Chuck Schumer says no one cares about this lard-fest. I say that the approximately 4o% of the country who actually pay more taxes than they consume in government services care deeply – it’s just that we’re outnumbered by people who think we should continue to pay their way, and expand our service to them. So be it; if you’re making it your goal in life to empty my pockets, I’ll make your task easier by ensuring my pockets are pretty empty already. At this point, the question isn’t whether Atlas will shrug, it’s when.
[Chart updated per the revised porkulus plan. Chart updated AGAIN. More charts at Gateway Pundit.]
It’s not just that I despise socialism, although I do. It beats people down, makes them dependent, and keeps them poor by taking away their hope. Socialism attacks my church. It teaches that government is the giver of all good things; it glorifies government, not God. I will not support such a system.
Like most religious conservatives (and conservatives generally, unlike liberals), I give a healthy portion of my income away. In our family, we start with 15% of our gross income. We live modestly and don’t lack for anything, and give as much as we can away. As soon as we have met our obligations to debtors, we’re going to start reducing our income. It’s one thing to give our money away. It’s an entirely different matter to have it forcibly taken, and to be told that no, that’s not enough, and for it to be made clear that it may never be enough. “Peggy the Moocher” doesn’t want to have to worry about filling her gas tank and paying her mortgage? Well, guess what? I don’t want to worry about paying Peggy’s mortgage or filling her gas tank either. People think they’re going to get rich by some magical means, “because we have Barack Obama.” But he’s not interested in creating wealth. He’s ignoring every historical means of doing so, and placing all his focus on taking wealth from one group and giving it to another. Which has never worked in all recorded history. H.L. Mencken said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
I suspect a lot of people are thinking along these lines. Tax Freedom Day in 2008 was April 23. That’s 113 days of working for the government, and 252 days of working for ourselves. And given the amount of debt our country is taking on, it seems clear that ratio is going to dramatically change in favor of the looters and moochers.
I’m not anti-government or even anti-social programs. I was on welfare myself. The system helped me tremendously so that I progressed from being without any decent job skills to clerical work to computer work – and owning a small business. In the long term, I’ve given back much more to society than I’ve taken, both in my personal giving and in my tax receipts. But the massive increases in entitlements – both in attitudes and in planned spending – have convinced me it’s gone too far.
Before the election I referred to a possible Obama victory as Carter’s second term. I remember the gas lines and how we lived then – certainly a good deal worse than this supposedly “worst economic crisis ever” and the early 80s were also worse by every metric. I’ve been truly poor – as in not enough to eat and no electricity – not big screen TV poor which is how most people under the artificially set poverty line live, like Sharon Jasper. I will have no problem scaling back my budget and living comfortably on a good deal less money than I have now, until people understand the consequences of what they demanded and vote in a more rational government. You want sustainable? I’ll show you sustainable. But I won’t sustain other people unless I choose to do so. They do not have the sanction of this victim.
This “stimulus” which even the Congressional Budget Office said wasn’t necessary to end the recession ramps up the socialization of our government – even socializing health care, without a debate or discussion of any sort. They’re dismantling the highly successful welfare reforms signed by Clinton. Going into debt to this extent enslaves us and future generations. And I am not going to participate in it. I will not work as hard as I can work to subsidize moochers like Peggy, Henrietta Hughes, and Julio. I won’t help build the empires of looters like Tom Daschle and Barney Frank.
Last year my family paid nearly a thousand dollars a month in federal taxes, and we are not by any stretch of the imagination rich. I’m going to make it my business to cut that amount in half, using every legal means possible and reducing my income so there is less to tax. Joe Biden insists that high taxes are patriotic. Luckily for Joe, there are a whole bunch of “Born Again Americans” who presumably agree with him. Good luck taxing them; you’re not going to get it from me.
ADDED: My favorite wordsmith, The Anchoress (and thanks for the link!) perfectly explained why compelling sacrifice cannot ever result in the “ideal” society:
But as we have demonstrated, monasticism – the perfect manifestation of the socialist ideal – only works if entered into freely, willingly, with open hearts and generous intentions. On a large scale, with less-than-willing subjects (and embracing the deadly idea of extreme equality with “special privileges for none”) the ideals which flourish in the cloister lead to stifling bureaucracy, the stagnation of creativity and no reason to excel beyond a standard of mediocrity.
I had forgotten that post, but it certainly influenced my thinking. Yes, liberty matters.
