This past Thursday we were asked a question regarding the
“voluntary tax” proposal of Luis Razo of California. Fortunately, the questioner included a link to a presentation Mr. Razo gave on the proposal, for we had never heard of it
before. Specifically, the question was whether the
plan was capitalist or socialist; the questioner couldn’t figure it out.
Our gut reaction is that if you can’t figure it out, then
it’s probably not something you want to get involved in. Our first non-visceral reaction is that,
technically, it isn’t either capitalist or socialist — but if we had to pick,
it would be socialist.
Why? As near as we
can tell, Mr. Razo wants to replace the “contract” on which civil society is
necessarily based, with a bastardized and universal form of “status”; he wants
to replace “exchange” with “gift” — and his explanation makes about as much
sense as you’d think. Distributions to
citizens of State benefits and contributions to the State would both be based
on need. What Mr. Razo appears to be
promoting is a version of what Karl Marx declared as the basis for economic
activity in his 1875 Critique of the
Gotha Program: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to
his needs.”
Even if this could
work — which it can’t, as has been proven over the millennia of human
civilization — it should never be done.
Not only is it directly contrary to human nature, it is the straight and
narrow to totalitarianism.
Government
always falls under the control of
those who foot the bill and control the purse strings. Consolidation of
power in the government in the U.S. began when the Union effort in the Civil
War was financed on debt instead of taxes, giving the politicians a way to
avoid having to go to the taxpayer.
The
big shift in the U.S., however, began with Keynesian economics and the New
Deal. As explained by Dr. Harold G. Moulton in The New Philosophy of
Public Debt (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1943), the shift to
massive debt financing during the 1930s allowed the government to begin a power
grab that would have been impossible under a system in which government revenue
was restricted to taxation and borrowing out of existing savings.
By
allowing the government to create money by emitting bills of credit in
contravention of the Constitution, individual sovereignty, and any checks on
the power of government are completely nullified. Roe v. Wade and
Obamacare didn't come out of nowhere.
The transfer of rights from individuals to the State that came out of the Dred Scott decision in 1857 and the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873 would have been meaningless had it not been for the fact that, at the same time, Salmon P. Chase figured out a way to circumvent the Constitution, and finance the government on "pure credit" instead of past savings.
The bottom line is that, as Daniel Webster reminded us in 1820, "Power naturally and necessarily follows property." If taxation becomes voluntary, then power will go to those with the money who have the will to seize power by controlling the government's revenue. It sounds like the ultimate in libertarian political philosophy, but leads to the ultimate in totalitarian government.
The transfer of rights from individuals to the State that came out of the Dred Scott decision in 1857 and the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873 would have been meaningless had it not been for the fact that, at the same time, Salmon P. Chase figured out a way to circumvent the Constitution, and finance the government on "pure credit" instead of past savings.
The bottom line is that, as Daniel Webster reminded us in 1820, "Power naturally and necessarily follows property." If taxation becomes voluntary, then power will go to those with the money who have the will to seize power by controlling the government's revenue. It sounds like the ultimate in libertarian political philosophy, but leads to the ultimate in totalitarian government.
#30#
