Tyranny and the Death of Honest Industry

The U.S. tax system is a malignant cancer: as it metastasizes, it brings with it a huge administrative burden, disincentives to produce anything of value, and the death of honest industry.

Ultimately, a civil government’s laws and tax system reflect its underlying values (or lack thereof). In the U.S., it’s clear that we’ve transitioned away from a Christian republic and now live under a form of democratic socialism.

It’s also clear that nearly all politicians’ claims of faith in God are merely lip service to win votes from religious tax payers.

Here’s a tip: What people actually do speaks much louder than words. Our leaders’ actions indicate that the reigning world view in Washington, D.C. is a godless Darwinian humanism that seeks total control of its citizens — even the world.

Tyranny Defined

Tyranny is the “cruel and unjust use of power or authority.” Tyranny is also the “jurisdiction […] of a tyrant or absolute ruler.”

Is it just to take honestly-earned money from a productive man and give it to a lazy man? This is what the modern welfare state does. And true to the art of doublespeak, they don’t call it theft, but rather “redistribution of wealth” — as if that’s a good thing!

Of course, my critics will immediately say that I must be heartless. Shouldn’t we take care of the poor? they’ll say. My reply: Absolutely. I just believe that charity should be strictly in the private domain — not in the public.

Here’s the problem. As soon as you accept “redistribution of wealth” as a good and necessary thing, you’ve just opened the door to a thousand evils.

That’s because one form of tyranny leads to another. It starts with something small, perhaps something like an income tax. A few decades later people are being imprisoned as “enemy combatants” without trial or due process of law.

Need proof? Look no further than the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was signed into law on December 31, 2011.

And right on its heels, an Executive Order (National Defense Resources Preparedness) was signed on March 16, 2012. These two laws lay the foundation for total tyranny in the U.S.

The Silent Invasion

As government spreads like a cancer, it creeps into private industry as well.

That’s why in the 20th Century we’ve witnessed the rise of corporate tyranny — control of the masses through large multi-billion dollar corporations.

The people who sit on the boards of these massive corporations are sometimes politicians. Which means the captains of industry and the captains of the country are often one and the same, Dick Cheney being a recent, high-profile example.

But this blending of business and government isn’t the only problem.

We also have professional lobbyists who spend their lives trying to win the government’s favor. After all, if they can get special concessions, financial incentives, or outright handouts from the government, it could mean millions of dollars in new revenue, maybe even hundreds of millions.

Lobbying the government adds no value to society. In fact, it is a drain on society. And yet somehow it still pays to have people feeding full-time at the government trough.

It Doesn’t Pay to Be Small

When taxes are high, there is a disincentive to do anything on a modest scale. In other words, there is an incentive to do business on a large scale.

Every business has to make enough money to escape the gravity of taxes. The economies of scale in your business have to overcome the tax burden and still provide you with a decent income.

This is one reason why we have so many large corporations in America. The corporation is an individual legal entity apart from the owners designed to operate on a large scale, remove personal liability, and avoid taxes.

As corporations pursue growth, ethics often get swept under the rug. This is even truer if a corporation is publicly traded.

A public company’s first and foremost obligation is to the shareholders, therefore profits are #1. If “doing the right thing” will hurt profits, then the right thing isn’t done. Profits trump ethics.

Furthermore, because corporations can be so insanely profitable, they practically own our government. They donate money to politicians; politicians, once elected, return the favor by granting exclusive government contracts, tax breaks, etc.

Next thing you know, the elected politician is a paid board member of the corporation — and the line between business and government fades until you can no longer see it.

If ever there was an unfair advantage, it’s the unfair advantage large politically-minded corporations have over small business.

The March Toward Fascism

Earlier in this post I said we have a form of democratic socialism. Which is true to a degree. But it’s actually worse than that because what we have is less like democracy and more like fascism.

Fascism is a centralized form of government where the government actually owns the corporations. With every bail-out passed by Congress, we see more corporations being nationalized.

This is fascism.

We’re not all the way there yet, but if the process continues, we certainly will be.

The problem with fascism is that a wealthy and privileged oligarchy ends up dictating the laws that are created. They use their wealth to control easily-manipulated politicians to do their bidding.

The politicians play along so they won’t be blackmailed — or assassinated. (Wall Street whistleblower Eliot Spitzer learned this lesson the hard way. His penalty was character assassination.)

So it appears as if we have a form of democracy, when it is really just an illusion. Andrew Gavin Marshall, writing for Global Research, says it this way:

Society, and with it, any remaining ‘democracy’ is being closed down. In this economic crisis, as Daniel Guerin warned decades ago, the financial oligarchy have chosen to ‘throw democracy overboard’, and have opted for the other option: totalitarian capitalism; fascism.

Right now, the IRS is hiring agents faster than any other time in history. They’re being especially aggressive about collecting taxes. The financial crisis is being used to justify this exercise of federal power.

Worse, the new health care reform requires a whole new breed of IRS agents who can audit and enforce the health insurance laws — yet another unnecessary and unconstitutional expansion of central government.

When will Americans wake up and finally realize that our government does not seek our good, but rather our enslavement? (Probably after it’s too late.)

Empires Require High Taxes

One reason Americans pay such high taxes is because it’s expensive to maintain a worldwide empire. It’s also expensive to wage wars… and to be the world’s playground bully.

Another reason for excessive taxation is social programs like Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, unemployment, etc.

To fund our wars and social programs, the government has to collect a high percentage of our incomes. Of course, the tax money they collect comes nowhere near what they need, so they make up the difference by “printing money” instead.

This is the hidden tax of inflation. We don’t pay this tax directly, but ultimately we pay for it in the form of rising prices and deteriorating purchasing power.

No matter how you look at it, the U.S. tax/money system screws us six ways ’til Sunday — and makes it difficult to run a legitimate business on a small scale.

This is why I reject all mainstream politicians and advocate a return to limited government that does not over-tax the people or interfere in our lives.

But until such time as Americans wake up, we’ll probably have more taxes, more inflation, more administrative burden, more corporations who call on government for unfair advantages, and a steady march toward fascism.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. I first wrote this post January 6, 2010. I’m finally posting it two years later with some minor editing.