A superb video from the TaxPayers’ Alliance asks…
… how long do you work for the tax man?
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How long do you work for the tax man?Perry de Havilland (Wiltshire) · Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Economics, Business & Globalization · UK affairs June 1st, 2010 |
 13 comments to How long do you work for the tax man? |
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The true answer, of course, is….. Your Whole Life! Paying tax is a lifetime sentence!
And let’s remember why – it is to allow people like Mrs Davey to exercise her “right” to have fourteen children at taxpayer’s expense.
I like the ad, it’s calm, to the point, regarding something to which their seems no immediate escape.
One ends up thinking about it after the ad finishes, and that’s something most ads can’t hope to meet.
good work.
Paying tax is only a life sentence if you let it be. There are ways and means of ensuring that you are legally not liable for tax anywhere. However, this requires you to structure your life in such a way that you are an eternal traveller.
It is difficult from the perspective of a man with a wife and child, but manageable provided you have an income or work that can be done from anywhere with an internet connection.
I’ve been successfully doing this for 2-years and apart from being away from the home and family for long periods (which my job requires anyway), the satisfaction of getting the salary paid into the bank without any deductions is enormously satisfying. Especially after having been raped and pillaged by HMRC and the IRS for more than 20-years.
As James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg wrote back in their 1997 classical libertarian text “The Sovereign Individual” Governments that tax too much will simply make residence anywhere within their power a bankrupting liability
We are rapidly approaching the point the collectivist welfare states across the Western Hemisphere are collapsing under the weight of their taxpayer guaranteed burdens.
Greece has already fallen, but the facade is being retained by the undemocratic and unaccountable elites of the EU. They fear (quite rightly) that if Greece was allowed to collapse completely then it would be the end of their European mega-state. How right they are to be afraid.
One quote that often strikes to the heart of the issue “…increasingly individuals will opt out of the social contract that notionally binds a citizen to his/her government”. This opting out will not just be the refusal to pay taxes, but the refusal to cooperate with governments completely. Only when there is a cascade of more and more people doing this will we cut the last head from the hydra of the state and let it wither and die.
I hadn’t expected to see this within my lifetime, however given the level of debt and the domino theory collapse of the Euro I am hopeful that I will see it. Then at last we can build a New Jerusalem – where the free exchange of value-for-value is the only law and governments are consigned to the rubbish bin of history.
You still pay tax John, just not income tax.
Excellent segment. There is not enough anger about the sheer volume of taxes in this country. The problem is, though, is that far too many people want the whole Statist engine, and imagine that we can just soak the rich who will pay for it all. There are not enough rich folk to go round.
There are not enough rich folk to go round.
But Johnathan – there are enough rich folks to go round, the problem is whenever we raise their taxes, they go somewhere that is less oppressive. Absolutely no sense of ethical / social responsibility.
Who will pay for the cost of government (Skoolz ‘n ‘ospitalz) if it isn’t the rich?
As Sir Maurice Joseph Micklewhite (aka Michael Caine) said recently “You can’t tax people who have enough money for airfare”.
Too true. Go for it Richard Branson – one way, exiles only ticket please.
Short answer … too effing long.
Johnathan is right.
There simply are not enough ‘rich’ people to pay for EVERYTHING.
First you have to define ‘rich’. Not in the media of course because there, the message is that ‘the rich’ is anyone who has more than YOU !!!!!!
The other message they love to tout is ‘you can only have more because someone else has less’. That one is easy to sell to the ignorant ( who outnumber the informed !!)
Say the rich is EVERY INDIVIDUAL with a net worth og more than 10 million dollars.
If you took EVERYTHING they have WHAT would you get from them next year ?? NOTHING – you took it all !!
And if you take everything they have, it’s not going to pay the bill for long – far less than a year. Now what ?
This is the fallacy of ‘class warfare’ but it is waged successfully because of the STAGGERING IGNORANCE by a majority of people (IMO) who simply have no idea how an economy works. They REALLY BELIEVE that EVERY dollar ( or pound or whatever ) that they ‘get’ from the gov’t is because the ‘gov’t has penty or all of the money’ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Try explaining sometime, that, ‘for you to get a dollar, they first have to take it from someone else’ and what you get is not ‘deer in the headlights’, it’s more like you just said ‘beelzebub dinner plane tippletop Sunday’. – it simply doesn’t register with them – to them it’s gibberish. They simply don’t understand ( and I suspect do not WANT to understand as long as the checks keep on a’comin’ )
If every working class family were allowed to invest their earnings in the stock exchange, rather than see their money looted by the state, then, even if they invested in low risk/low return investments, the parents would still retire as real* millionaires.
The working classes have no idea how badly they have been duped.
The Welfare State isn’t concerned with general welfare – it’s only concern with power.
“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We *want* them broken. You’d better get it straight That it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against– then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
— Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged , Ch. III, “White Blackmail”
*They may well become nominal millionaires of a worthless currency if current trends continue.
The modern system is rather odd.
Many previous systems have tried to tax people to provide benefits (food, medical care, money for old age…..) for a minority of the population.
Not just the rulers themselves – but also the military and their familes and (perhaps) the inhabitants of a few favoured cities (it should be remembered that the population of Rome and the other favoured cites was only a small fraction of the population of the Roman Empire).
But the modern system tries to provide just about everything (education, health care, income support, old age provision….) for the MAJORITY of the population.
Clearly this can only end in bankruptcy and the fact that this silly system has lasted as long as it has it a tribute to the remarkable results of modern technolgy (in producing stuff on a scale many times what has been seen before) – but technolgy (no matter how wonderful) can not repeal the laws of political economy, not in the end.
As for the efforts to use a credit money financial system (not just fractional reserve banking – the antics of recent years have been way beyond that) to finance the unfinanceable…….
Well it could never work (not for long) – and it is comming to an end (it will be gone in a few years), in spite of all the fanatical government efforts to keep it going.
From an historical point of view it is all very interesting indeed – but I wish I was observing from a safe distance in time.
.43% X 365.25/30.43 = May 4th.
Brad, that is Star Wars Day! (May the fourth be with you). It’s a spooky old universe, ain’t it?