-entitlement spending has gone up 4.5 percent a year. (Clinton’s annual increase was "only" to 2.1 percent.)

What sort of person will the next President of the United States turn out to be? Will we elect another King of Bureaucrats, another Lord of Spend and Destroy? The current system cannot sustain itself for more than another generation or two before it implodes under its own corruption.

We must either tighten our belts and eat less, or we will one day run out of food and die of starvation.

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Kitanis

Hmm

Don't steal.. the Government hates competition!

Taxes and spending should be the true heart of the election.. but sad to say.. too many people are not going to think of it that way.

The majority of the democrats are screaming that they will abolish the tax cuts.. hence this will allow them to raise spending for the "common good". In other words, steal from peter to pay paul and the public will ALLOW THEM TOO!

Trevor has it on the head.. the education system touts this kind of thinking to proliferate. Keep fighting it or were all lost!
Trevor

Once they got their hands on education, it went downhill from there. The word democracy will be the bane of civilization if we allow it. If you believe in individualism, in memes, in the power of humankind, then everything good, and everything bad, starts in one human mind and spreads. One person can change the world, one politician can change the world.
Gringo_Malo

"What sort of person will the next President of the United States turn out to be?"

Does it matter? There's a quotation attributed to some Frenchman or other in the front of P.J. O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores that goes something like:

Democracy is not a form of government to last. It can endure only until a majority of the citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.

That's precisely what's happening to us. Our present government was intended to be a republic, in which taxpayers elect representatives to spend their money wisely. That it became a democracy, in which anybody can vote, will prove to be a tragedy. One politician, more or less, will make no difference. There is no democratic solution to the problem of democracy.