At least P.J. O'Rourke is here to poke fun at this annual paroxysm of government-endorsed financial vampirism:
As April 15 rolls around let us take a moment to recall why we Americans pay taxes: Because some of our country's good-for-nothing bums are too chicken to rob us at gunpoint. That would be members of Congress and the executive branch.
I mean, REALLY. Grad student fellowships get taxed, taxed, taxed. Any sort of measly, paltry income that nerds get in jobs or whatever gets taxed, taxed, taxed. And if you think grad students or lowly young academics don't count as "working poor," then it's because you've never been one. I counted the numbers, and we're paying a QUARTER of our income in state and federal taxes -- and by "we" I mean all the nobodies like me who are just scraping along.
But at least we're supporting ourselves without help from anybody! This is a mark of pride, as it should be. It means we have to watch our pennies carefully and behave responsibly and frugally -- and you'd think this is GOOD thing, right? Too bad the utterly reckless government can't seem to grasp this concept, much less encourage it among the citizenry! But noooooooo, enter bailout-a-palooza, mortgage plans, and more moral hazard and toxic policy than you can wrap your mind around.
So here I am juggling rent and bills and whatever -- some of my colleagues now have babies and little ones -- and trying to save pennies (while also shouldering a mound of school debt), and I'm watching an endless passion for debt, deficit, and spending from the hopelessly clueless government. I just don't know what to do or think. Well, every Tax Day I'm feeling peppery, but this time around, I'm more irate than ever. Not just at having to pay mountains of taxes to a government that I think is wasteful and foolish (if not corrupt), but at the knowledge that WAY TOO MANY high-profile Obamanauts have had problems not paying their own frickin' taxes. And one such egregiously disgraceful tax cheat is heading up the US Treasury, for goodness sake! (If the guy can't even manage his own finances, how's he supposed to manage such a far more complex sytem like the US economy?)
Maybe that's why the leftists don't mind hiking up taxes all the time, why they in fact LOVE doing that. They're not paying any taxes! Hey, do you know what happens if I don't pay MY taxes? No, I don't get invited to head the Treasury. I get the consolation prize of audits and fines and jail and all that fruit basket of happiness.
Oh, I'm not saying that I don't think we should pay no taxes at all. We need to fund infrastructure and the military, for instance. I will happily pay my taxes to support the armed services. But I absolutely am beginning to feel that the hard-working taxpayer is increasingly being regarded by tax-obsessed politicians not as the bedrock of the country and a citizen who should be respected, but as an all-you-can-eat buffet to feed an ever-increasing government. I'm foolish enough to think that the government should work for me, not the other way around. OK, even if -- let's be realistic here -- that won't happen, I'll settle for government leaving me alone as much as possible. But that doesn't look too likely either. Don't even get me started on statist policies.
While I'm looking at the insane ballooning of government, I can't help thinking of Maggie Thatcher's famous quote that the problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money. Crush the productive sector of society in order to feed the unproductive, and sooner or later the productive will give up -- or emigrate. (Then I guess we're finally achieve the Holy Grail of leftism, so-called FAIRNESS, when we're all equally poor and miserable. I'm an evil capitalist, and I prefer that "fairness" be turned into a world where everybody gets rich.)
Then there's this, with which I will end this rant and go back to my online tax filing:
Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. ~Thomas Jefferson, 1801 inaugural address
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