Taxation Is Theft
Taxation Is Theft
by
Andrew P. Napolitano
Recently
by Andrew P. Napolitano: Drones,
Guns, and the President
With a tax
code that exceeds 72,000 pages in length and consumes more than
six billion person hours per year to determine taxpayers’ taxable
income, with an IRS that has become a feared law unto itself, and
with a government that continues to extract more wealth from every
taxpaying American every year, is it any wonder that April 15th
is a day of dread in America? Social Security taxes and income taxes
have dogged us all since their institution during the last century,
and few politicians have been willing to address these ploys for
what they are: theft.
Texas Gov.
Rick Perry caused a firestorm among big-government types during
the Republican presidential primaries last year when he called Social
Security a Ponzi scheme. He was right. It’s been a scam from its
inception, and it’s still a scam today.
When Social
Security was established in 1935, it was intended to provide minimal
financial assistance to those too old to work. It was also intended
to cause voters to become dependent on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s
Democrats. FDR copied the idea from a system established in Italy
by Mussolini. The plan was to have certain workers and their employers
make small contributions to a fund that would be held in trust for
the workers by the government. At the time, the average life expectancy
of Americans was 61 years of age, but Social Security didn’t kick
in until age 65. Thus, the system was geared to take money from
the average American worker that he would never see returned.
Over time,
life expectancy grew and surpassed 65, the so-called trust fund
was raided and spent, and the system was paying out more money than
it was taking in – just like a Ponzi scheme. FDR called Social Security
an insurance policy. In reality, it has become forced savings. However,
the custodian of the funds – Congress – has stolen the savings and
spent it. And the value of the savings has been diminished by inflation.
Today, the
best one can hope to receive from Social Security is dollars with
the buying power of 75 cents for every dollar contributed. That
makes Social Security worse than a Ponzi scheme. You can get out
of a Ponzi investment. You can’t get out of Social Security. Who
would stay with a bank that returned only 75 percent of one’s savings?
The Constitution
doesn’t permit the feds to steal your money. But steal, the feds
do.
At one of last
year’s Republican presidential debates, a young man asked the moderator
to pose the following question to the candidates: “If I earn
a dollar, how much of it am I entitled to keep?” The question
was passed to one of the candidates, who punted, and then the moderator
changed the topic. Only Congressman Ron Paul gave a serious post-debate
answer to the young man’s question: “All of it.”
Every official
foundational government document – from the Declaration of Independence
to the U.S. Constitution to the oaths that everyone who works for
the government takes – indicates that the government exists to work
for us. The Declaration even proclaims that the government receives
all of its powers from the consent of the governed. If you believe
all this, as I do, then just as we don’t have the power to take
our neighbor’s property and distribute it against his will, we lack
the ability to give that power to the government. Stated differently,
just as you lack the moral and legal ability to take my property,
you cannot authorize the government to do so.
Here’s an example
you’ve heard before. You’re sitting at home at night, and there’s
a knock at the door. You open the door, and a guy with a gun pointed
at you says: “Give me your money. I want to give it away to
the less fortunate.” You think he’s dangerous and crazy, so
you call the police. Then you find out he is the police,
there to collect your taxes.
The framers
of the Constitution understood this. For 150 years, the federal
government was run by user fees and sales of government land and
assessments to the states for services rendered. It rejected the
Hamiltonian view that the feds could take whatever they wanted,
and it followed the Jeffersonian first principle that the only moral
commercial exchanges are those that are fully voluntary.
This worked
well until the progressives took over the government in the first
decade of the 20th century. They persuaded enough Americans to cause
their state legislatures to ratify the Sixteenth Amendment, which
was designed to tax the rich and redistribute wealth. They promised
the American public that the income tax would never exceed 3 percent
of income and would only apply to the top 3 percent of earners.
How wrong – or deceptive – they were.
Yet, the imposition
of a federal income tax is more than just taking from those who
work and earn and giving to those who don’t. And it is more than
just a spigot to fill the federal trough. At its base, it is a terrifying
presumption. It presumes that we don’t really own our property.
It accepts the Marxist notion that the state owns all the property
and the state permits us to keep and use whatever it needs us to
have so we won’t riot in the streets. And then it steals and uses
whatever it can politically get away with. Do you believe this?
There are only
three ways to acquire wealth in a free society. The inheritance
model occurs when someone gives you wealth. The economic model occurs
when you trade a skill, a talent, an asset, knowledge, sweat, energy
or creativity to a willing buyer. And the mafia model occurs when
a guy with a gun says: “Give me your money or else.”
Which model
does the government use? Why do we put up with this?
Reprinted
with the author’s permission.
April 18, 2013
Andrew P.
Napolitano [send
him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey,
is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano
has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent
is Theodore
and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional
Freedom. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read
features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit
creators.com.
Copyright
© 2013 Andrew P. Napolitano