“ Violent criminals are being released back onto the streets in cities across America. This is all thanks to district attorneys who were bought and paid for by George Soros. One America’s Pearson Sharp has more on how the radical left-wing billionaire is working to undermine our nation’s justice system”. LINK: https://davidicke.com/2020/08/25/george-soros-buying-district-attorneys-across-america/ Image by Gerd […]
Andrei Martyanov has argued that the U.S. military simply has no idea what a really big war is. Its peer wars off stage (since 1812) made it stronger; its home wars were profitable thefts. It believes wars are easy, quick, profitable, successful. Self delusion in war is defeat: post 1945 U.S. wars are failure delusionally entered into. To quote Fred Reed again:
– Fred Reed (who probably learned this in Vietnam)
According to a popular Internet calculation, the United States of America has not been at war with somebody for only 21 years since 1776. Or maybe it’s only 17 years. Wikipedia attempts a list. It’s a long one. You’d think that a country that had been at war for that much of its existence, would be pretty good at it.
One cannot avoid asking when did the USA last win a war. You can argue about what “win” looks like but there’s no argument about a surrender ceremony in the enemy’s capital, whether Tokyo Bay or Berlin. That is victory. Helicopters off the Embassy roof is not, pool parties in a U.S. Embassy is not, “Black Hawk down” is not. Doubling the USSR’s record in Afghanistan is not. Restoring the status quo ante in Korea is not defeat exactly, but it’s pretty far from what MacArthur expected when he moved on the Yalu. When did the USA last win a war? And none of the post-1945 wars have been against first-class opponents.
And few of the pre-1941 wars were either. Which brings me to the point of this essay. The USA has spent much of its existence at war, but very seldom against peers. The peer wars are few: the War of Independence against Britain (but with enormous – and at Yorktown probably decisive – help from France). Britain again in 1812-1814 (but British power was mostly directed against Napoleon). Germany in 1917-1918, Germany and Japan 1941-1945.
Most American opponents have been small fry.
Take, for example, the continual wars against what the Declaration of Independence calls “the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions“. (Starting, incidentally, a long American tradition of depicting enemies as outside the law and therefore deserving of extermination.) The Indians were brave and skilful fighters but there were always too few of them. Furthermore, as every Indian warrior was a free individual, Indian forces melted away when individuals concluded that there was nothing in it for them. Because there were so few warriors in a given nation, Indian war bands would not endure the sort of casualties that European soldiers did. And, always in the background, the carnage from European diseases like the smallpox epidemic of 1837 which killed tens of thousands in the Western nations. Thus, whatever Indian resistance survived could usually be divided, bought off, cheated away and, if it came to a fight, the individual Indian nation was generally so small and so isolated, that victory was assured. The one great attempt to unite all the western nations was Tecumseh’s. He understood that the only chance would come if the Indians, one united force, showed the Americans that they had to be taken seriously. He spent years trying to organise the nations but, in the end, the premature action of his brother Tenskwatawa led to defeat of his headquarters base in 1811. Tecumseh himself was killed two years later fighting a rear-guard action in Ontario. It is because defeats of American forces were so rare that Little Big Horn has passed into legend; but the American casualties of about 250 would have been a minor skirmish a decade earlier. And the victory led to nothing for the Indians anyway; they lost the Black Hills and were forced into reservations. Brave and spirited fighters, but, in the end, no match for industrialised numbers.
The USA fought several wars against Spain and Mexico, gaining territory as it did. Despite the occasional “last stand” like The Alamo, these were also one-sided. The Spanish-American War is the outstanding example: for about 4000 casualties (half from disease), the USA drove Spain completely out of the Americas and took the Philippines, obliterating the Spanish Fleet at Manila Bay. More easy victories over greatly outmatched adversaries.
The other group of wars the U.S. was involved in before 1941 were the empire-gathering wars. One of the first was the takeover of the independent and internationally-recognised Kingdom of Hawaii; the sugar barons organised a coup against Queen Liliuokalani with the help of troops from U.S. warships and no shooting was necessary. Not so with the long bloody campaign in the Philippines, forgotten until President Duterte reminded the world of it. And there were many more interventions in small countries; some mentioned by Major General Smedley Butler in his famous book War is a Racket.