Also: Thanks for the link, Dicentra. And yes, Malachi 3:10-12…. I certainly trust the Lord of Hosts to redistribute income (as it’s all His anyway, and I am just a steward.) Teh One, and the gubmint, not so much! Jeffrey Quick is thinking “barter” too.
Interesting- good luck in reaching your goals! Personally, I will continue to pay in extra every month and give the government an interest- free loan. And while I will take reasonable deductions, I won’t try and withhold every possible cent I legally can, just because I don’t like the party in power. I didn’t do it when I disagreed with our last president and how he spent our money, and I won’t do it now. I am a part of this country, and frankly, I do feel that it’s my obligation to support it.
But then that’s just me.
I am hoping for another way even as I agree with you. As you give up income(wealth) you also give up liberty. The characters that were admitted to “Galts Gulch” gave up part of their liberty to gain another type. Losing only a certain type of liberty while maintaining another is still losing.
Stephanie, it’s not just a matter of not choosing to support a political party with which I disagree. This stimulus plan – which, again, even the CBO said is unnecessary and ineffective – has NOT worked in the other countries where it has been tried, and in fact has been proved to make the situation worse. That’s not even in doubt. It’s actively harmful. And since I don’t think President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest are stupid, I’m forced to conclude they’re playing a different game entirely. The purpose of this massive lard-ridden debt is to change the nature of our government and economy to one that is more socialist. It is antithetical to American values; it is the very opposite of what the founding fathers set us up to be. It is un-American. It is less free. It is anti-religion.
The fact that it includes items that will convert our health care system to one overseen by the government – without debate or discussion – pretty much says it all. What they are doing is harmful to the country, which is bad enough, but more importantly it is harmful to the church. (All organized religion, though what I care about is Christianity.) Not only does the stimulus include illegal language preventing organizations that take stimulus funds to improve a building from ever using that building again for a religious purpose – i.e. a college dorm improved by stimulus funds cannot afterwards host organized student prayer meetings – but the very nature of socializing our government and our economy is anti-religious. See Social Justice, For The Glory of Government for more on that. That is what I will not support.
Just curious … what do you mean by going on strike? Reducing your income … how? How to replace goods/services/whatever without money? Got any sources to point to on this topic? Thx.
My husband and I are going to work fewer hours to reduce our income. As for how to maintain our lifestyle and keep up with our normal level of charitable giving, I’ve started formulating a new budget – more on that here.
Laura – excellent summation. It’s gives me hope to see you write so passionately on the mess we’re swimming through – It means I’m not alone in fearing for my country.
There are three problems with your strategy: (1) you are still supporting the government actions by paying taxes, even if the total support is reduced; (2) government isn’t paying for the current socialist surge with tax dollars, it is borrowing, which doesn’t require your assistance; and (3) if we all were to follow your plan, we would all reduce our standard of living, an action which would aggravate the current economic downturn and create serious hardships for some, fear for others, and, no doubt, further socialist intervention (with public support).
One of the problems with politicians is that they consider only the visible short-term effects of their actions. You are imitating this behavior. If we consider the long-term and the hidden effects of our actions, we can set a better example.
Frederic, I WANT to hasten the economic downturn to the point that the government does not have enough money to do everything it’s trying to do; to force it to make different choices. I’m required by law to pay taxes, and required by my faith to obey the laws. So the only way I can reduce my contributions to government is to accept a reduced lifestyle, which I embrace for a number of reasons, not just as a form of protest – but the protest would be enough, in my view. Although I’m not really excited by the idea of a total government collapse, I would willingly accept one if that’s what it took to “reboot” the system and convince people that the nanny state doesn’t work. I’m hoping, however, for results on a somewhat smaller scale – like California, where common sense may by starting to break out.
You mention considering long-term/hidden effects and setting a better example – will you provide more details on what you mean by that?
I agree with Federic. Let’s not bash people because their opinion is different than yours Laura. It’s upsetting that you want the country to do so badly that you want it to come close to collasping? Using terms such as: “rebooting the system” is a hackneyed phrase, and is not the correct usage. If you want the country to collaspe so badly, and to force a change, then you have not consider the ramifications? Have you consider what are enemies would do to us when we have no money to support ourselves and our troops. It takes money to defend us.
Henry Kissinger onced stated that the United States was hard to attack because of the body of water that surrounded us, however many years later, planes attacked us. The world is becoming a much smaller place and our enemies will take advantage of any weak spot we have.
