A Public Service Announcement: Slavery

A Public Service Announcement regarding slavery: it doesn’t require chains, locks, and keys.

The following excerpts from three books on slavery have, I believe, many connections to income taxation as well as to other institutions or policies which are unfriendly to human rights.  We have much to learn about freedom when we study its opposite.  

The first book is a biography of Harriet Tubman.  The second book was written by William Still, who interviewed fugitive slaves as they were just escaping from slavery.  The third book is what the recent movie Amazing Grace is based upon (a movie that’s on my must-see list).

Take some time, dear reader, to ponder the connections between then and now, the connections between that "peculiar institution" and some of the other institutions we live under today.  I think it will be time well spent.

From Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, by Kate Clifford Larson.  Ballantine Books, 2005  

Earning your own living not a right for a slave: “Harriet hired out her time quite regularly during the 1840s, paying Brodess [her master] a yearly fee [$50-$60] for the privilege of hiring herself out to temporary masters of her own choosing…”

Escaping the system: “The system of slavery could work only if those enslaved believed the costs of escape would be too great and the chances of successfully getting away too remote.”

Necessity of earning a living: “For the thousands of refugees who fled north for a chance at a free life, daily struggle did not end when they left the South.  Liberty did not guarantee food, clothing, and housing. The daily work of survival continued… ”

Importance of being self-supporting: “On June 5 [1863] Montgomery led his regiment down the coast to capture Darien, Georgia.  Tubman stayed behind to help the newly arrived freedmen from the Combahee raid.  ‘Most of those coming from the mainland are very destitute, almost naked…I am trying to find places for those able to work, and provide for them as best I can, so as to lighten the burden on the Government as much as possible, while at the same time they learn to respect themselves by earning their own living.’”

Notice that rather than laying the burden of these newly freed slaves on the government (as would most likely happen today), Ms. Tubman advocated assistance from the private sector instead.  She also avoided creating a generation that crippled itself with dependency upon government services.  It was a self-respect issue.

From The Underground Railroad, by William Still.  Dover, 2007 

The desire of slaves to be self-supporting, Cordelia Loney, 1859: “As many creature comforts and religious privileges as she had been the recipient of under her ‘kind mistress,’ still she ‘wanted to be free,’ and ‘was bound to leave’…She was willing to take the entire responsibility of taking care of herself.”

The desire of slaves to be self-supporting, Barnaby Grigby, 1855: “He was prompted to escape because he ‘wanted to live by the sweat of his own brow,’ believing that all men ought so to live.  This was the only reason he gave for fleeing.”

Contentment with slavery is learned, Charles Thompson, 1857:

Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia: “Suppose your master was to appear before you, and offer you the privilege of returning to Slavery or death on the spot, which would be your choice?”

Charles Thompson: “Die right there.  I made up my mind before I started.”

VC: “Do you think that many of the slaves are anxious about their Freedom?”

CT: “The third part of them ain’t anxious about it, because the white people have blinded them, telling about the North – they can’t live here; telling them that the people are worse off than they are there; they say that the ‘niggers’ in the North have no houses to live in, stand about freezing, dirty, no clothes to wear.  They all would be very glad to get their time, but want to stay where they are.”

Remember, without an income tax, we'd all be standing around dirty, naked and freezing, and wondering where all the roads and schools went.  Keep preaching that to anyone who speaks against it.

The injustice of slavery in being forced to support others, Benjamin Ross, 1854: “Benjamin was twenty-eight years of age, chestnut color, medium size, and shrewd.  He was the so-called property of Eliza Ann Brodins, who lived near Buckstown, in Maryland.  Ben did not hesitate to say, in unqualified terms, that his mistress was ‘very devilish.’  He considered his charges, proved by the fact that three slaves (himself one of them) were required to work hard and fare meagerly, to support his mistress’ family in idleness and luxury.”

Earning your own living not a right for a slave, John Judah, 1855: “John was a mulatto, of genteel address, well clothed, and looked as if he had been ‘well fed.’  Miss Eliza Lambert had the honor of owning John, and was gracious enough to allow him to hire his time for one hundred and ten dollars per annum.  After this sum was punctually paid, John could do what he pleased with any surplus earnings…John accused his mistress of being hard in money matters, not caring how the servants fared, so she got ‘plenty of money out of them.’”