Minor opponents indeed.
Andrei Martyanov has argued that the U.S. military simply has no idea what a really big war is. Its peer wars off stage (since 1812) made it stronger; its home wars were profitable thefts. It believes wars are easy, quick, profitable, successful. Self delusion in war is defeat: post 1945 U.S. wars are failure delusionally entered into. To quote Fred Reed again:
The U.S. Army once really studied war and produced first-class studies of the Soviet performance in the Second World War. These studies served two purposes: introducing Americans who thought Patton won the war to who and what actually did and showing how the masters of the operational level of war performed. Now it’s just silliness from think tanks. A fine example of fantasy masquerading as serious thought is the “Sulwaki Corridor” industry of which this piece from the “world’s leading experts… cutting-edge research… fresh insight…” may stand as an amusing example. The “corridor” in question is the border between Lithuania and Poland. “Defending Suwalki is therefore important for NATO’s credibility and for Western cohesion” and so on. The authors expect us to believe that, in a war against NATO, Russia would have any concern about the paltry military assets in the Baltics. If Moscow really decided it had to fight NATO, it would strike with everything it had. The war would not start in the “Suwalki Corridor” – there would be salvoes of missiles hitting targets all over Europe, the USA and Canada. The first day would see the destruction of a lot of NATO’s infrastructure: bases, ports, airfields, depots, communications. The second day would see more. (And that’s the “conventional” war.) Far from being the cockpit of war, the “Suwalki Corridor” would be a quiet rest area. As Martyanov loves to say: too much Hollywood, too much Patton, too many academics saying what they’re paid to believe and believe to be paid. The U.S. has no idea.
And today it’s losing its wars against lesser opponents. This essay on how the Houthis are winning – from the Jamestown Foundation, a cheerleader for American wars – could equally well be applied to Vietnam or any of the other “forever wars” of Washington.
The resiliency of the Houthis stems from their leadership’s understanding and consistent application of the algebra of insurgency.
The American way of warfare assumes unchallenged air superiority and reliable communications. What would happen if the complacent U.S. forces meet serious integrated air defence and genuine electronic warfare capabilities? The little they have seen of Russian EW capabilities in Syria and Ukraine has made their “eyes water“; some foresee a “Waterloo” in the South China Sea. Countries on Washington’s target list know its dependence.
The fact is that, over all the years and all its wars the U.S. has rarely had to fight anybody its own size or close to it. This has created an expectation of easy and quick victory. Knowledge of the terrible, full out, stunning destruction and superhuman efforts of a real war against powerful and determined enemies has faded away, if they ever had it. American wars, always somewhere else, have become the easy business of carpet bombing – rubblising – the enemy with little shooting back. Where there is shooting back, on the ground, after the initial quick win, it’s “forever” attrition by IED, ambush, sniping, raids as commanders come and go. The result? Random destruction from the air and forever wars on the ground.
There is of course one other time when the United States fought a first-class opponent and that is when it fought itself. According to these official numbers, the U.S. Civil War killed about 500,000 Americans. Which is about half the deaths from all of the other U.S. wars. Of all the Americans killed in all their wars – Independence, Indians, Mexico, two world wars. Korea, Cold War, GWOT – other Americans killed about a third of them.
Nonetheless, one thing is crystal clear: The Cold War ended in 1989 and so did the justification for converting the federal government into a national-security state in the first place.
By disclosing the dark-side, sordid policies and practices of the U.S. national-security state, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have performed an invaluable service to the American people. They have helped remind us that this is not what America is supposed to be all about.
President Trump is saying that he might issue a pardon to Edward Snowden. For some reason, he hasn’t said the same thing about Julian Assange.
But a pardon suggests that the person being pardoned has done something wrong. Neither Snowden and Assange has done anything wrong — at least not in a moral sense. It is the U.S. government — and specifically the national-security state branch of the federal government — that has engaged in terrible wrongdoing — wrongdoing that Snowden and Assange revealed to the American people and the people of the world.
