The 'Flat Tax'

Dear Daddy:

Many of us have been thinking about taxes lately, due to the time of the year. What do you think about the "flat tax" as a way to get fairer treatment for us all? Isn't this a lot better than what we have got now?

Taxed to the Max

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Dear Max:

Yes, the "flat tax" thing would be a great improvement over much of what we have now -- but it still misses the greater point -- and the opportunity to do something really worthwhile in the name of morality and liberty.

The single greatest thing that I can conceive of to "fix" what's wrong with America -- that would have the greatest effect in limiting every area of government intrusion, that would do the most to end and reverse the centralizing and expansion of federal power, while simultaneously turning materialistic humanism on its little pointy head -- is so simple that it has largely escaped notice for all these years.

It has had no movement surrounding it. Nothing I can ever remember until the recent overture by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).

End the withholding of people's money from their paychecks.

That is it.

You can dispense with a great many other crusades if this one simple thing was done.

The multi-headed monster of the humanistic state would soon starve to death.

Think about it. Think about it a lot.

We are a nation of tax collectors. Hard to hate the hated tax collector (this is part of the 'beauty' of the present system) when it is all of us -- most importantly all of our employers!

The cost of all this collecting is never ever calculated, either. I would wager that it is in the mega billions of dollars per year --maybe trillions. Not the taxes collected -- I am talking about the cost of the collection! Just a "cost of doing business." Born by us all.

How many employers are there in the land? Every tiny little mom and pop outfit and every branch of every large company -- even every government branch -- millions upon millions of tax collectors, never failing (upon pain of destruction) to take, each week, each month, large portions of every employee's pay to dutifully send off to the various entities -- federal and state -- and in some cases local government.

That they suck up about 50 percent of the total fruit of everyone else's real labors is bad enough -- but the waste of productivity of the system itself is beyond belief. How many people spend how many hours per year -- per employee -- handling all the tax work -- at the employer end -- to account for and collect and send in the taxes? The inefficiency of this may make the scandalous charities with their records of consumption of most of the money sent to them look really good!

Let the governments collect their own taxes -- whatever their system of levying them. Let them send each person a bill -- to be paid in cash or by check. Then we will see if we are "taxed enough." Hah!

The welfare state and its supporting attitude would vanish. Let the governments sell bonds to raise money over and above that raised by a simple sales (consumption) tax. Watch personal savings skyrocket. Watch the need for the pitiful payments of "Social Security" to everybody (not just the elderly in need) simply go away.

Can you imagine the effect on all the groups that now suck hard on the teats of government? You wouldn't have to worry about much of the crowd that works night and day destroying what's left of the Christian base of this society. They would have to spend a lot of time working to raise money themselves for their rotten causes.

There really is only one group that truly would hate to see this happen. They are the ones that buy votes with other people's money.

Take a while and and think about it.

Daddy