No Liability: Food for Thought

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Food for Thought

Post 3 of 11

I offer the following as grist for your mill in considering what issues are worth considering when choosing your relationship to the government. First, what are you supporting with your tax dollars?

Supporting the War Machine?

"What would you do if I came into your office tomorrow with a cup in my hand, asking for contributions to enable me to buy guns and kill a group of people I don’t like.

"Wally Nelson, war tax resister, speaking to an IRS agent

"For many, the only difference between paying for war and participating in war is that the former is less messy and more convenient.

"Although not pacifists, some people have been motivated to act because of the nuclear war threat and the immoral misuse of Government spending. However, many war tax resisters also do not believe that killing or the threat to kill is an acceptable way to solve social or political problems. Frequently, new resisters have expressed a gain in personal power they have felt over their lives upon becoming war tax resisters.

"No matter what motivates those of us who resist war taxes, it is agreed that each one of us is responsible. And part of that responsibility is to reduce our complicity in war and preparation for war."

War Tax Resisters League, Guide to War Tax Resistance, third edition 1986, p.9

Second, if you feel the good things government are supposed to do are more important than the bad, are you obligated to support any organization which performs those functions so poorly?

Wasteful, Inefficient, Unaccountable, Irresponsible Management?

Louis Rukeyser, "By now, practically everybody in America agrees that the government wastes money, an incredible lot of it indeed, a sum with so many zeroes that it is beyond the imagining of anyone who doesn’t happen to be employed as a professional mathematician."

Stan Collander, Director of Budget Analysis for Price Waterhouse in Washington, "Look there’s no doubt that at some point you feel like you’re playing with poker chips. That it has no meaning at some point. And just to give you an example. The federal budget is so large that we tend to round things off to the nearest tenth of a billion when I do all my work. A tenth of a billion is a hundred million dollars, which means that if you came to me and say I’ve got a program that’s 47 million that rounds down to zero."

Stephen Moore, "In 1950 in this country, we spent about $1500 for every child in the public school. That’s again in 1990 dollars. In 1990, we’re spending close to six thousand dollars per pupil in the public school. Now as everyone knows, the public schools were much better in 1950 when we were spending four times less than we are today. Now how can that be? How can it be we’re spending four times more, and yet SAT scores are lower, graduation rates are lower, the types of skills that our students are leaving from high school with are lower. More money does not often lead to better quality. The schools are a very good example of that."

Louis Rukeyser, "Martin, is the basic problem that what we subsidize we get more of, whether it’s unemployment, poverty, or whatever? And what we tax, be it work or savings, we get less of?"

Martin Gross, author of “A Call for Revolution, "Absolutely, and we spend 360 billion dollars on welfare and poverty has gone up from 9 percent in the 70's, to 11 percent in the 80's, to 14 percent today. The federal government — everything it touches turns to dirt. So poverty increases with the more money we spend. As a matter of fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s an inverse reaction to government spending. If we sent a check for $14,700 to every poor family in America, welfare or otherwise, it would cost 115 billion. We would save 200 billion and we would have no poverty and no unemployment."

J. Peter Grace, Chairman of W.R. Grace & Company, and head of the Grace Commission on Government Waste under President Reagan, "I don’t know if you’ve noticed that, I don’t have the chart in front of me, but the debt goes up more than they claim it the deficit is. For instance the deficit is 255 reported fiscal years 1993, but the debt went up 468 billion."

Louis Rukeyser, "Are they lying to us?"

J. Peter Grace, "Oh, the whole accounting system. They have 332 incompatible accounting systems. 319 incompatible payroll systems. Somebody else will say well this is the way we run our books, we’re not lying. But yes, I mean, under normal accounting rules they’re lying all the time. The whole thing is the city is crooked.

"We’re certainly not on the track [to a balanced budget] in the next 10 years, the next 20 years, the next 25 years. Meanwhile, of course, the debt’s going up and interest rates are bound to rise. They’re low now. And that combination is gonna give us a trillion dollar a year interest debt, and that buys nothing. It doesn’t save a human life, it doesn’t do anything for a homeless family. It provides nothing useful at all. Just a waste of money.

Senator William Proxmire, retired after 31 years in Congress, "The Congress perks are fantastic. About a hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year salary, you have a staff that won’t stop. The average Senator, Member of the House, together, three and a half million dollars apiece, apiece, for each Member of the Congress."

Milton Freidman, 1976 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, "We’ve tried to elect the right people. It doesn’t work. Whether the right people are elected to the Presidency or to Congress. And I do not think we’ll get anywhere that way. But I think in order to really set a limit on government spending we’re going to have to change the institutional arrangements under which the decisions are made to spend your and my money."

There Goes Our Money, A Louis Rukeyser Special, Maryland Public Television, Broadcast April 15, 1994

You Still Pay Anyway!

Finally, I must point out that even if you never file another tax return the rest of your life, you will still pay plenty of taxes. How? Consider a roll of toilet paper. Let’s pretend you buy a four pack at a grocery store. That grocery store received it from a distributor who is working for a manufacturer. That’s three companies who each have many employees, each company is undoubtedly organized as a corporation, and, as such, is a creation of the State. Which literally means the State has sovereign rule over that corporation as it’s property, in law (though not in any other, more practical ways.) Thus there is no question that the corporation is subject to the income tax, and as a mandatory not voluntary tax due to the literal master/slave, creator/created relationship of the State and the corporation.

"The individual unlike the corporation, cannot be taxed for the mere privilege of existing. The corporation is an artificial entity, which owes its existence and charter to the state."

Redfield v. Fisher, Supreme Court of Oregon, 292 P. 813 (1930)

The wording of the tax laws is such that corporations “shall” file returns of income. Meaning that filing is mandatory (I will discuss the permissive interpretation of “shall” later.) Thus the cost of the roll of toilet paper will include the taxes those corporations paid for their privileges to exist as taxable “persons” and have whatever the state chooses to defines as “income.” I will also discuss the meanings of “person” and “income” later. My point is that, as the world currently exists, the saying that you cannot avoid death and taxes is still true. What I am suggesting is the possibility to choose not to be liable for indivdual income taxes in the United States.