Therefore, the real question is: Should Snowden and Assange pardon the U.S. for having destroyed a large part of their lives and liberty?
Oh, sure, the two of them technically violated the federal government’s national-security laws, rules, and regulations against revealing the dark-side, sordid policies and practices of the national-security establishment. Big deal. Those laws, rules, and regulations are illegitimate, at least in a moral sense. Why should the dark-side, sordid policies and practices of a government be immune from disclosure?
The American people have now become so accustomed to living under a national-security state form of governmental structure that many of them tend toward deferring to the laws, rules, and regulations that come with a national-security state. Thus, when the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA refer to Snowden and Assange as “enemies of the state” or “traitors,” the tendency of many Americans is to blindly accept their assessment.
Of course, it works that way under every national-security state. Look at China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, They too are all national-security states. Like the U.S. national-security state, they all engage in dark-side, sordid policies and practices. And like the U.S. national-security state, they go after anyone who discloses such policies and practices with a vengeance. And most of their citizens blindly and loyally go along with it all.
The real question, however, is not whether Snowden and Assange should pardon the U.S. government. In fact, the real question isn’t even whether it should be a crime for people to disclose the dark-side, sordid policies and practices of a national-security state.
The real question — one that unfortunately will not be discussed in the presidential race — is whether it’s time to end America’s 75-year experiment as a national-security state.
A national-security state is a totalitarian form of governmental structure, one that empowers a government to engage, either secretly or openly, in dark-side, sordid policies and practices, such as torture, assassination, coups, murder, regime-change operations, invasions, bribery, kidnappings, indefinite detention, denial of due process, denial of trial by jury, and denial of speedy trial.
Keep in mind that the United States was founded as a limited-government republic, not a national-security state. In fact, if the Constitution had proposed a national-security state, there is no possibility that the American people would have approved the Constitution. That would have meant that the nation would have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, a third type of governmental system under which the federal government’s powers were so weak and limited that it didn’t even have the power to tax people.
It wasn’t until the end of World War II that the federal government was converted into a national-security state. The rationale was that in order to prevent the communists, especially those that governed the Soviet Union (which, ironically, had been America’s wartime ally and Nazi Germany’s enemy) from from taking over the United States, it would be necessary to become a national-security state, just like the communist regimes were. A limited-government republic, it was said, would be insufficient to defeat a foreign regime that wielded omnipotent dark-side, sordid powers.
I challenge that notion. The best way to have opposed communism would have been to remain a free society and a limited-government republic, not by adopting the governmental structure and dark-side, sordid policies and practices of the communists.
Nonetheless, one thing is crystal clear: The Cold War ended in 1989 and so did the justification for converting the federal government into a national-security state in the first place.
By disclosing the dark-side, sordid policies and practices of the U.S. national-security state, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have performed an invaluable service to the American people. They have helped remind us that this is not what America is supposed to be all about.
Assange and Snowden deserve the praise and thanks of every American. The best way we can honor them is by dismantling America’s Cold War legacy of a national-security state and restoring America’s founding system of a limited-government republic.
The answer is human nature. Once a people have decided to cease to act responsibly, once they’ve decided to pass the decision-making to the government, they slide into a childlike existence in which they cease to bother to look any further into the future than their next governmental handout.
Once a people have become this shortsighted, they’re easily manipulated into forgetting the pain of past errors and are suckers for renewed empty promises.
History shows that countries discard socialism only if it has brought the economy to the bottom and kept it there long enough for a fundamental change in thinking amongst an electorate. If not, the same wheat field that voted conservative in one election will blow the other way four years later – and that will be true in most any country.
In 1946, Juan Perón was elected president of a prosperous country: Argentina.
He promised great social benefits to the common man, under justicialismo (social justice). This “justice” was never actually defined; it was more implied: If you’re a common man, the Perón government will favour you over the “rich.”
