Deep-six the income tax

Yahoo posted a fascinating clickbait article with all kinds of numbers. What would upper-middle-income wages and salaries be like if the FedGov income tax disappeared? Depending on the various income levels in the States, working folks would take home anywhere from $1200 to $1800 every two weeks. That is an average of more than $30,000 per year per taxpayer.

Government is expensive. The FedGov is more expensive. And what do we get for it?

Well, libertarians and lovers of liberty have long advocated the abolition of this nasty method that the government uses to steal money from the people it supposedly works for. This gives us one more really neat talking point in getting people to at least consider that what we have done for more than a century is a really bad idea—not just expensive but stupid.

Of course, we lovers of liberty have been pretty blunt about it: an income tax is nothing less than a form of slavery. A certain percentage of your (presumably) productive time – of your life – is taken from you by the threat of force. And spent wildly – as decided by a bunch of greedy, power-mad politicians and bureaucratic parasites. Including dozens or hundreds of things. And as a general rule, modern human governments demand much more than all ancient governments. Much more (3-5 times more) than God required His people to give (the tithe).

Obviously, the amount of money discussed in the Yahoo article is fascinating. And perhaps hits closer to home than just talking about billions and trillions. We have a hard time understanding – really getting a handle on – billions. But talk about an extra thousand bucks in our pocket every two weeks? That we can appreciate.

Fascinating numbers – and a tremendous economic boon and boon for real charities.  A lot of people think Trump can’t/won’t do it. (The number of never-Trumpers seems to grow. Do you think they will kill him to keep things like this from happening?) 

And how many judges will claim that getting rid of the Income Tax is “unconstitutional” – increasingly a catch-all phrase for “It’s Trump’s idea and since I hate him, I hate this idea.” (And we need to remember what stolen money mostly pays for federal judges’ salaries and luxurious chambers.)

Remember that except for Honest Abe the Tyrant, the States did without an income tax to pay for government for nearly 150 years. And it took a constitutional amendment to allow it – a constitutional amendment (whose ratification many people still doubt). And of course, it was implemented as a “soak the rich” sort of business, to boot. A lie even as it was spoken: the politicians then could crunch the numbers and see that would not work: they had to dip into the middle class and even the working class incomes to meet the appetite of government. And it got steadily worse in the last century.

But back to the main point of the Yahoo article: Americans would again have control over billions of dollars that they worked for and earned. This is far better, of course, that the DOGE proposal of giving taxpayers a one-time rebate of $5,000 or so – and obviously far more than that amount.

Would it starve government? Hardly, but it would certainly require a strict diet and cutting of billions and billions of dollars. Not just “wasteful” and “fraudulent” spending but spending on projects that government does that private business can and should do.

One of the areas of spending that could be – should be – cut is the subsidies given to various charitable organizations and even for-profit providers of health and other services. But a key point to remember is that a lot of that money kept by the taxpayers would end up being donated to charities and to help the poor and needy. But without the governments’ sticky-fingers surcharge and with less of the political aspect.

We need to remember that money has velocity – a dollar travels through a community and the nation as it is being spent and spent again and again. The difference between paying $1200 every two weeks to the IRS versus being able to decide where to spend (or give) that money in the community will be huge. And is needed.

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