Hating even mild forms of slavery, Richard Bradley, 1855: “He was sufficiently intelligent to look at Slavery in all its bearings, and to smart keenly under even ordinarily mild treatment.”

Hating even mild forms of slavery, six slaves who escaped the Honorable L. McLane, 1857: “Although this party was of the class said to be well fed, well clothed, and not over-worked, yet to those who heard them declare their utter detestation of slavery and their determination to use their instruments of death [they were all armed when they escaped] even to the taking of life, rather than again be subjected to the yoke, it was evident that even the mildest form of slavery was abhorrent.”

It's so easy for us to tolerate the income tax - it's just a little taken out each month.  Not a big deal. My master hardly ever whips me, and when he does, he has a light touch.

Hating even mild forms of slavery, Mary Frances Melvin, 1858: “Mary Frances hailed from Norfolk; she had been in servitude under Mrs. Chapman, a widow lady, against whom she had no complaint to make; indeed, she testified that her mistress was very kind, although fully allied to slavery.  She said that she left, not on account of bad treatment, but simply because she wanted her freedom.”

She simply wanted her freedom, though she risked losing her life in pursuing it.

From Bury the Chains, by Adam Hochschild.  Mariner Books edition, 2006

Ending slavery has economic costs: “For fifty years, activists in England worked to end slavery in the British Empire.  None of them gained a penny by doing so, and their eventual success meant a huge loss to the imperial economy.  Scholars estimate that abolishing the slave trade and then slavery cost the British people 1.8 percent of their annual national income over more than half a century, many times the percentage most wealthy countries today give in foreign aid.”

How often do I hear the economic argument when I'm speaking of human rights?  The income tax is a human rights issue before it is an economic issue.  This is where we have been blinded.

Society scoffs at ending institutions they take for granted: “If, early that year [1787], you had stood on a London street corner and insisted that slavery was morally wrong and should be stopped, nine out of ten listeners would have laughed you off as a crackpot.  The tenth might have agreed with you in principle, but assured you that ending slavery was wildly impractical: the British Empire’s economy would collapse.  The parliamentarian Edmund Burke, for example, opposed slavery but thought that the prospect of ending even just the Atlantic slave trade was ‘chimerical.’  Within a few short years, however, the issue of slavery had moved to center stage in British political life.”

Acceptance of slavery closes people to thinking of alternatives: “Slavery in the British Empire seemed as entrenched as ever [in 1783].  If pressed, some Britons might have conceded that the institution was unpleasant – but where else would sugar for your tea come from?  Where would Royal Navy sailors get their rum?  The slave trade ‘was not an amiable trade,’ as a member of Parliament once commented, ‘but neither was the trade of a butcher an amiable trade, and yet a mutton chop was, nevertheless, a very good thing.’”

And so I always hear: But without the income tax, how would we pay for roads and schools?

Change comes through the solution-oriented, not the problem-oriented: “We can only imagine how the [anti-slavery] committee members felt as they dispersed to their homes that night [after their first meeting].  The task they had taken on was so monumental as to have seemed to anyone else impossible.  They had to ignite their crusade in a country where the great majority of people, from farmhands to bishops, accepted slavery as completely normal.  It was also a country where profits from West Indian plantations gave a large boost to the economy, where customs duties on slave-grown sugar were an important source of government revenue, and where the livelihoods of tens of thousands of seamen, merchants, and shipbuilders depended on the slave trade.  The trade itself had increased to almost unparalleled levels, bringing prosperity to key ports, including London itself.  How even to begin the massive job of changing public opinion?”

A reason for hope: “Britons’ confidence in their rights ran proud and deep.  Without it, the abolitionists could never have persuaded them that slaves had rights as well.”

Be careful what you fight for: “I would fain know what the soldier hath fought for all this while?  He hath fought to enslave himself, to give power to men of riches, men of estates, to make him a perpetual slave.” –Colonel Thomas Rainborough, the Putney Debates of 1647

Why Antigua was thought to be safe from a slave uprising: Partly because there were “missionaries to the slaves ‘whose Preachers constantly recommend in the strongest terms the Necessity and Duty of Subordination and passive Obedience to their Masters.’”

Reminds me of the old hymn: "Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."  This message brought to you by the status quo.