This he demonstrated through forced wage increases and other benefits. Railroads and utilities were nationalised (stolen from their owners by the government). In addition, extensive, but often unnecessary, public works projects were undertaken.
Work ethic and personal achievement took a back seat to being well-connected. Increasingly, success was the result of bribes to government leaders and officials.
The overall result of these actions was that the economy sank and the very businesses that were bled to provide the largesse given to the common man were no longer able to pay the ever-increasing cost of entitlements.
This led, not to an obvious reversal of the socially and economically destructive policies, but to an increased reliance on the military and a growing police state. Constitutional liberties were removed and any opposition was punished.
Although the “man of the people” campaign promises from Mister Perón had been welcomed in 1946, by 1955, it became apparent that they had led to inflation, increased poverty, corruption and political oppression.
Amid broad public discontent, Mister Perón was ousted from office. The subsequent government advised the electorate that, for the economy to recover, they must accept a loss of entitlements. Such was the payback to recover from the mistakes of socialism.
Perón went into exile, but amazingly, he was returned to office by the electorate in 1973 (and died in office the following year).
Since that time, Argentina has gone through cycles that have each begun with a new “saviour” candidate promising greater largesse from the government, winning the election, then instituting a revised Peronist model. In every case, it would end in inflation, increased poverty, corruption and political oppression two or three terms later.
Following the inevitable economic decline, a more conservative administration would be voted in. There would be a brief period of correction – fiscally sound governmental polices. Under such administrations, entitlements would be diminished and Argentina would begin to return to a sound economic footing.
But these periods of responsible governance would rarely last more than one term. Before the transition to full prosperity could be completed, the next election would result in a return to the Peronist model.
If the above description sounds repetitive, it is. The cycles have repeated for 73 years, with the odd interruption of military rule.
The result has been that Argentina, a once-highly productive country, has become a banana republic and has remained that way. There are significant periods of socialism, interrupted with brief corrections – attempts to refloat the economy – only to dive once more, headlong, into socialism.
And yet the Argentine people are, for the most part, educated and industrious. Why on earth does this conundrum continue after so many blatant failures?
The answer is human nature. Once a people have decided to cease to act responsibly, once they’ve decided to pass the decision-making to the government, they slide into a childlike existence in which they cease to bother to look any further into the future than their next governmental handout. Read the rest of this entry »
When more folks began using Spooner’s mail service than the U.S. mail — his stamps cost less and his guaranteed on-time deliveries were reliable — the Post Office sought refuge in legislation. So, Congress enacted laws prohibiting competition in first-class mail by charging less than the Post Office. This monopolistic legislation put Spooner out of business and returned the Post Office to its lethargic ways.
The legislation was also a guarantee of inefficiency — with ensured customers and no competition. Today, we have UPS and FedEx, but they can charge 20 times as much as the Postal Service to deliver the same document. On the other hand, the Postal Service goes where UPS and FedEx don’t. And its best customer — Amazon — offers nearly any product to anyone, no matter the destination.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” — Unofficial motto of the United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service — formerly the Post Office — is an American institution rooted in the Constitution. To the framers, the idea that the federal government would be in the thankless business of carrying mail from city to city defied their Madisonian ideas of limited government. But they feared that rival states would take over delivery of the mails. So, they reluctantly made it a federal apparatus.
In an era with slow communication, and before the invention of the telegraph or telephone, the use of the mails was the only effective way to pay a bill without cash, transmit a document or send a letter.
In the 1840s, a gifted philosopher-businessman, Lysander Spooner, founded the American Letter Mail Company. It delivered mail between Washington, D.C., and Boston for significantly less than what the Post Office charged. When the federal government challenged its right to compete with the Post Office, the courts held that even though the Constitution established the Post Office, there was no prohibition in the law on competing with it.
These decisions were based on sound economic policy and obvious constitutional jurisprudence, but they were too much for the federal government to bear. The reluctant Madisonians were gone, and a bureaucracy had replaced them — a bureaucracy which, then as now, hated competition.
