'Tis the (Tax) Season!

"Tax season" is upon us.  Time to get excited about that anticipated refund or some company's fast and/or free service!  Look closely at the people in these ads - this is how we're supposed to be feeling.

If your feelings aren't reflected here, there is something wrong with you.  You must be one of those selfish right-wingers who hate poor people and think only of themselves.  You must think that the bells and whistles of civilization don't cost anything.  You must be one of those scary anarchist people who live in the hills and belong to a militia.  Shame on you for not caring about the lower classes, for hating powerful, centralized, bloated government.  Shame on you for not knowing your patriotic duty.  Or...

Perhaps your feelings aren't reflected here because you no longer subscribe to the notion that the income tax is the "fairest" system we've come up with.  Perhaps you realize that the only reason people aren't rushing into the poorest neighborhoods of their cities to extol the virtues of the income tax is because there is nothing to be said.  A tax that was sold to the public as the answer to the rich paying their fair share, that would lessen the gap between rich and poor...well?  It's been a full century now.  Still waiting.  When do all those good things kick in?  Do we give it another 100 years, like naive 4-year-olds who believe Santa's sleigh will actually be landing on their roof on Christmas Eve?  Or can we be adults about this and pull the plug?

These people are happy and smiling because they don't see the connection between the income tax and the Robber Baron crowd who literally wrote the legislation to get it off the ground.  I promise you, it isn't the poor who would moan and groan if the income tax were to be abolished.  It's the uber-wealthy who would shit their pants.  The income tax is their gravy train, it lines their pockets, it maintains their insanely rich lifestyles, it allows for a huge military-industrial complex, it is corporate welfare.  And it is all these things by design.  It's not that our income tax money is being misallocated - no.  It's going where it was meant to go - to the wealthy.  When the man who literally wrote the book on why the income tax was being championed a hundred years ago admits that it wasn't needed for revenue purposes, that everything that needed to be paid for by government was already being handled by taxes on foreign goods and a few articles produced here (with a surplus in the Treasury to boot, and without putting people in the Poor House), then why would we fail to suspect that this unnecessary revenue that was going to be raised would end up anywhere other than in the pockets of the Robber Barons who launched the system, and their heirs?

Remember, the tax system that was in place worked so well it created a surplus, and it wasn't responsible for creating the lower class.  The lower class was already there, and already (and understandably) complaining of their situation.  The income tax system was pitched in a way that sympathized with the poor; it was pushed as a remedy to their plight.  (Ever heard of politicians pandering to their constituents, and all the while scheming to line their own pockets and the pockets of their true supporters?  Look it up - it's happened before.)  Of course Congress would approve it.  "Soak the rich!" was the rallying cry behind the income tax.  It all sounds so good, so right, so noble.  But in terms of government revenue, in terms of meeting the government's operating costs, the income tax was to raise a surplus on top of a surplus.  Nothing suspicious there at all.  

Yeah, believing that Santa was going to visit my house on Christmas Eve used to bring a big smile to my face.  I gotta hand it to you - you folks who still believe in the income tax are the true optimists, the true believers.  Smile!