The Workings of Income Taxation

When you think about it there is no consensus on how much money people should give up for the so-called common things to be administered by the government. You pay what you are told because you know that if you don't (and get caught) you'll be sent to jail.

Rather, the way it works is that the people in the government decide how much of our money they want to spend and then send us the check. The rest they graciously allow us to keep. But the higher claim on our money, and also our property life, obviously goes to the government because they can change the rules and the amounts any time at penalty of incarceration. We don't keep the portion of our income that is not taxed away because there is an agreement among people that this amount is right. We keep as much as we do because the government tells us how much we may keep and because keeping any more would likely bring the full wrath of the gun and the badge od the State.

Frank Chodorov in his book The Income Tax: Root of All Evil gives us the naked truth about the matter:

"The government says to the citizen: "Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide."

This is no exaggeration. Take a look at the income-tax report that you are required by law to make out, and you will see that the government arbitrarily sets down the amount of your income you may have for your living, for your business requirements, for the maintenance of your family, for medical expenses, and so on. After granting these exemptions, with a flourish of generosity, the government decides what percentage of the remainder it will appropriate. The rest you may have.

The percentage of the appropriation may be (and has been) raised from year to year, and the exemptions may be (and have been) lowered from year to year.¹ The amount of your earnings that you may retain for yourself is determined by the needs of government, and you have nothing to say about it."

You can find a great discussion on taxation from a libertarian perspective in Thomas DiLorenzo's lecture at the 2011 Mises University:

Nigel Farage on Why He Thinks Angela Merkel Is Dangerous

A bit of an insight on who the eurocrats are and what their agenda is.

Thanks again to EPJ.

Ron Paul in a Very Candid Interview As Usual

I'm just gonna leave this here.

Thanks to EPJ.

Tom Woods on the Fed, Gold, Moral Principles, and Much More...

Ok so you've opened this link and came to this website, I thank you very much. You have enough curiosity to have done it. Great! Now if you have just a bit of interest in the topics mentioned in the title click on the video. This guy is amazing, trust me! Read below for the credentials of Tom Woods.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and creator of Tom Woods’s Liberty Classroom. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and his master’s, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is the author of eleven books, most recently Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse and Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century.

This is his website.

Public Private Partnerships or Fascism?

Economicpolicyjournal.com has a post about what our betters apparently have in store for us:

"The nation’s major internet service providers by year’s end will institute a so-called six-strikes plan, the “Copyright Alert System” initiative backed by the Obama administration... The plan, now four years in the making, includes participation by AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon... The internet companies may eliminate service altogether for repeat file-sharing offenders, although the plan does not directly call for such drastic action."

 But fear not, Hillary Clinton cometh to the rescue to calm things down:

"The problems we face today will not be solved by governments alone. It will be in partnerships - partnerships with philanthropy, with global business, partnerships with civil society."

If you head over to Wikipedia and type in "fascism" in the search box this is one of the things you can read (my bold):

Economic policies

Further information: Economics of fascism

Fascists used to promote their ideology as a "Third Position" between capitalism and Bolshevism.^[237] Italian Fascism involved corporatism, a political system in which the economy is collectively managed by employers, workers, and state officials by formal mechanisms at the national level.^[238] Fascists advocated a new national class-based economic system, variously termed "national corporatism", "national socialism" or "national syndicalism".^[35] The common aim of all fascist movements was elimination of the autonomy or, in some cases, the existence of large-scale capitalism.^[239]
According to Bruce Pauley, Fascist governments exercised control over private property but did not nationalize it.^[240] However, according to Patricia Knight, they did, with the Italian Fascist government coming to own the highest percentage of industries outside the Soviet Union.^[241] The Nazis also nationalized some business.^[242] In fact, the "Twenty-Five Point Programme" of the Nazi party, adopted in 1920, demanded "the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations."^[243] Other scholars noted that big business developed an increasingly close partnership with the Nazi and Fascist governments as it became increasingly organized. Business leaders supported the government's political and military goals, and in exchange, the government pursued economic policies that maximized the profits of its business allies.^[244]

Hip hip hurray for public private partnerships. Mussolini would be proud.



Matej Avsenak Ogorevc

A Joke for Economists

Walter Block of Loyola University, New Orleans, has it:

There were 3 prisoners in the Soviet Union and as prisoners do, they swapped stories as to why they were in jail. The first guy says "well, I got to work late and they accused me of cheating the State out of my labor services." The other guy says "I got to work early and they accused me of brown nosing." And the third guy said "I got to work every day exactly on time and they accused me of owning a Western wrist watch."

There were 3 guys in jail in the US due to anti trust violations and the first one said "well I am in jail because I charged higher prices than everyone else and they accused me of profiteering." The second guy said "I got in jail because I had lower prices than everyone else and they accused me of predatory price cutting." And the third guy said "well I charged the same prices as everyone else and they accused me of colluding." 

But Dr. Block says it better, watch it here (the joke starts at 30:20):

The Beautiful Circle

The European Central Bank (ECB) is printing a lot of money to bail out struggling governments and banks. Here is a graph of its balance sheet to illustrate exactly what I mean by printing a lot of money money:

ECB balance sheet, millions €

Source: ECB

One of the problems with this (beside the fact that it's creating inflation on steroids, of course) is that by doing this it is exposing itself to a lot of risk which comes with lending to nearly bankrupt governments and banks. If these assets are written down the ECB will face losses that cold likely lead to negative capital. In this case the Eurozone member states have to recapitalize teh ECB. Get it?

If the Eurozone governments become insolvent and can't pay their debts, causing financial institutions lending to these governments to also become insolvent, leading the ECB to reach negative capital, these same bankrupt governments must somehow raise money and recapitalize the ECB. I wonder who's gonna get the bill.

But all in all, a beautiful circle, no?



Matej Avsenak Ogorevc