When more folks began using Spooner’s mail service than the U.S. mail — his stamps cost less and his guaranteed on-time deliveries were reliable — the Post Office sought refuge in legislation. So, Congress enacted laws prohibiting competition in first-class mail by charging less than the Post Office. This monopolistic legislation put Spooner out of business and returned the Post Office to its lethargic ways.
The legislation was also a guarantee of inefficiency — with ensured customers and no competition. Today, we have UPS and FedEx, but they can charge 20 times as much as the Postal Service to deliver the same document. On the other hand, the Postal Service goes where UPS and FedEx don’t. And its best customer — Amazon — offers nearly any product to anyone, no matter the destination.
The new postmaster general came into office two months ago at the cusp of a hotly contested presidential election. He has made cost-cutting changes resulting in slower mail delivery. Some of his new rules are absurd. They require mail trucks and carriers to leave postal service facilities each day on schedule, even if the mail they are to deliver is not yet on the trucks or in the carry bags. Which is better, mail an hour late or a day late? The answer is obvious to all but Postal Service management.
In two months, we will have a presidential election in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. President Donald Trump — who has voted by mail since changing his lawful residence from New York City to Palm Beach, Florida, last year — has been arguing persistently that voting by mail is inherently corrupt and untrustworthy.
Yet, in the 2016 presidential election in which Hillary Clinton received 3 million more popular votes than Trump, and he was elected by the Electoral College, more than 40 million Americans voted by mail and there was little if any complaining by either major political party of corruption.
This November, 80 million Americans will have the choice of voting by mail or in person. The right to vote is essentially guaranteed by the Constitution. The Constitution also mandates a uniform day for voting for president. As we all know, constitutional guarantees are only as reliable as is the fidelity to the Constitution of those in whose hands we repose it for safekeeping. In the case of voters electing a president, the Constitution reposes the power to make election rules in state legislatures.
So, when New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, for example, ordered the printing and mailing of 4 million ballots — one to every registered voter in the state — so as to enable individuals to choose to vote in person or by mail, he usurped the power of the legislature. Only a few New Jersey Republicans complained, but the Democratic-controlled legislature did nothing. Perhaps it has grown accustomed to Murphy’s governing by decree.
The legal challenge to Murphy’s latest authoritarianism will no doubt fail. That’s because the Supreme Court has consistently ruled this year that the mechanisms for voting are left to the states and any grievances about them are political. Stated differently, the court is telling us if we don’t like Murphy’s rules — or the rules of any state legislature or governor — we can vote them out of office.
Now, back to the Postal Service. It is a grossly inefficient entity which could never survive were it not a monopoly. How inefficient is it? In 2019, it lost $8.8 billion. Who makes up for the losses? The taxpayers.
No monopoly can exist without government violating the basic laws of economics. We have lived with this inefficiency for too long. It should change radically — after this November.
The postal couriers and their managers may be able resist snow and rain and heat and gloom of night, but to take on competition — to allow the economic laws of supply and demand to reduce prices and enhance services — will be too much for them to bear.
In 2021, the federal government should sell the Postal Service to the highest bidder.
If government activities could generate wealth, they would be self-funded and would not require any support from other wealth generators, and the issue of taxes would never arise. As it is, government cannot make any contribution to savings and thus to the pool of real savings.
New government spending projects amount to little more than government squandering wealth. The fact that the private sector does not undertake these projects indicates that they are of low priority to individuals. The implementation of these projects will undermine the well-being of individuals, because they are funded at the expense of projects that are of a higher priority and would otherwise be undertaken in the private sector.
Moreover, whenever wealth producers exchange their products with each other, the exchange is voluntary. Every producer exchanges goods in his possession for goods that he believes will raise his living standard. The crux of the matter is that the trade must be freely undertaken. Government activities, however, are of a coercive nature; they are funded by forcing wealth producers to part with their wealth in exchange for less desirable government services. Producers of wealth are forced to exchange more for less. Obviously, this impairs their well-being.
Let us assume that the government decides to build a pyramid and that most people regard this as a low priority. The people employed on this project need access to various goods and services to sustain their existence.
