Serfin' U.S.A.

"Let me tell you how it will be. There's one for you, nineteen for me. 'Cause I'm the taxman." – George Harrison

Money; the Federal Reserve can print as much of it as they want; the Federal Government can borrow and spend as much of it as they want, but we need to earn ours; after we do, we’ll have every government agency and municipality trying to take as much of it away as they possibly can (without causing a revolution). 

First they’ll try to look sincere as they explain to us that taking our money is really for our own good, or the greater good, or the future, or our children’s future; they’ll tell us that they’ll use our earnings better than we can. We’ll actually be much better off after they confiscate the money that we worked for; in fact, we should thank them for taking it! All we need to do is trust them and shovel it over, they’ll do the rest (by shoveling it over to someone else, usually to the groups that supported them on election day).  

They try to use kinder, gentler words to describe what they’re really doing: it’s not “theft,” it’s not “looting,” it’s not “extortion;” they prefer “withholding.” 

If the government didn’t “withhold” their cut from our pay, and we had to write them a check each month, I think most of us would feel differently about the income taxes that we pay.

We the People, will inevitably try to hang on to as much of our earnings as we can, when we do, we’ll be labeled “greedy” by the people that want to take it. If a person is “greedy” for trying to keep what they worked hard for, what would you call the person that didn’t earn it, but thinks they have a right to it? What would you call the people that take it by force?  

The IRS or other tax agencies will threaten to use force to take their “fair share” of our income. They don’t really do too much saber rattling until they have to, but we all know what the consequences would be if we didn’t pay them. If the IRS doesn’t get what they want from us, they’ll eventually send people with guns to either take it, or put us into a prison. If you don’t believe that, just ask Wesley Snipes; you can contact him at Pennsylvania's McKean Federal Correctional Institute (a kinder, gentler name for “prison”). So much for the idea of a “free country.” 

If you don’t think of your money as just paper, if you think of it as your labor, your work, your risk, your time, your reward and your value to your employer, if you think of it as the means to a better life, your money suddenly means quite a lot more. It reflects the value of your labor and the reward for your risk. It’s not just paper after all, is it?  

Have you ever stopped to think about how much you pay in taxes? I’m not just talking about your income tax (but that’s bad enough), if you added them all up, how much of your money goes to government?  

The top federal income tax rate is now 35 percent, but most taxpayers are probably paying at the 25 or 28 percent tax rate. At least one day in four, we’re not working for ourselves or our families; we’re working for the Federal Government. That comes out to three months out of each year; but we’re still not even close to finished.  

New York State takes another 7 percent from our earnings, which means we’re paying 32 percent or 35 percent of our income to our governments, 42 percent if we’re in the top tax bracket. Including New York State’s cut, we’re working about one day in three for governments. If you work in New York City, they’ll take between 2.907 percent and 3.648 percent of your earnings. That brings us to between 35 percent and 45 percent of our salaries going to pay income taxes, so we’re up to around four months a year, almost six months for some. That’s at least January, February, March and April (throw in May and part of June for the top earners) before we get to keep any of what we work so hard for.  

Of course we also have sales tax in NY; here in Nassau County it’s 8.625%. On a thirty thousand dollar car, that’s about $2,500, on a $100 dinner in a restaurant, that’s a little under nine bucks, on that $6,000 living room set, it’s a bit more than $500. What do you think it all adds up to by the end of the year?  

We also pay taxes on our property; if you have a modest Cape Cod style home on 1/4 acre in my home town (Glen Cove), you’re probably paying somewhere between seven and eight thousand dollars a year in property taxes; it goes up a lot higher than that, depending on square footage of the home and lot size. Your property taxes will jump up if you add an extension or an in ground swimming pool. The government will actually penalize you for providing jobs and improving your home. If you’re a renter, the property taxes are factored in, making your rent higher.  

There is a “Capital Gains” tax on your investments, there are also taxes on your telephone bills, television bills, your utility bills, your cigarettes, your beer, your soda, nearly everything is taxed.

There are countless taxes that are more or less invisible that we don’t really think about; in NY we’re paying a tax of 61.9 cents per gallon of gasoline.  Fill ‘er up!  About 10 bucks from that 15 gallons of gasoline you just bought goes to our government.  

The fuel taxes don’t only hurt you at the pump, they drive up the cost of transportation and shipping. Nearly everything we own, eat or consume had to be shipped to us from somewhere; fuel taxes are factored into the price of everything we purchase.   

The Corporate tax rate in the US is at 35 percent and is the second highest in the world, after Japan (no wonder unemployment is so high, how do we compete?).  That 35 percent isn’t absorbed by the corporation, it’s factored into the price of their product and is hitting us pretty hard at the checkout line, for anything that’s American made anyway (including your power and heat). Fewer and fewer things are American made, partially thanks to that 35 percent tax rate. Whenever you hear that business isn’t doing their “fair share” and they should take on more of the burden; remember that they’ll just pass the burden onto the consumer, which means we’ll pay for it anyway.  

Companies are taxed on their employees (also causing prices to rise and contributing to unemployment). The payroll tax is based on how many employees a business has, which of course causes businesses to hire as few employees as possible.  It causes labor intensive businesses to struggle disproportionately, and also causes businesses to move out of our country; anyway you look at it, it means more unemployment at home.  

They even tax the dead. The “Estate Tax” or “Death Tax” will take a sizable portion of whatever a person might have accumulated, and thought they were leaving to the kids. If a person managed to buy a nice home, a small business and maybe put together a chunk of cash and investments after paying all of those taxes over the course of their life, before the ink on the death certificate is dry, the Feds will take the first healthy cut. If we die with debt, don’t expect the Feds to take a share of that; they’ll be generous enough to allow your children to inherit your debt.

I realize governments run on money, and we need to pay taxes. It’s inescapable and to an extent understandable, but we’re really paying too much; we’re choking on them. We’re working more than half of our days to feed the growing government (and they say they’re working for us). The average, working American pays more in taxes than we do for food, housing and clothing combined.   

How much is “fair?" 

When you’re doing all of the work and taking all of the risks, does more than half sound “fair” to you? Maybe we should each give our entire paycheck to government and let our elected officials decide what’s “fair.” We can abolish private property, have the government take over the businesses and banks and control all of the money, and guarantee total equality; not equality of opportunity, but equality of results.

I’m a bartender, and I can get equal pay to a heart surgeon! Why not? How about “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”? Would that finally be “fair” enough?  How do you think that would work out? Has anyone else tried it? How did it work for them?  Was it productive or destructive? 

Nobel Prize winning economist Friedrich Hayek wrote about the tyranny of top down economic planning in his book “The Road to Serfdom.” He explained that it leads to high taxation and eventually tyranny and totalitarianism.

Russian born writer and philosopher Ayn Rand wrote about it too (in a very different way); her novel “Atlas Shrugged” might have seemed a bit far fetched to some in 1957, but these days it’s reading like actual headlines. She tried to explain that in a free country, the separation of economics and State is every bit as important as the separation of Church and State. If you haven’t read Hayek or Rand, give ‘em a go. While you’re at it, read the other side in Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital.” See which parts of these philosopher’s ideas and theories you recognize in today’s America.      

Because we’re working more hours, days and months for people other than ourselves and our own families, I really don’t think we’re on “The Road to Serfdom;” I think we’ve arrived.