U.S. Government Spends $3.5 Trillion a Year — The Gap Between Taxation and the ‘Public Good’ Has Never Been More Vast
Three things that all of you serfs and peasants shouldn’t say on Tax Day (Excerpt)
April 15, 2014The Matt Walsh Blog - “I’m paying my taxes.”
“My” implies ownership. It communicates a certain level of inherent,
natural responsibility toward the subject. So it makes sense for me to
refer to “my bill” at Applebee’s or “my credit card debt”. They are both
the result of a contractual agreement I personally entered into and
accepted. Even if the spinach dip was overpriced, and even if Visa is
kicking me up and down the sidewalk with interest and penalties, I still
knowingly and willingly consented to assuming the financial cost in
return for a good or service. I own it. It’s mine. It’s nobody else’s.
In fact, it’s important for me to stipulate my Applebee’s bill from your Applebee’s bill because we entered into different agreements for different products. I’m certainly not on the hook for your bill, especially because I’m drinking ice water while you’re over there chugging margaritas like it’s Cinco de Mayo.
Your tax bill is different than your bar tab or the money you owe Netflix. You didn’t agree to this. You have absolutely no control over it.
You might say that taxes have always been like that and always will be, and you’re right. But, in modern times, with a government that spends 3.5 trillion dollars a year — making it the most expensive bureaucracy that’s existed anywhere on the planet ever in history — the gap between taxation and the ‘public good’ has never been more vast. It’s kind of hard to whisper even the faintest suggestion that our government limits itself to expenditures necessary to fulfill only its lawful and constitutional obligations, when it spends, in a single year, almost as much money as physically exists on the planet.
Did you catch that? If you wanted to outspend the government next year, you’d have to first steal every single physical dollar and coin that exists on Earth, and you still might not have enough.
And, since the government spends even what it doesn’t have, we have accrued a debt so enormous that the numbers cannot be understood by the human mind. Any notion of taxation with representation has been completely buried under this pile of debt so inconceivably massive that it could touch the moon (literally).
Politicians take your money and use it for whatever they like, and whatever they like almost always involves gaining power and influence. Again, you’ll tell me that politicians have always used taxes for this purpose, and you’re right, but they’ve never been able to steal this much, and they’ve never been so proficient in stealing it (while, in every other area, so utterly lacking in proficiency).
Your money will be taken and allocated to fund abortion clinics, and foreign governments, and entitlements, and studies to determine whether cocaine makes Japanese quail horny, or if Chinese prostitutes can be taught to drink responsibly, or how to best teach the benefits of genital washing in the third world. When you say that you owe this amount, you are saying that you are personally indebted to Planned Parenthood, and the government of Uganda, and every individual on every welfare program, and every study about lustful quail. Or else you are saying that a politician’s power to tax is absolute and unlimited, and their saying that you have this debt is enough to make that debt into some kind of existential reality.
The point is that this debt belongs to the powers that created it. They will take from you, but you do not owe it. There is no “social contract”. We are churning out generations of Americans born into a bankruptcy they did not cause, created to pay for things they did not buy, to benefit people they’ll never meet. Entire generations emerging into the world with a giant ‘IOU’ branded on their foreheads; emblazoned there because the Americans that came before them lacked the courage and discipline to stop the government gravy train in its tracks.
These are not your taxes. They will come from your pockets and out of the mouths of your children, but you do not owe them.
Your tax bill is different than your bar tab or the money you owe Netflix. You didn’t agree to this. You have absolutely no control over it.
You might say that taxes have always been like that and always will be, and you’re right. But, in modern times, with a government that spends 3.5 trillion dollars a year — making it the most expensive bureaucracy that’s existed anywhere on the planet ever in history — the gap between taxation and the ‘public good’ has never been more vast. It’s kind of hard to whisper even the faintest suggestion that our government limits itself to expenditures necessary to fulfill only its lawful and constitutional obligations, when it spends, in a single year, almost as much money as physically exists on the planet.
