By Bob Livingston
If you witnessed the gaggle of Democrat candidates for president promise to raise your taxes to pay for their proposed “free” handouts I would hope you didn’t fall for it. Not only because of the contradiction inherent in “free” things needing to be paid for via taxation or any other means, but because taxation is a wound on the people and the government is here to make sure it never heals.
The York Daily Record reports that the “Johnstown Flood Tax” was a “temporary” tax enacted in 1936 to help victims of the Johnstown flood. In the years immediately following prohibition, it was a 10 percent tax on liquor designed to help a community rebuild, according to a report published by the Pennsylvania Treasury.
It’s now simply the state liquor tax.
And it’s now 18 percent.
It’s charged in state-run stores — which is the only way to buy liquor in alcoholic beverage control states like Pennsylvania and New Hampshire — and Pennsylvanians mostly have no idea they are still paying the tax. It’s hidden from view, incorporated seamlessly and invisibly into the retail price and not broken out on receipts.
The tax originally raised $42 million to help rebuild damaged Johnstown by 1942. As is typical of “lawmakers,” they made the tax permanent… a mere nine years after it had accomplished its goal.
Also typical: They raised the tax twice over the next two decades, and the money goes straight into the state’s general fund.
States can get away with this because all tax codes are masterpieces of witchcraft and deception. My years of study and observation tell me that not one person in a million understands income taxation with regard to the coded laws.
We feel shame and confusion for not understanding. Because it’s convoluted. No one is taught how to do taxes, and the forms are designed to be byzantine and make you feel like you are inadequate and that you are alone in your confusion. You wallow in its pointlessness.
When I tell you that you are an American tax slave, I become one of the few who question the tax system and are labeled “tax protesters” and as “unpatriotic.” The propaganda machine has successfully persuaded the American people to think of themselves as “taxpayers.” After all, you won’t think bad thoughts about something you are.
People are tricked by phrases like, “paying our fair share.” This is altruistic nonsense because no one can pay taxes with debt money, which are those fiat IOUs that are our greenbacks.
The income tax is a people control and information system. There is no better description of the income tax system than organized crime. It’s payola to the machine.
No one “pays” income taxes. The system regulates your consumption by reducing your purchasing power, i.e., the government creates its own money through the Federal Reserve and commercial banks, and controls its value (some of it) by reducing your credit (income tax).
Always remember: the government has nothing good or nice to give to you. The government is in the business of contracting freedom and wealth, not expanding it, as evidenced by the “presidential debate” kabuki theater they put on the television. Taxes of all kinds remind us that people can be conditioned to accept anything. In time people stop all questions and all inquiry. Taxes are used to express and enforce public policy. Taxation is the foundation of socialism.
Only the individual can create wealth and increase his freedom, all the government’s deceptive Ponzi schemes and other criminal enterprises notwithstanding.