"Resistance Is Futile!"

A reader felt that in my last post I had oversimplified Seligman’s point when he said that “wherever we find the spread of democracy, we find the growth of income taxation.”  I said that Seligman was saying that we need to jump on the bandwagon because “everybody’s doing it!”  The reader felt that the point Seligman was making was that “income taxation is a system more in harmony with a democratic society because, in theory, it spreads the tax burden more equitably across the classes, such that all income levels bear a more or less equal weight.”

And yet, with the way the tax is administered and enforced, it is one of the most draconian forms of taxation we've stumbled upon.  We imperil our rights to our property and our own physical freedom for the sake of a money maker.  We hang our families and livelihoods over a barrel for revenue that could be collected as we shop.  Could it be that those on the receiving end have the most to gain and, therefore, the most to lose without the income tax?  Is it really about democracy, or is it yet another example of the few manipulating the system for their own benefit while using populist window dressing to avoid a rebellion by the many?

The reader was actually correct when he shared what he thought was Seligman’s deeper point, that income taxation is the “democratic” thing to do.  I would argue that, unfortunately, that is the oversimplification of the matter.

Nothing happens in government, especially at the highest levels, by accident.  They happen because real people sit down at a table and say concrete things to each other until an agreement is reached.  Everything flows from that very deliberate process.  Bearing in mind Seligman's connection to the powerbrokers of his day (the robber barons his father, a banker, had worked with as customers and partners), listen to another recap at the very end of his book:

"[T]he income tax is coming.  Sooner or later the constitutional or political difficulties will be surmounted, and the United States will fall in line with every other important country of the world.  Economic conditions have everywhere engendered a shifting of the basis of taxable faculty, and democracy has declared that the best criterion, on the whole, is to be found in income.  Whether we like it or not, the development is irresistible, and the income tax will come to stay until some new criterion of ability approves itself to the democracy of the future.”

Spoken like an insider; such resolute language.  If you read that paragraph with a German accent and as if spoken through a bullhorn, you get the idea.  I’m only half-joking.  “Resistance is futile!”

And, it just begs to be asked: how does “whether we like it or not” fit into the democratic principle?

It gets even more comforting.  He then talks about how wherever the income tax is introduced (and always strongly opposed by the public, remember), the tax works better and better (rakes in more dough) from year to year and decade to decade.  “This is due partly to the fact that business conditions are apt to adjust themselves to long-continued laws [do they have a choice?], partly to the fact that in progressive communities a gradual improvement in administrative methods may be expected [this is how death camps became more efficient over time], and partly to the fact that public sentiment slowly accommodates itself to a fait accompli.”  Let us pause here to define that French term.

fait accompli: An accomplished, presumably irreversible deed or fact.

So, Seligman assures us that we will eventually be worn down and accommodate ourselves to what we presumably cannot change.  So long as we think something is unchangeable, we will adjust to it and resign ourselves.  Again, I’m trying to find the democratic principle in this.

 

After having practically ordered us to “fall in line” in his previous paragraph, Seligman seems to be trying to soften our inevitable submission with the old, “Everyone eventually comes to their senses, and so will you” approach.  Can you see him standing close to you under the harsh light, speaking in comforting tones and smiling?  Here’s how the fait accompli paragraph finishes.

“For the present generation in England or Germany to read of the imprecations [curses] heaped upon the income tax by an earlier generation is almost to read an unfamiliar language, so completely has both the governmental and the individual attitude changed.  Is it unreasonable to expect that the similarly extreme opposition which is still manifested by certain individuals or classes in France and in the United States will be regarded with the same feelings of wonder by a future generation?”  Perhaps here Seligman offers you a cigarette.

We are the future generation and, from the question Seligman has just posed, I gather we are to regard as a quaint oddball the U.S. senator who pointed out that France had no income tax in the 1890’s because she had “learned to love liberty, to hate inquisitions, to detest class legislation, and to respect the rights of property.”  By now, according to Seligman, those sentiments are supposed to hit us as alien, as foreign, as unrecognizable – yes, to fill us with wonder.

“Finally,” he concludes, “the success of an income tax depends, perhaps more than almost any other modern institution, upon administrative machinery.”  There, did that make the pit in your stomach go away?  “…Certain methods, which promise well from the point of view of the symmetry of the tax, work badly amid a democratic environment.”

