Taxation through the Ages

By Joseph Sobran

(Reprinted from SOBRAN’S, December 2003, pages 3–5)

I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again.

In the summer of 1965, when I’d just finished my freshman year in college, I was reading a little book called The Law — a long pamphlet, really — by the nineteenth-century French legislator Frédéric Bastiat, when I was riveted by a single sentence: “Look at the law, and see if it does for one man at the expense of another what it would be a crime for the one to do to the other himself.”

In Bastiat’s view, government, beyond the strictest limits of justice, became “organized plunder,” a device by which “everyone seeks to enrich himself at the expense of everyone else.” In other words, government itself tends to become the very evil it is supposed to prevent: crime. But it confuses people because it enacts criminal acts under the forms of law.

The simple insight rocked me. It upset my faith in my country and its basic justice. If Bastiat was right, the United States was already profoundly corrupt. It took me years to come to terms with this idea. Today it seems to me almost self-evident. I marvel that anyone with common sense thinks otherwise.

This means, for openers, that taxation is a gigantic system of fraud, robbery, and extortion. Most taxpayers receive nothing to justify the amounts they are forced to pay. Yet it’s the taxpayer, not the ruler, who is treated as a criminal suspect and required to “confess” his earnings and holdings. The ruler isn’t penalized for anything he does to the taxpayer.

This fact makes me wildly indignant, and I’m frustrated and baffled that so few Americans share my feelings. We are being robbed and cheated on an astonishing scale.

Once, during a radio interview (I’ve been known to repeat this story too), I was asked, “Why don’t you ever criticize big business the way you always criticize big government?” I answered, “I’m not forced to do business with General Motors. If I do so voluntarily, I get a car for my money. But I am forced to do business with the government. Every year I’m forced to pay it roughly the price of a new car. And I’ve never seen that car. Someone else gets it.”

Bastiat, a devout Catholic, reasoned about the state from a natural law philosophy. He concluded that the state violates the most basic principles of natural justice. Once you start thinking that way, you can hardly avoid thinking of politics as a largely criminal activity.

At some level, most people know this intuitively. I think this accounts for the huge popular appeal of The Godfather. We are all taught that the government is there to protect us from criminals. The Godfather audaciously reverses our civics lessons: it shows us a benign master criminal who will protect us from the corrupt government. This is another sentimental myth, of course — unlike real mafiosi, Don Corleone never extorts “taxes” from shopkeepers in the form of protection money — but it has enough truth to seize our imaginations.

[Breaker quote: How law becomes criminal]But the state’s myth still prevails, and we submit. Most people see nothing questionable about state taxation, and politicians complacently assume their right to take our wealth.

Some Oklahoma politicians, for example, are currently in a tax-boosting mood. They want to raise taxes of all sorts — income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, you name it.

According to the National Taxpayers Union, the average Oklahoman already pays more in taxes — Federal, state, and local — than for food, shelter, clothing, and transportation combined. This amounts to 26.5 per cent of per capita income.

How much is enough? What is the limit? At what point, short of taking 100 per cent of our earnings, do our rulers feel they are taking too much from us?

The obvious answer is that they recognize no limit. The subject never comes up. They view the taxpayer as an inexhaustible resource.

Rest of article at: http://www.sobran.com/articles/taxationages.shtml

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

Rest of screed aside, this paragraph must be incorrect. It is highly unlikely that food, shelter, clothing and transportation take up less than 26.5 percent of the average Oklahoman's income. Heck, in many places shelter alone will cost more than that.

I also like the rhetorical leap of going from a total tax burden of 26.5 percent to "when is enough enough? Nothing short of 100%, apparently."

I know you think taxes are intrinsically evil and society should run entirely on voluntary donations. Just noting the rhetorical and factual excesses.

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Man up.

Not necessarily. Would depend on the real estate market. There are vast differences across the country. I have a cousin that just moved to Oklahoma. She said housing was much cheaper than what she was used to in Texas.

The top rate has been up to 95%. His point that government feels it can tax people as much as it deems is necessary is valid though. I've never heard the mainstream politicians claim government should make do with less and actually try to cut its voracious appetite for spending.

I knew you'd be a big fan of this article...

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer