Today, April 15th, marks the 94th year that Americans have had to pay an income tax to the federal government.
I cringe whenever I think about the utterly primitive and barbaric conditions that prevailed in the United States prior to 1916, that first year of the federal income tax. No roads, no commerce, no laws, no technology, no language, no civilization of any sort. Just the law of the jungle: widespread pillage, plunder, rape, pedophilia, necrophilia... even cannibalism.
Thank God the federal government saved the day with its brilliant solution of stealing a portion of every person's income. Out of that daring, resolute action on the part of government in 1916, American civilization was born. Prior to that year, there was no America. The land was merely inhabited by godless, lawless ape-men who spent their days wallowing in the mud like pigs.
But the theft of a portion of their income changed everything. It immediately transformed the disgusting animals into decent social beings striving for virtue and the eternal glories of the State.
Happy 94th, Income Tax! We Americans obviously owe our lives -- nay, our very civilization -- to you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Wait a minute... are you being just a little sarcastic here? :-P
ReplyDeleteThe sad part is that income tax is just over a third of government revenues, meaning that if government would cut spending by just over 1/3, we wouldn't need the income tax anymore. But as government spending continues to increase at an alarming rate, that possibility grows ever more remote.
As I've said before, there is no such thing as a fair tax. All taxes, whether derived from people's incomes or some other source, are a form of stealing. The public sector cannot create wealth; it has to steal it from the private sector. When I file my taxes every year, I think of how many jobs cannot be created, how many businesses cannot be started or sustained, how much technology development has been hampered, how much economic growth we have lost, just because our government cannot control its spending.