Earlier in the book, Seligman lamented: “Administration in a democracy is proverbially difficult.  In a community where everyone considers himself as good as his neighbor, respect for expert knowledge is not likely to be so great as in an aristocracy or autocracy.  The university professor, for instance [of which Seligman was one], occupies a far higher position, socially and financially, in Russia than he does in the United States.  Not only is democracy less favorable to the dominance of the expert, but it is also less favorable to administrative efficiency in other respects.  Permanence of tenure, with all the knowledge that results therefrom, is difficult to secure…And finally, the general attitude of the average citizen to the government official is more likely to be that of superior to inferior, rather than the reverse.”

Seligman later speaks of the “inestimable advantages of a democratic government” which we put over and above the inherent “dangers” of difficult administration, and later in his career he spoke strongly against implications that he was a socialist.  The point here is not whether he was.  It is simply to point out that this well-connected professor openly envied systems of government where the leaders and “experts” could just say, “Do it!” and the people did it, “whether [they] like it or not.”  That doesn’t smell like democracy to me.

So, picture this: a form of taxation introduced in democracies where it is greeted with sometimes violent opposition by the people (you know, those who make up a democracy).  The few keep it in place long enough, knowing the people will eventually grow tired and acquiesce (where have all the Occupy protesters gone?).  The tax is administered and enforced by the proper “machinery,” which turns out to be despotic rather than democratic or even humane (ripping families apart so Uncle can get a buck?).

For Seligman to say that “democracy has declared” that the income tax is the democratic way to raise government revenue is truly an oversimplification.  I believe if we look beneath the surface we will see that there’s more to it than that, and I believe that my take on Seligman and all the other “experts” who were using the income tax to point the way forward actually hits closer to home: Our system, though not perfect, has been doing a fine job financing government (in fact, sometimes too good).  The Gilded Age has caused the gap between rich and poor to increase, and we must do something in the name of equality to fix it, because the rich aren’t paying their “fair share.”  Here’s the democratic answer – the income tax.  And look, everybody’s doing it, and so should we.  And, by the way, you’ll fall in line whether you like it or not.

Do we need another hundred years to watch the income tax administered and enforced before we can make a judgment and put it to rest?  True, it looks good in theory, but in practice, with its necessary machinery in place, it can only be the tax of the despot, the tyrant, the dictator – even in a so-called democracy.

Are You Sitting Down?

I wish the fire would hurry and spread so we could be done with the income tax and move on.  Believe it or not, my life doesn’t revolve around the income tax.  I have other things I’d like to do, folks!  I have a screenplay I’m writing based loosely on my recent deployment, I’m writing a memoir based on my upbringing in what I think was an interesting family, and I intend to write a book that will restore the names of Admiral Kimmel and General Short (of Pearl Harbor fame).  I also need to get more milk.  So, let’s pick up the pace, get some new convictions about the income tax, and tell our representatives to just let it die.  Print out some of these posts and send them along if you think it will help.  The income tax was a bad idea from the beginning, and that fact hasn’t changed in 100 years.

A few posts ago I made a sarcastic remark about Edwin Seligman’s “rousing” summation of why we need an income tax.  I’m going to relate that now, so hold on to your hats – it’s about to get real!

First, let’s look at the things he said that actually support my argument for doing away with the income tax.  At the very outset of his 700-page history of this form of taxation (published in 1911), he writes: “The income tax has come into the forefront of public discussion with comparative rapidity…Everywhere, in short, there seems to be a trend toward the income tax.  Why is this so?  What is the explanation of this essentially modern phenomenon?  For what reason are the fiscal systems that have so well served their purpose in the past now everywhere being brushed aside, and being replaced or supplemented by the income tax?  What, in short, is the real significance of the movement?”  (emphasis added)

Seligman goes on to convey in the clearest of terms that the income tax was not needed for raising government revenue, neither at the state nor federal level.  He notes that the tariff and excise system was providing everything the government needed, and goes so far as to say how that system could be easily tweaked to raise considerably more revenue without laying a heavy burden on the public.

So, why was Seligman pushing for the income tax?  What was the “real significance of the movement” that was behind it?  Brace yourselves!

