What have you done for me lately?

Our tax system is broken. For a country founded on the principal of low taxes, we sure have made a mess of things. We actually went to war, and became a country because of high taxes, and here we are taxing everything including the kitchen sink. If that isn’t bad enough, some things have more than one tax on them. Let’s take my income. I get taxed yearly on what I make. If I put that into an account and save it, when I die my kids will have to pay taxes on what I’ve already paid taxes on.

What do we need? We need to rid ourselves of this complex tax system that rewards creative accountants and brings headaches to millions of Americans every year. We need to tax everyone the same, once. Yes I am in favor of the fair tax, and here’s why. People hate taxes, it’s a fact. Another fact is that most people will do whatever they can to avoid taxes or minimize taxes on their life. Taxes are, unfortunately, a fact of life and a necessary evil, but our current tax system is a mess and wrought with loopholes that the best and brightest have learned to abuse. I will not get into the details of the fair tax, but you can read them here http://www.fairtax.org/.

Instead I will argue an argument made by economists as to why this fair tax will not work. Most economists feel that a fair tax will simply not raise enough money to support our economy. Based on our current economy with our current pattern of spending, and our ever increasing desire to spend more, these economists are correct. A fair tax will never bring in the money America needs to cover its wants. America’s needs, however, can be met by the fair tax. What’s the difference you ask? Simple America has become lazy, and in our laziness Americans have stopped trying to work and think for ourselves, and have passed that job on to the government. Every time we push off our duties to the Federal or State governments we give up a bit more freedom and cost our government just that much more in taxes.

One need only look at the silliest aspect of our life and we’ll be confronted with the truth of how much freedom we’ve actually given up to the government. Take television, a simple enough thing right? We watch for news, entertainment, information, but the government has censors to rate certain things. Why? Because we as American parents are too lazy to monitor what our kids watch, so we create a rating system, and institute a v-chip to block certain programming. How about being a good parent? What happened to telling your kids NO, or better yet monitoring their shows yourself and then telling them NO. Believe it or not this costs the government time and money. People have to meet to determine what constitutes a certain rating. Agencies are set up to enforce ratings, people are employed to handle something the average parent can handle in 5 minutes.

Another pet peeve of mine is welfare. As Americans we’ve given up our freedom and exchanged one form of slavery for another. In pre civil war times slavery was outright. White man bought black man or woman and sold them as they pleased. Then the black man was freed and made equal, but another form of slavery was on the horizon. One that wouldn’t be limited to the black race, but instead would have the freedom to target the less educated in every race. It started off innocently enough. Poor Americans needed a hand up, a way to escape the depression era poverty that was claiming America. Over time that helping hand became a black hole for men and women everywhere. Now we have whole generations raised in the welfare system, only to become as dependant as their parents.

How is this slavery? Simple when you depend on someone or something else for your very existence you cease to be free. You exchange your freedom for the convenience of being kept. You become like a pet dependant on its master for food, and a place to sleep. Americans have given up their God given right to the pursuit of happiness and have exchanged it for cheap housing and free food. Like a domesticated animal, they cannot hunt or gather on their own, but must instead rely on someone else to do it for them.

These social programs, originally intended for good have gone awry and have become a black hole, sucking up tax dollars that could be spent elsewhere. Gone are the days of asking what we could do for our country. Now we ask our country to do for us; to think for us, to moralize for us, to fix our every problem, and take away our consequences. Our banks loan money to people they know cannot pay back and now they cry foul. And on we go, having to bail out bad decision after bad decision, becoming more and more enslaved to the very system we created. Here we are asking the government to remove the consequences of our actions.

How do we fix the problem? Simple, tell the truth and educate. Tell Americans to start thinking about their decisions before making them. Tell Americans that we will help for 2 years only, and retrain them to provide for themselves. We need to cut the strings that bind, and make the problem worse. We need to help the kept, domesticated Americans become wild and free again by teaching them to work for their food and rewarding hard work over laziness. We as Americans need to start pulling back some of these freedoms we have given up and take charge of our own lives.

Why should the government have to monitor what our children watch? Can we not do that ourselves? Why should the government have to monitor how much food we feed our kids, as opposed to how much exercise they get? Isn’t that our job as parents? Why should our government have to worry about educating our children about sex and drugs? Are we not capable as parents to teach our own children morals? We were at one time. We were responsible enough to run our own lives but now we simply ask for more than our needs, we ask that the government now help with our wants. We need to learn that bad decisions come with bad consequences, and take care with our decision making process. We need to get educated on the problems of today and figure out how to face them without becoming dependant on someone else to bail us out.

We need to stop blaming the government and asking them to fix our every woe, only to complain when they come up short. We need to remember the words of John F. Kennedy and take them to heart, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. Only after every American commits to do for themselves, will this country’s social and economic issues go away. It will be painful, we will have to tighten the belt but this is one issue that can be fixed. Only then can our tax dollars go to what they were intended for, the protection and continuation of the United States of America.