Now, the government is not a wealth producer; it has to impose taxes on wealth generators—those individuals who produce goods and services in accordance with consumers’ priorities—in order to fund the building of a pyramid. The more pyramid building that the government undertakes, the more real wealth will be taken away from wealth generators. It follows that the level of tax—i.e., real wealth taken from the wealth-generating private sector—is directly determined by the size of government activities.
If government activities could generate wealth, they would be self-funded and would not require any support from other wealth generators, and the issue of taxes would never arise. As it is, government cannot make any contribution to savings and thus to the pool of real savings. The essence of the previous analysis is not altered by the introduction of money. In the money economy, the government will tax and transfer the received money to various individuals who are employed directly or indirectly by the government. Government employees can now exchange taxed money for various goods and services and engage in the consumption of real wealth without contributing to its formation.
Government uses various methods to divert wealth from wealth producers toward its activities. These methods, which can be summed up as “effective taxation,” include direct and indirect taxes and levies, monetary printing as a result of government borrowing from the central bank and borrowing from the private sector. The method of diverting real wealth is of secondary importance. What matters here is that real wealth is diverted from wealth producers. The more is diverted, the higher the effective tax imposed on the wealth-generating private sector is going to be.
A superficial view could argue that government borrowing from the private sector must not be regarded as taxation. However, when government borrows from the private sector, it cannot repay the borrowed real wealth. Only wealth producers who are borrowing from each other are in a position to repay from their future production of wealth. All that government can do is to pay back borrowed wealth by means of newly created money, through new taxes, or through new borrowing, thereby further impoverishing wealth producers.
Similarly, when government borrows from the central bank, it effectively causes the central bank to hand the government newly created money, which is employed to divert real savings from the private sector.
One could argue that government could also borrow overseas, thereby reducing the burden on the private sector. Since government is not a wealth generator, however, the burden of servicing the foreign debt will fall on the private sector.
What, then, is a budget surplus? It means that the government intake of money exceeds its spending of money. It is a monetary surplus; that is all. The emergence of a surplus produces the same effect as any tight monetary policy would. On this, Ludwig von Mises wrote,
Now, restriction of government expenditure may be certainly a good thing. But it does not provide the funds a government needs for a later expansion of its expenditure. An individual may conduct his affairs in this way. He may accumulate savings when his income is high and spend them later when his income drops. But it is different with a nation or all nations together. The treasury may hoard a part of the lavish revenue from taxes, which flows into the public exchequer as a result of the boom. As far and as long as it withholds these funds from circulation, its policy is really deflationary and contra-cyclical and may to this extent weaken the boom created by credit expansion. But when these funds are spent again, they alter the money relation and create a cash-induced tendency toward a drop in the monetary unit’s purchasing power. By no means can these funds provide the capital goods required for the execution of the shelved public works.1
Contrary to the widely held view, the budget surplus does not automatically make room for lower taxes. Regardless of the monetary surplus, taxes cannot effectively be lowered until real government outlays are curtailed, i.e., only when the government cuts the number of pyramids it plans to build.
Would a slower growth rate in government outlays permit an effective cut in taxes? There is no doubt that a slower rate of increase in government outlays is preferred to a higher rate. Nonetheless, it still implies less of real savings for the private sector—for government outlays are still growing, although at a slower rate.
Only a cut in real government outlays will result in an effective tax cut. All else remaining equal, a cut in the income tax rate while government outlays continue to increase will lead the government to impose greater burdens on wealth producers through higher borrowing, higher levies, and higher indirect taxes, and through monetary pumping at some point in the future.
The way to make tax cuts effective is to back them with spending cuts.
Frank Shostak‘s consulting firm, Applied Austrian School Economics, provides in-depth assessments of financial markets and global economies. Contact: email.
So in today’s money, remember how everyone making $76,000 or less was entirely exempt from income taxes? Now income taxes kicked in at just $7,000. Those same people owed $15,870 to Uncle Sam.
What happened with the income tax is what always happens with taxes…
They start off only targeting the rich. But inevitably, rates go up, and everyone pays.