Toward the end of his book, Seligman begins to sum it all up.  Having already stated that the fiscal systems of the past had been serving their purposes “so well,” he then says:

“…[I]t is obvious that there is no immediate likelihood of a fundamental change in the tariff [though he had just explained the little effort it would take to change what was already working and make it even better], and we have learned that the system of state and local taxation is becoming in some respects progressively worse rather than better [which contradicts his statement at the beginning of the book, and also ignores the many pages where he argues decisively against any income taxation at the state level.  Nevertheless, he goes on.]  In the face of this situation the argument for some kind of an income tax becomes very strong.  [So far, I would sum up what he said as, “Even though the sky is nowhere near falling, I think we really need this.”  He continues.]  When we join to this argument the further consideration that the adoption of an income tax would not only tend to redress existing inequalities [100 years later, that’s a joke], but would also in all probability make a reform of our entire system of state and local taxation more easy of accomplishment [a reform which he’s conceded isn’t all that necessary], the arguments in favor of the adoption of an income tax acquire additional weight.  [Again, there’s no fire, the earth isn’t collapsing, but let’s fix what essentially isn’t broken.]”

Now, this last bit of his summation is actually still part of the same paragraph, but I wanted to set it apart so I could again advise the reader to take a seat and hold on.  This is amazing.  Ready?  This is the apex of a 700-page tome that had to have taken considerable amounts of time and energy to produce.  This is what it all comes down to.

“When, finally, we add to these considerations the reflection that the income tax is in harmony with a pronounced tendency throughout the civilized world, and that wherever we find the spread of democracy, we find the growth of income taxation, the argument for the adoption of some form of income taxation becomes well-nigh irresistible.”

I’m sorry, Mr. Seligman, “well-nigh irresistible” because why?  Because everybody’s doing it!!

Holy buckets, people, did you catch that?  There’s a bandwagon, and we need to jump on!

I’d spent weeks reading this book and thinking it was going to present a really tough challenge to my beliefs.  Seligman was no lightweight – he was one of the leading experts on economics and taxation.  I thought there would be some serious soul-searching and wringing of hands and eating of words on my part when Seligman finally brought it home at the end.  But I got to this point in the book and kind of felt sorry for the guy.  I wrote in the margin: “Wow.  Weak.”

When Seligman says that “wherever we find the spread of democracy, we find the growth of income taxation,” we need to finally diagnose that “growth” as what it is: a cancer on society.  Which will be the first of the democratic countries to rid itself of this disease?  As I’ve said before, leave this form of taxation to the despots, tyrants, and dictators.  That would be fitting, because the income tax is a liberty killer.

People-Watching At The Local IRS Office

I keep thinking back to the people I've observed over the past couple of weeks while visiting the IRS office.  Like the lady who struggled with a condition that required a cane in each hand in order to get around.  Or the young father who spent over three-and-a-half hours there with his toddler and his mother (or mother-in-law) helping out, walking the child around, carrying her, keeping her entertained, cradling her when she slept.  There was the woman who spoke with a heavy accent in broken English working things out with an agent.  Every time the agent told her about how much money was due, or what the interest or penalties amounted to, she sounded bewildered, like it was somehow incredible that the government was piling all of this on her.  The agent relentlessly spewed numbers and timetables like a machine, making her gasp at times.  They talked for over an hour.  She had so many questions.

I remember hearing agents in other cubicles talking to their “customers” and laying down the law – this is the payment program you've agreed to, you have to remain current with all new taxes due, you can’t get behind or we’ll cancel the agreement.  Do you understand these terms?

There were people who complained at the front desk of having been in and out of that office two or three times that day, getting the run around as to what the agents needed only to find out when they came back that there was something else they needed to go back home and get, or they had to take a number again and wait to be called for further help.  A couple of tough looking Latinos were getting this treatment, and one of them said in protest with a Spanish accent, “I’m a United States citizen!  I shouldn't be treated like this.”  I could hear in his voice that his high expectations for his adopted country were sinking, and I felt bad not only for him, but for all of us.

  

“You don’t take cash?” asked an exasperated woman.

“Ma’am, there’s a sign right there on the door.  We’re not accepting cash at this time.”

“But-“

“Ma’am, I don’t have time to argue.  There’s the sign.  You’ll have to move out of the line.  I have other people to help.”

