Tax-Loving Idiot Provokes MM's 2010 Tax Rant

Ugh. Look, there is a point to some taxes (I will happily pay to maintain our kick-butt military and maintain interstate highways, for instance), but any tax-loving idiot who writes words like "Charity yielded to justice" (I am not making this up!) in a sappy love letter to higher taxation deserves my contempt.

Oh, yeah, I know, I know, it's yet another one of those "taxes are patriotic, so shut up and give us all your money, you selfish slimeball" sorts of editorials. But what does that even mean, that "taxes are patriotic"? Government spending is now huge, wasteful, and largely stupid. How patriotic is it to subsidize some special-interest cause or asinine earmark that I don't support? A citizen's objection to governmental spending follies is patriotic too - except now, when if you disagree, you're automatically a raaaaaaaaaaacist or whatever?

In recent days, I've heard not one but two other nerds make the most extraordinary utterances about taxation. One complained that his home state had no income tax. Another said he would happily pay more taxes because he could afford them. To both I say, if you're so hot to pay taxes, how about paying MINE? I flatly told the second one that he might feel differently if he had a family and kids to support.

As for the matter about ever-more taxes, overweening government, and the incessant demands that I further impoverish myself in the name of whatever cause the utopians feel like pursuing as a means to grab power, all I'm going to do is quote Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address:

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.

TRUE DAT.

The advocates of social engineering are constantly banging on and on about the needs of this group or that group or the the "community" or whatever super-sounding term you like -- but always is the individual seen as the obstacle. It's basically why high-minded utopian efforts always end in disaster, because inevitably some individuals will not want to participate, but the utopian project prioritizes the collective, so the individuals get steamrollered.

And in these current days of increasing tax serfdom, what are we to say?

And for the record, YES, I am a selfish money-grubbing kulak who wants to keep as many of her pennies as she possibly can. I might be persuaded to engage in private charity for good causes, but I will forever refuse the idea that government -- any government -- knows better what to do with my money with regard to my own self.

Besides, a girl's got to think of her future. There's nobody who's going to do it for me, and I think, deep down, I wouldn't want that. We all have to think about our own futures. It's bloody terrifying, but what's even more terrifying is not doing everything -- everything -- in your power to ensure as much of your own financial future as you can in whatever circumstances you have. (Remember this?) The trouble is that with ever more taxes (not to mention ludicrous government policy ideas that will raise prices all over, be it the cap-and-trade energy tax or the utterly hellish VAT idea), it's going to get harder and harder to squirrel away pennies for a rainy day.

BTW, I just did my taxes. For the record, I don't feel patriotic. I feel ANNOYED.

I also refer you to my 2009 tax rant, in which I called taxation "government-endorsed financial vampirism." Not bad wordsmithin', if I do say so myself!

My 2008 tax rant is here, complete with a song.