The Alternative Minimum Tax is another great example. The AMT originally targeted 155 people who were making over what today would be $1.1 million per year, but weren’t paying any federal income taxes because of loopholes and deductions.
Imagine starting a small business, working for yourself, or building a company from scratch in the USA in 1875.
With no corporate taxes, and no income taxes, you kept the full rewards of your risk and labor.
It’s not surprising that in about 100 years the United States went from non-existent, to having the largest economy in the world.
Unparalleled economic freedom helped create the industrial revolution which spurred legendary economic growth from 1870 through the turn of the century.
For most of the 19th century, the main source of tax revenue for the federal government was tariffs—taxes on imported goods.
But in 1913, everything changed.
Around the world, communist and socialist philosophies were spreading. Marx was a hero. The Bolsheviks would come to power in Russia in just a few years. And America was caught up in the same craze.
There were all these rich people in America now, and the politicians wanted them to pay their fair share.
Tariffs disproportionately affected the poor, and enriched the wealthy owners of American businesses, protected from foreign competition.
The public was clamoring for a change.
In 1913, the 16th Amendment was added to Constitution, which allowed Congress to replace tariffs with an income tax as the main source of US federal revenue.
The first income tax code was just four pages long. And the top tax rate was 7% on income over $500,000—worth around $12 million today.
Plus, anyone earning under $76,000 (in today’s money)—which was most people—paid no income taxes at all. That’s how nice the tax code was.
The wealthy paid all the taxes, and the poor – even most of the middle class – paid none. People felt pretty good about that.
But it didn’t take long for things to change. Tax rates went up, the exemption fell, and debts mounted from the Great War (World War One).
By 1918 the top earners handed over 77% of their income.
The top tax rate made it all the way to 94% by 1944 to pay for World War Two.
(Two years earlier, President Roosevelt proposed a 100% tax rate to fund the war, arguing “no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year.” – about $300k in today’s money.)
At the same time, the exemption fell and lowest bracket tax rate spiked to 23% (a 23x increase).
So in today’s money, remember how everyone making $76,000 or less was entirely exempt from income taxes? Now income taxes kicked in at just $7,000. Those same people owed $15,870 to Uncle Sam.
In just a few decades, the income tax went from barely skimming from the richest of the rich, to confiscating almost a quarter of the middle and working class people’s income.
What happened with the income tax is what always happens with taxes…
They start off only targeting the rich. But inevitably, rates go up, and everyone pays.
The Alternative Minimum Tax is another great example. The AMT originally targeted 155 people who were making over what today would be $1.1 million per year, but weren’t paying any federal income taxes because of loopholes and deductions.
But the tax was never adjusted for inflation.
By 2017, five million taxpayers were paying extra taxes because of the AMT, and more than half of them made less than $200,000 per year.
Same story with self-employment taxes…
Today, people who are self-employed pay double the payroll taxes as typical workers. The government forces them to cover both the employee and employer contributions to Social Security and Medicare.
So the self-employed are out 15.3% of every dollar they earn before we even start talking about income taxes.
When Congress introduced the self-employment tax in 1954, the rate was just 2.25%, and only applied to the first $3,600 of income.
Now there are almost 42 million self-employed people in the US, but they only earn an average of $36,000 per year.
That’s what you get trying to stick it to the rich—ultimately sticking it to tens of millions of working-class Americans.
This is what ALWAYS happens… and here we are doing it again with our favorite socialists proposing sky-high taxes that will inevitably hit the middle class.
It’s now in vogue to endorse income tax rates of up to 70%– just for the rich of course! Don’t worry it won’t effect you… just like the original income tax
Others endorse an annual Wealth Tax on the total net worth of everything the rich own every year. At first, it will only affect people with more than $50 million in assets. But don’t be surprised when the exemption creeps down, and inflation puts more and more people in that category.
Because the socialists talk about really soaking the ultra-rich billionaires by taxing inheritance. And then they introduce plans to start confiscating almost half the dead’s wealth at just $3.5 million.
