As you know, one of my pet issues is taxation. For years I have been alerting you to the current efforts by leftists (principally Democrats) to shift the entire burden for the federal income tax to a small percentage of high-achieving income earners that are not all that likely to be voting Democrat.
Every year our federal government gets larger and larger. A failure to increase spending on a government program is called a ?spending cut.? And just when was the last time any of you heard of any federal government spending program being eliminated?
This year your elected officials in Washington decided that $600,000 should be seized from the Americans who actually earned that money and turned over to some woman to study the mating habits of South African ground squirrels. Do you realize what your grand representatives are telling you here? There are telling you that it is more important that this money be taken from you by force and spent on this study ? watching squirrels mate ? than it is to allow you to keep this money that you earned and spend it on those things that you deem to be important to you; things like prescription drugs, school supplies, retirement planning, medical care, saving for a down payment on a home or just for your own pleasure. When your government can take this money from you with such ease the mating habits of South African ground squirrels come first.
This, no one can deny, is excess. It is excess in government size, government power and government spending. This excess is enabled by excessive taxation.
Where, today, can we find men with the wisdom of our founding fathers? People like Alexander Hamilton had no interest in growing the size of the federal government beyond that which was absolutely necessary to fulfill the very limited mandates contained in the Constitution. Hamilton knew that it was the natural desire of government to grow, and that a constitution would have to be written to fight this desire. This is why, for the first 150 years of our history, our government was originally funded by what essentially are consumption taxes, not income taxes.
Read what Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers:
"It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. If duties are too high, they lessen the consumption; the collection is eluded; and the product to the Treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. This forms a complete barrier against any material oppression of the citizens of this class, and is itself a natural limitation of the power of imposing them."
For the past 15 years I have been an advocate of the elimination of income taxes and their replacement with a consumption tax. I favor a national retail sales tax much the same as that outlined by Americans for Fair Taxation [ www.fairtax.org ]. In the reading assignments you will find a link to a column from Bruce Bartlett. That?s where I got the Hamilton quote. In that column Bartlett also points out that it is ?easier to hold down the size of government by limiting taxation than by trying to control spending directly.?
You have to make up your own mind whether or not you want to get involved in any movement for a change in our system of taxation ? and just what you would like to see happen. Just remember this. Government is getting larger every single year that passes. Government is spending more money, both in terms of actual dollars and in terms of our Gross National Product every single year. Right now the average American tax payer pays a higher percentage of the wealth that he creates to the Imperial Federal Government of the United States than did the serfs to their Lords in ancient England.
You may be so far along, and so economically bullet proof that the ever-increasing size of government isn?t going to nail you. But ? do you have children?
Courtesy Neal Boortz
Every year our federal government gets larger and larger. A failure to increase spending on a government program is called a ?spending cut.? And just when was the last time any of you heard of any federal government spending program being eliminated?
This year your elected officials in Washington decided that $600,000 should be seized from the Americans who actually earned that money and turned over to some woman to study the mating habits of South African ground squirrels. Do you realize what your grand representatives are telling you here? There are telling you that it is more important that this money be taken from you by force and spent on this study ? watching squirrels mate ? than it is to allow you to keep this money that you earned and spend it on those things that you deem to be important to you; things like prescription drugs, school supplies, retirement planning, medical care, saving for a down payment on a home or just for your own pleasure. When your government can take this money from you with such ease the mating habits of South African ground squirrels come first.
This, no one can deny, is excess. It is excess in government size, government power and government spending. This excess is enabled by excessive taxation.
Where, today, can we find men with the wisdom of our founding fathers? People like Alexander Hamilton had no interest in growing the size of the federal government beyond that which was absolutely necessary to fulfill the very limited mandates contained in the Constitution. Hamilton knew that it was the natural desire of government to grow, and that a constitution would have to be written to fight this desire. This is why, for the first 150 years of our history, our government was originally funded by what essentially are consumption taxes, not income taxes.
Read what Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers:
"It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. If duties are too high, they lessen the consumption; the collection is eluded; and the product to the Treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. This forms a complete barrier against any material oppression of the citizens of this class, and is itself a natural limitation of the power of imposing them."
For the past 15 years I have been an advocate of the elimination of income taxes and their replacement with a consumption tax. I favor a national retail sales tax much the same as that outlined by Americans for Fair Taxation [ www.fairtax.org ]. In the reading assignments you will find a link to a column from Bruce Bartlett. That?s where I got the Hamilton quote. In that column Bartlett also points out that it is ?easier to hold down the size of government by limiting taxation than by trying to control spending directly.?
You have to make up your own mind whether or not you want to get involved in any movement for a change in our system of taxation ? and just what you would like to see happen. Just remember this. Government is getting larger every single year that passes. Government is spending more money, both in terms of actual dollars and in terms of our Gross National Product every single year. Right now the average American tax payer pays a higher percentage of the wealth that he creates to the Imperial Federal Government of the United States than did the serfs to their Lords in ancient England.
You may be so far along, and so economically bullet proof that the ever-increasing size of government isn?t going to nail you. But ? do you have children?
Courtesy Neal Boortz
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