Did you catch that? If you wanted to outspend the government next year, you’d have to first steal every single physical dollar and coin that exists on Earth, and you still might not have enough.
And, since the government spends even what it doesn’t have, we have accrued a debt so enormous that the numbers cannot be understood by the human mind. Any notion of taxation with representation has been completely buried under this pile of debt so inconceivably massive that it could touch the moon (literally).
Politicians take your money and use it for whatever they like, and whatever they like almost always involves gaining power and influence. Again, you’ll tell me that politicians have always used taxes for this purpose, and you’re right, but they’ve never been able to steal this much, and they’ve never been so proficient in stealing it (while, in every other area, so utterly lacking in proficiency).
Your money will be taken and allocated to fund abortion clinics, and foreign governments, and entitlements, and studies to determine whether cocaine makes Japanese quail horny, or if Chinese prostitutes can be taught to drink responsibly, or how to best teach the benefits of genital washing in the third world. When you say that you owe this amount, you are saying that you are personally indebted to Planned Parenthood, and the government of Uganda, and every individual on every welfare program, and every study about lustful quail. Or else you are saying that a politician’s power to tax is absolute and unlimited, and their saying that you have this debt is enough to make that debt into some kind of existential reality.
The point is that this debt belongs to the powers that created it. They will take from you, but you do not owe it. There is no “social contract”. We are churning out generations of Americans born into a bankruptcy they did not cause, created to pay for things they did not buy, to benefit people they’ll never meet. Entire generations emerging into the world with a giant ‘IOU’ branded on their foreheads; emblazoned there because the Americans that came before them lacked the courage and discipline to stop the government gravy train in its tracks.
These are not your taxes. They will come from your pockets and out of the mouths of your children, but you do not owe them.
You wake up.
You get out of bed and flip on a light. And you are taxed. You stumble into the bathroom and use the toilet. And you are taxed when you flush, and again when you turn on the shower, and again when you go to the faucet to brush your teeth (unless you’re one of those “brush my teeth in the shower” deviants). You put on clothing, which were taxed when you bought them. You slip on your taxed socks and tie your taxed shoes. You go downstairs. You use your taxed coffee machine. You pay a tax on the electricity. You grab a frozen breakfast burrito, which you paid taxes on, and stick it in the microwave, which you paid taxes on, and turned on the microwave using that taxed electricity again. You decide to check out the morning news while you enjoy your gourmet meal. Good thing you’ve got that taxed TV and that taxed digital cable. OK, quit stalling. Time to get to work. You grab your taxed cell phone and call your boss to tell him you’re running late. You paid about a dozen different taxes on that phone call. You leave your house, which is perpetually taxed, and get into your car, which was taxed. You drive down the street, burning that oh-so-taxed gasoline. Maybe you pass through a toll, maybe you’re stopped along the way and charged 128 dollars for not wearing a seatbelt. Maybe you get flashed by a red light camera. Maybe you have to park in a metered spot. Tax. Tax. Tax. Tax.
You haven’t even made it to your job yet, and the government’s fleeced you for a bucket of cash. Then you punch the clock at work and that’s where the real taxing begins.
See, in America, “the Land of the Free,” we pay taxes on everything we buy and everything we use; we pay taxes on where we live and what we eat; we pay taxes when we drive down the road or stay in the house; we pay taxes on whatever we sell, whatever we earn, and whatever we save. We pay taxes to live and we pay taxes to die. Some people live in states without a sales tax, but they still pay taxes when they buy things, because there are so many taxes and fees embedded into the price of any good or service.
Our Founding Fathers would rather wage an armed revolt against the world’s greatest superpower than pay a tax on their Snapple; we, on the other hand, would rather pay taxes on literally every conceivable facet of our existence, than be accused of “extremism” for questioning the government’s alleged absolute power to levy taxes on everything, all the time, without any discernible limitations.
My, how times have changed.
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