There was the self-employed lady and her daughter looking through the dozens upon dozens of forms and instruction booklets that were available.  She left with a stack of them at least five inches thick (no exaggeration).

On my last visit there was a guy that brought in a bag of papers who needed help getting his taxes done.  The guy at the front desk said no help would be given until the man’s accountant put everything in order first.  The guy ended up walking out just as I was leaving.  He told me on the elevator that he had managed to get the day off to have this straightened out, and now the day off had been wasted.

These observations were made over the course of four visits to that office.  Don’t get the idea that it was a scene of constant pandemonium.  Most of the time it was silent, with an assortment of old and young, black, white, Latin and Asian people sitting in their chairs waiting for their number to be called, fighting off sleep or fully embracing it.

A lot of my friends on the left look at taxation and support of government as being all about people and meeting their needs.  And when they hear me disparage the income tax, their first concern seems to be that its abolition would ultimately affect people in a negative way.  But look at what its enforcement does to people.  The income tax, with its heavy-handed demands, is itself a people issue; it is a well-being issue from the start.  Think of the millions of man-hours that would be freed up if there were no income tax.  Do we suppose that lady with the dual canes had no better place to spend her day?  Wouldn't that toddler have rather spent her day in a familiar setting where she was free to play and make noise and be a toddler?  Does compliance with any type of consumption tax force us to run around all day at the bidding of tax agents and burn up our days off from work?  Does a sales tax force cashiers to drag their patrons into a cubicle to read them the riot act?  Does a tax on a little trinket made overseas force people to pour over mountains of instruction booklets and forms and rules and regulations; to take a number and wait for hours on end to get their marching orders from a bureaucrat; to try and figure out how the honorable activity of work forces you to incur debt?

The time that is consumed by compliance with the income tax – these millions of man-hours every year – could be spent in one of two ways if given back to the people.  That extra time could be spent putting in more time at work, benefiting the worker and the business.  Or, that time could be spent on leisure and entertainment, benefiting the refreshed worker and raising his or her quality of life, not to mention benefiting the leisure and entertainment industries.

So what stands in our way?  Only our stubborn belief that a free and creative people are not yet creative enough to figure out how to build a road or a school and remain free.  Is that really all the farther we've evolved in our thinking?

Back In "My Place." Now What?

Yesterday, I left the IRS office having brought myself into “compliance” so that they would lift the levy from my bank account and allow me to continue living off of the money I’ve earned…oh, and so they wouldn’t send me to prison (no, not writing this from North Korea – I’m in North America).

The staff person who worked with me was the same sweet woman who was working with me when I took my big, dramatic stand about two weeks ago.  I have to give her credit for being a very decent human being.  She even showed me the Schedule M for the 2009 and 2010 returns which saved me $800.  I have no complaints against the woman personally or professionally.

She did, however, leave me with some confusing marching orders as I left the office.  She said she had to get her manager’s approval to lift the levy, but to go ahead and call the 800 number on the Notice of Levy I'd received in the mail and have them lift it.  “It should be no problem,” she said.

So, leaving some time for that manager to get back to her and approve everything, I waited until today just after lunch to call and see if the levy could be lifted.  I had a rather strange conversation with a woman on the phone who said the manager still hadn’t approved lifting the levy, but that she could grant a “partial” lifting.  She asked if I had any pressing needs “right now,” so I thought of the most current need, which was that I probably had a couple phone bills past due because they froze the assets in my account.  She asked a few other questions about my current income, and I thought I made it pretty clear that my current income is about half of my current living expenses, and that I need what was in the bank to make up the difference until my tuning business is back on its feet.  She put me on hold, and when she got back to me she said she was releasing $300 from the levy.  I thanked her (sincerely) and said that if that was all she was able to do, I might have to go back to the office and see if they might try to reach that manager soon as Friday was the day my frozen assets would be automatically turned over to the IRS if the levy wasn’t lifted.

I thought as I shared this idea that the lady would give a sort of “That’s probably a good idea considering your circumstances” reply, and we’d be done.  Instead, she started getting upset with me and telling me that the IRS only lifts levies if they feel there are extenuating circumstances.  I explained that I thought next month’s rent and child support payments were pressing enough to warrant it, and that without what I had in the bank being made available, my current income would not be able to meet my normal monthly expenses.  Somehow – somehow, my friends, she couldn’t grasp this and remained upset with me that I would still try to get the entire levy lifted.  We had rather a terse goodbye, and I was rushing back to the IRS office only an hour before I was supposed to pick up my youngest son from school.