So go ahead and not pay your taxes, because you feel it makes a point for the short term, but in the long term, everything effects our way of life.
God Bless.
Roberta, sorry it’s taken me so long to respond. Your comment is arrogant and condescending, and I had to decide whether to even publish it, much less bother to reply. Perhaps it was not your intention, but good grief, could you be ANY more patronizing than that “Let’s not bash people because their opinion is different than yours Laura.” First of all, Roberta, please grow up. Expressing a contrary opinion is not “bashing” someone. Even describing your comment as arrogant and condescending isn’t bashing you. It’s describing my opinion of your comment. Bashing you is calling you personally names. Or, if you’re a literalist, hitting you with a baseball bat or other blunt instrument. Which I also have not done.
Second of all, I’m well aware of the meaning of the phrase “rebooting the system,” having worked in various parts of the IT industry for most of my adult life. And there is nothing wrong with my usage, thanks. The system is overloaded, lacking adequate resources to run properly, a boatload of hidden programs that were sneakily slipped into the start lineup are running without people’s knowledge and using up valuable RAM, the registry is loaded down with remnants of old programs, sometimes conflicting, and we’re in real danger of a blue screen of death style crash. I’d prefer to manually press the restart button, let the boot process go through some maintenance and housekeeping style tasks, free up the RAM, run msconfig to clean out the startup, delete old useless and/or unwanted programs, run ccleaner on the registry and then defrag the hard drive. (i.e. stop government from doing a good deal of what it’s currently doing, and make it refocus on the important tasks we originally formed a government to do.) So yes, I believe it’s about time for a reboot. Feel free to disagree with my thesis, but my usage was spot-on.
As to whether I’ve considered the ramifications of going Galt – if it works, and the economic hit our country takes when the minority of us decide to stop funding the majority of moochers and an ever-growing, ever WASTEFUL government – yes, I have. That’s exactly why I’m doing it. People are already going to suffer under Obama’s disastrous economic policies. I hope to make it worse for a short period, because if things collapse quickly, the amount of suffering will hopefully be less overall, and we can soon return to a just and rational system where people are not penalized for producing and rewarded for NOT producing. Ever ripped off a bandaid? What hurts less, picking at it for hours or just giving it one good yank and getting it over with? I’ve considered it carefully and I vote for the latter.
I don’t worry about our enemies attacking us. They WILL attack us, because Obama will not effectively fight them, regardless of how much money the military has. His foreign policy decisions to date have been based on magical thinking and are actively harmful. But believe me, we have more to fear from wide-open borders and political correctness than we do an underfunded military. You use 9/11 as an example – the military could not have prevented that. Rational immigration policies and political incorrectness could have. Those things are not materially affected by funding; they are policy decisions.
Have YOU considered the ramifications that the increasingly larger number of people who take services for which they have not paid is completely unsustainable? Just how much money do you think the Chinese are going to loan us? And since you’re worried about people’s welfare, have you considered the human rights ramifications of our indebtedness to the Chinese? That’s just one aspect of this train wreck, but it’s an important one. Are we going to come out and call our banker a human rights disaster and pressure them to change, or give them a pass for their vicious policies? Real people are affected by these decisions, by America’s lust for things which we cannot afford. The laogai overflow. Do those people have any rights in your view?
Barack Obama and his SecState Hillary Clinton have already made their intentions crystal clear.
Yes, in the long term everything has an effect. Like this debt we’re piling on, without regard for the consequences to the small minority of Americans who are going to get stuck with the bill, to the millions of Chinese who just got thrown under the bus so that people who used their houses like ATM machines get a mulligan, auto unions can continue to pay people not to work, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can go on making outrageously bad loan decisions, and ACORN can cash in to the tune of 4 billion, last time I checked.
Oh, and God bless you, Roberta. You may feel I’ve taken too harsh a tone with you here. If your feelings are hurt, I hope you’ll stick around and develop a thicker skin. A tough debate leads to better opponents and more well-thought out positions. It’s a failure to be challenged that makes us weak. I don’t mind being challenged and I always admit when I’m wrong. Tough but polite is always well received. Just don’t patronize or condescend, and be sure to check the political correctness and postmodernism at the door.
Thanks for the link.
I wonder if Chuckie would care about the pork if slices of sow belly suddenly started appearing in his Congressional mail. If he’s “bringing home the bacon”, why can’t we just send it back to him?
Jeffrey Quick´s last blog post..OMG! Senators with brains