Look People, Government Workers Do Not Pay Taxes!

I've written about this twice here and here, but no one in Congress is listening to me (big surprise there). On Wednesday Sen. Tom Coburn has introduced a bill that would force U.S. lawmakers to disclose any taxes they owe and have their wages garnished until the debt is paid off. 

"Taxpayers are fed up with those in Washington living under a different set of rules than the rest of America," Coburn said in a statement entered into the Congressional Record. "At a time when Congress may allow taxes to increase on some or even all Americans, Congress should not expect other Americans to pay more taxes when they are not even paying the taxes they owe under the rates they set themselves."

Well, Sen. Coburn the fact that you earn your income as senator from taxation, i.e., money received through aggression, already means that you and your colleagues live under a different set of rules than the rest of America. The rest of us cannot threaten others with violence and take their money without being arrested and jailed. Coburn continues:

"Legislators and government employees should not be exempt from the laws they write and enforce," Coburn said in his statement. "The very nature of federal employment and the concept inherent to 'public service' demands those being paid by taxpayers contribute their fair share of taxes. They should lead by example."

Lead by example? How can you lead by example when you and colleagues are the ones who are paid out of taxes? If you give back money in "taxes", you will eventually receive that same money again later. You know why? Because you are paid out of taxes! You are paid out of the same pot you put that money back into.

I realize I risk beating a dead horse here, but I think that this an important illustration of how democracy blurs the line between rulers and ruled. The risible idea that public servants share the burden of government when public servants are the burden of government is yet another ideological scale that the libertarian must remove from the eyes of the masses so that they can see the truth. The truth as classic libertarian class analysis demonstrates is that the State divides the people into two classes: tax payers and tax consumers. Tax payers are those who produce and exchange in the market. Tax consumers are those who live off of the production of those who exchange in the market. And without a clear delineation between who is a tax payer and who is a tax consumer, the tax payers will never see that they are the exploited class. They will never realize that the tax consumers live off of their production and that the tax consumers composing the ruling class uses tax payers own resources to crush their freedoms. Instead the tax payers will continue to think that their rulers are actually on equal standing with them.

One might think that it demonstrating to people that government workers do not pay taxes would be easy. One only needs basic math to understand this. But in my experience, it really is hard to get this point across. The argument that has been presented against my position is very simple: "Taxes are removed from my paycheck; therefore, I pay taxes" or "Taxes are removed from their paychecks; therefore, they pay taxes". I have yet to figure out how to defeat this. I've tried simple math and common sense and each has failed miserably.

My point is that for all of the more complex propaganda the State uses to convince people that State is a legitimate, social institution, some of the simplest distortions are the hardest to disabuse the masses of. Thus, I believe it useful to regularly point out the simplest State falsehoods even if I have to write three posts on this same topic within a week.

Comments

[Cal]

Good luck Brutus. Unfortunately, it's pretty tough to shake the average rube of all the misapprehensions that clutter his mind after 13 years of forced indoctrination. I've tried getting across points like this before, and it always ends in frustration. No matter how logical and well-presented your argument is, you can't get it across in one sentence, which is slightly more than you can cram into the short window of attention that most people are able to afford you. Not to mention the fact that you are challenging the poor sucker's entire world-view: that politicians and bureaucrats are enlightened beings, endowed with not only the superior intellect and foresight required to determine the proper behavioral order of humanity, but also the moral imperative to force the masses to comply with it, whether they like it or not.

Sometimes I think that our energies would be put to better use if we stopped trying to influence adults, and instead just sit back, let them crush each other out, and get busy populating the world with new generations of free minds unsullied by the state-worship and collectivist nonsense that are the products of compulsory government schooling.

But then again, I'm a product of government schooling myself, and although it took a few years to wake up (from June 1991 until all those Ron Paul signs started popping up), once my eyes were opened, I never saw things the same again. It's all pretty clear: the would-be architects and governors of society are nothing more than self-serving sociopaths with no more intellectual prowess than your average DMV worker, no moral imperative whatsoever, and not a fucking clue as to what they are doing. They're just keeping the racket rolling, and most of them probably acknowledge that fact, at least secretly to themselves.

But just try to get that point across to the average dope who spent their most formative years starting their day by pledging allegiance to some useless inanimate object hanging on the wall (and the REPUBLIC, not REPUBLICS, mind you, for which it stands), marching around for hours between disguised jail cells to ingest a uniform interpretation of history and society, and wrapping it up with another 6 hours of mindless entertainment replete with subliminal reinforcement of the state's order and their place within it. It's a daunting task, so again, good luck.

[trevor]

Cal, you should be writing this on the blog! It definitely deserves its own post.

[Cal]

Shit, nothing sucks worse than homework on Friday! Thanks a lot, teach!

But seriously, I'll revisit the topic and see if I can get it to stand on its own two feet. The real catch is that lately my available writing time is limited to the few minutes in the morning when I'm chewing on my oatmeal waiting for the adult supervision to clock in and flog me back to the salt mine.

As a Latino friend of mine is fond of saying, "trabajo es caca!"

[trevor]

Estoy de acuerdo!