I reached the office in good time and approached the lady at the service desk.  I explained that I had been in yesterday getting my ducks in a row to get a levy lifted and that some manager needed to give their approval before the Friday deadline or I’d lose what they had levied.

“Well, there are no managers at this office, sir.  You’ll just have to wait for one of them to call the woman who was helping you yesterday.”

“Yes.  I just thought if I could talk to her again today and see if we might put in another call to that manager.”  A line was beginning to form behind me, and there were others already seated and waiting to speak with an assistant.

“There’s really nothing we can do right now, sir.”

“Well, I need that money to live on and Friday is the deadline.  I can’t lose that money.”

“She put in the call yesterday, so now all we can do is wait.”

“I’m only making half of what I need every month to get by, so I need that money I brought back from my deployment to make up the difference.  I’m trying to rebuild my business.”

“Sir, she put in the call- “

“But I thought maybe another phone call because of the deadline.  You know, the squeaky wheel and all that.  Well, I guess I’ll just have to hold my breath.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that!” she kidded.

I smiled, but I felt sick inside.  Why do I have to fight for money I’ve rightfully earned?  I’ve harmed no one or their property, yet I’m treated like a criminal.  I’m begging for the use of my own money.

“Sir, wait right here a moment,” she said.  She went and got the woman I worked with yesterday, who assured me that as soon as she heard from the manager she would call me.  I thanked her and left.

A couple hours later, she called and gave me the good news as I was going to pick up my other boy.  The entire levy should be lifted some time tomorrow.  It felt good to hear, and I sincerely thanked her for her help.

I still feel grateful, but let’s not get all sentimental, okay?  A runaway slave can feel genuine gratitude for being spared the whip as a “just” punishment for running away, but don’t mistake his or her feeling of gratitude for a wholesale acceptance of the institution of slavery.  The runaway taxpayer is back on the plantation, in his proper place, but he still resents the fact that he continues to live under the same threat of punishment that he just avoided.  A compliant slave with a scar-free back is no less a slave than the rebellious one being whipped.

Two weeks ago I told the IRS to stuff it, and then spent the next three days facing the very real possibilities of what that could mean.  The only other time I’ve felt so oppressed and distraught over the future was when I had visitation with my boys cut to almost nothing overnight for no justifiable reason.  That wasn’t just threatened – that happened.  It sucked the life right out of me.  I remember laying on my couch in a ball – helpless, hopeless, my insides churning with real grief and despair.  It’s a feeling I genuinely wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies.  And so these threats from the IRS – confiscation of property and rights to property, imprisonment – went to work on my mind and heart and caused the same emotional trauma as the assault on my visitation.  The common denominator between the two situations was the lack of necessity.  That’s the part that kills you.  “None of this is necessary, yet it’s happening (or very well could happen).”

So, I’m in “compliance,” the levy is to be lifted, and I’m allowed to carry on almost as if nothing happened.  I’m back in “my place” as a taxpayer.  Where does this leave me from two weeks ago when I “got my rebel on”?

One word: determined.

Fighting For That Levy To Be Lifted Before Friday

I’ll tell you, you never think of concepts such as freedom and liberty so much as when you stand in an IRS office (as I just did) in front of a bunch of strangers and fight for the money you’ve earned and that you depend on to make ends meet.  But you think of freedom and liberty as something you’re longing for, not as something you’re experiencing.

When was the last time you thought about your little toe?  Probably the last time you stubbed it on the leg of a chair.  You see, it’s kind of mean for me to keep harping on something that you experience only as a slight annoyance, or worse, a patriotic duty.  You don’t feel the income tax the way I feel it, so many of you just shake your head trying to understand the strength of my convictions.  You don’t feel the weight of the chain, or you misunderstand the chain of the income tax as something that benignly binds you to society – like a membership fee.