That is not a lot of wealth to have accumulated over the course of a life of hard work, and being responsible with your finances.
Don’t worry, they tell us. If you’re not a multi-millionaire, this won’t affect you…
And that may very well be their intention. But rest assured something will change that. It could be expensive war bills, inflation, or a change in the tax code that alters how people calculate their assets and liabilities.
It always starts by targeting the rich… but taxes have always crept their way down to rob the middle class just the same as the rich.
Because it’s never enough. Even if you confiscated 100% of the wealth of every single billionaire in the USA, at current spending levels, it would run the US government for less than a year. Then what? It’s all gone.
Plus, the socialists don’t want to just stay at current spending levels. They have all sorts of ideas the imaginary endless wealth of the rich can finance.
Do you think if the people from 1913 could see America now, would they still vote for the income tax?
Probably not if they saw which people ended up with the burden.
A spokesperson said Tuesday that the South Dakota Health Department has found 40 cases of COVID-19 related to the event, including three out-of-state cases.
Last week, a health official in neighboring Minnesota said 15 people who attended the massive gathering and festival had been diagnosed with the coronavirus. One person who tested positive was hospitalized.
The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. – Via his work, The Mysterious Stranger
The Facts:A painting called “War Games” Ryan-Kleid ended up in the home of Jeffrey Epstein, apparently without his knowledge. The painting shows George Bush playing with paper airplanes in front of two collapsed Jenga Towers.
Reflect On:Why would Jeffrey Epstein have a painting like this in his home? With all of his powerful connections and control he exercised over politicians, did he know something we still don’t about 9/11?
What Happened: Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile who ‘killed himself’ and had close connections to many powerful people, also had some peculiar paintings in his home, as discovered after his death. Many were sexual in nature but not all of them. A couple of the paintings were by artist Ryan-Kleid. Apparently, Kleid had no idea that Epstein’s home was where these paintings ended up. One of the paintings inside Epstein’s home was of Bill Clinton wearing a blue dress, sitting seductively in a chair, crossing his legs and pointing a finger to the person looking at the picture. Another one was of George W. Bush, called “War Games” which features the former president sitting on the floor of the White House playing with paper airplanes in front of two fallen Jenga towers, obviously implying his manipulation of the 9/11 attacks which were used to justify the invasion of Iraq for ulterior motives. Who knows what the Clinton painting is supposed to imply, I’ll let you be the judge.
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Parsing Bill and War Games were shown at the 2012 Tribeca Ball, a fundraiser for Ryan-Kleid’s alma mater, the New York Academy of Art. Photos from A Guest of a Guest, a party blog, show the artist posing in front of the two works at the star-studded event.
Earlier today, Ryan-Kleid said in a statement to artnet News that she had no idea where the painting had ended up until she saw it light up the news yesterday:
In 2012, as a grad student at the New York Academy of Art, I painted pictures of Presidents Bill Clinton and Bush as part of my Master’s thesis. When the school put on a fundraiser at the Tribeca Ball that year, they sold my painting to one of the attendees. I had no idea who the buyer was at the time. As with most of my paintings, I had completely lost track of this piece when it was sold seven years ago. So it was a complete surprise to me to learn yesterday that it wound up in Epstein’s home. (source)
Why This Is Important: 9/11 is a classic example of what’s happened on our planet time and time again for over one hundred years. I am referring to ‘false flag‘ events that are created by the same ‘powers that be’ who then in-turn use these events to justify actions that they desire to take. In this case, the invasion of Iraq after 9/11. Some still believe this is a conspiracy theory, but leaked documents, examination from physicists and engineers, whistle-blower testimony from high ranking individuals, the connections, creation, arming and funding of various terrorist groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda to and by western governments, and much more make it quite clear for others.
That being said, a massive amount of propaganda was created after this event, and patriotism was used to glorify military heroes. These were soldiers not knowing what they were being sent to do. They themselves believed they were actually protecting their country, when in reality the invasion of Iraq and the entire Middle East over the years had absolutely nothing to do with that.
