Published: April 29, 2008 05:12 pm            

Tar Heel Dispatch: Taxation is slavery

The ink is still wet on the checks I’m sending the government. For the first time in my life, I won’t be getting a tax refund. I am convinced now, more than ever that taxation is a form of slavery.

I usually have my taxes taken out each paycheck. When tax season comes around, I get most of it back, except for the Social Security portion. But this year, my employer didn’t withhold my taxes, therefore I have to pay them an amount equal to the Social Security figures I would normally not get back anyway.

So now, I have to dip into my life savings, which consists primarily of student loan money at this point in my life, to pay the government. And why do they need my money? To give it to someone else they deem more deserving.

I don’t mind taxes to pay for military, courts, and police. But these taxes are going to other ends. Houses built on muddy hills in California need government insuring. Houses built below sea-level in New Orleans need rebuilding in the same dangerous area. Wealthy bankers whose greed got them into financial trouble need bailing out. And we, the responsible taxpayers foot the bill.

My philosophy starts with an assumption of self-ownership. Religiously, I believe that God ultimately “owns” the universe and all that is in it, including individuals. But as far as the political arena is concerned, the best arrangement we can set up is to simply assert that an individual owns himself.

From this it follows that when an individual works he owns the fruit of his labor. You worked. You earned the money, raised the crop, or made the artistic creation. It’s yours, no one else’s.

Most people believe that theft is immoral. Taking what belongs to someone else is wrong. If I steal your car, your wallet, or even a drink from your refrigerator without asking, it’s wrong for me to do so. Stealing is also wrong even when it is for a good cause. If I stop you on the street and demand $5 from you at gunpoint, only to take your money and give it to a beggar, I have committed a crime, though I’m sure the beggar is very appreciative.

When governments do this, we give it a fancy name: taxation. And taxation is legal, unlike regular thievery. But there is no moral distinction between taxation and thievery. The government takes what does not belong to it. And it’s not just money. That money represents your labor, which you own. It represents your time, your life’s goals and life projects.

I am not saying there aren’t deserving people who need a helping hand. I am saying that that helping hand shouldn’t be the thieving hand of the government. Charity ceases to be charity when it is backed up, ultimately, with coercion. Try not paying your taxes. Eventually you get put in jail. Resist arrest and out come the government’s guns.

Not only is taxation mere stealing, but it is also a form of slavery. What is slavery? Slavery is the owning of one person by another. More specifically it is one human being’s claim of ownership to the economic fruit of another human being’s labor. A slave works and the product of this labor is taken for the benefit of the slave owner.

Slavery was outlawed in 1865 by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Slavery was reinstituted in 1913 with the ratification of the 16th Amendment which made the Federal income tax permanent.

Taxation forces individuals to work for the economic benefit of others. The average American has to work from January to May just to pay Federal taxes. I guess that makes us slaves for about four or five months out of the year—slaves to the government, slaves to other people, slaves to bureaucrats.

I am half-a-mind to pull a Wesley Snipes and refuse to pay my Social Security taxes. I’ll be lucky if I live long enough to get a 1 percent return on my investment. I could get a better return if I stuck that money in a simple savings account. Minorities suffer under Social Security even worse. Black men for instance, according to life expectancy rates, won’t live long enough to break even.

Imagine you are a private investor and the company you are pumping money into continues to lose money. It constantly spends more money than it takes in. Eventually the company resorts to taking out enormous loans from its biggest rival company. You’ll never turn a profit and you’re beholden to your enemy. Would you keep paying into the system?

You are, every time you pay taxes. The government spends more than it takes in. (I think it has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.) Then it borrows money from China, a growing economic and military enemy. By the way, how do you think the government is paying for the latest “economic stimulus” tax rebates? Borrowing it from China probably.

According to the IRS Web site, I don’t qualify for any stimulus. But some people who don’t even pay taxes will be receiving a rebate. I work and pay taxes against my will, and others get the financial benefit. If that isn’t slavery, I don’t know what is.



Tar Heel Dispatch is written by Tyler Younts, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Younts, who grew up in Farmer, has a passion for writing and for politics and for writing about politics. E-mail comments to news@randolphguide.com or directly to Younts at younts@email.unc.edu

        

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