I would love to have a bunch of readers who are already a part of the choir and just preach to them and hear them say “Amen!” and “We’re with you!” and “I totally agree!”  I would love that validation.  I would love to have a strong following of “believers” who just eat up what I’m saying.  But I’d just be spinning my wheels at that point.  It’s better right now to speak to the skeptics, to the people who still hold on to beliefs that they hold dear without having examined them closely.  I’d rather be talking to the “average” American who really does think that our country would cave in on itself if the income tax were to go away.  I want to get people thinking who haven’t thought a lot about it.  I used to be skeptical when I heard what I brushed off as “tax protester” rhetoric (and some of that rhetoric I still steer clear of because it seems to emanate from a lot of nut jobs).  But, just like the Apostle Paul, the strongest advocates of a cause are often those who opposed it at first.

I want people who have only experienced the income tax as that bit of money they see taken from their monthly paychecks to learn to look at it with disgust.  I want them to understand what they’re really looking at and what it really means.  I want the average 9-to-5 wage earners to get a clue and lead the charge to bring down this tyrannical form of taxation once and for all.  And it doesn’t even have to start here in America – I have readers in Russia, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, Germany, Canada, etc.  The movement may start overseas and work its way here (that’s actually how the income tax started – in Europe).

Go back and read what I’ve written before, and read what’s coming.  And think.  For goodness’ sake, none of this will mean anything if you don’t take time to think.

What Is A Right If You Have To Pay For It?

We who work for our living, who don’t have income apart from our daily jobs, we who are teachers and bus drivers and shop owners and engineers and CPAs and plumbers, artists, fast food workers, piano tuners, electricians – we who work for our living and have nothing else to fall back on: I have a question for us.  How did we allow the sweat of our brow to be hijacked by cushy politicians and the unbelievably wealthy investor class?  How did we allow them to craft legislation that burdens and belittles and humiliates the one thing we have that keeps us going from day to day, week to week, month to month?  How did we let them put our sweat in chains – our daily toil, our labor?

Why place a tax on the income from our labor when they can just as easily – no, far more easily – get it from us as we spend?  Two years ago the state of California was looking at bumping up their sales tax by one penny.  That little bump was expected to bring in an additional $4.5 billion in one year.  Not million – billion.  Seligman was absolutely right when he said that we don’t often think of the tremendous amount of revenue that can be raised from modest taxes on foreign goods and certain products made here.  And I think the government would prefer that we don’t think of such things, but instead keep believing in the “necessity of the income tax” myth.  Something else to think about: it’s estimated that if the income tax were to disappear overnight, the revenue levels of the federal government would fall back to what they were in the 1990’s.  I was there in the 1990’s, and it certainly didn’t feel anything like the nightmare of the 1930’s we’ve all heard about.

I’ve been living in the same 1-bedroom apartment since 2004.  I have two growing boys whom I spend time with almost every day.  I can’t afford a 2-bedroom, so we make do.  According to the federal government tables, my toil over the last six years has put me $45,000 in debt to Uncle Sam.  You see, I’ve been working to make ends meet every month and to get out of legitimate debt, but look what I get.  I get to erase an entire year’s worth of income from that six years and hand it over to the government.

I've never asked the government for handouts; I’ve never taken unemployment.  I’ve worked through some very dark financial times.  No one gives me anything to clothe, feed and house my children.  I make it happen from one month to the next by working.  That’s all I have.  And every penny I earn is a penny I spend.  I have no savings, no investments, nothing for the rainy days except the hope that my phone will ring again and someone will ask me to tune their piano.  And you know what?  For the last ten years, it’s worked.  I even stopped using credit as of about five years ago – I pay for everything as I go.  (Yet, still, I have tens of thousands of dollars in student loans and old medical bills hanging over my head.)

And the only thing I have to take care of it all is...my investment income?  Stock dividends?  Other forms of gambling?  No, just my hands, my tools, and that phone.  Take it as I’m spending, not as I sweat for it.

Chances are, you have just a little taken out of each paycheck, and it’s been that way since the first day you showed up for work.  You’re used to it.  You don’t feel it the way I do.  You don’t feel the degradation, the humiliation, the frustration.  But brother or sister, let me tell you, just because you’ve never felt the lash, the slap in the face or the heaviness of the chain you wear doesn’t make you any less of a slave than I am.  Wake up!

Taxes?  Sure, let there be taxes.  But for humanity’s sake, don’t lay the burden on our fundamental human right to earn our living.  It’s all we’ve got!