Daily Caller: [Alan Keyes]
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
These measures will of course be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax….
(The Communist Manifesto (pp. 18-19). Kindle Edition.)
All duties upon articles of consumption, may be compared to a fluid, which will in time find its level with the means of paying them. The amount to be contributed by each citizen will in a degree be by his own option, and can be regulated by an attention to his own resources. The rich may be extravagant, the poor can be frugal; and private oppression may always be avoided by judicious selection of objects proper for
such impositions … It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which can not be exceeded without defeating the end proposed that is, an extension
of the revenue.[No. 21 of the Federalist, emphasis added.]
April 15 is the usual deadline for its subjects to file their income tax returns with the U.S. Government, along with such payment as may be due. Because it divides payment of the tax into chewable morsels, the practice of withholding a suitable proportion of the tax from employees’ paychecks somewhat mitigates the felt burden it imposes on individuals. But for a long time I have been convinced that the greatest damage this form of taxation inflicts occurs sub-consciously. It leads people to look upon their net pay as “my money” and see the amount withheld as “the government’s money.” More
Just 12 easy payments. Can you imagine the uproar if taxes were collected ONCE a year as in olden days?
People have been trying for years to pin politicians down to declare what tax rate should be the maximum, but they won’t do it. The clear implication is that they believe they have the power (right?) to take up to 100% of what we earn. That’s slavery. Furthermore, being taxed at 50% makes you only half a slave, and for that we are supposed to be grateful to our would-be masters for their forebearance.
Milton Friedman is quoted as saying his idea income tax witholding was the worst mistake he ever made. I agree: think of the shrieks we’d hear if on April 15 if we had to write checks for the entire amount of income tax for the previous year.
EDIT: Friend moose was posting as I was typing – great minds and all that!
Just eliminate withholding by your employer, if we had to write that check every payday people would get interested.
Since my teenage years, I’ve been asking people why we have an income tax.
“How else are you going to pay for government?”
“Really? THAT’S your answer?”
Basically, we have an income tax because the American people are just stupid enough to accept it.
It’s the cavalier and wasteful squandering of the forcefully collected earnings that are most offensive along with the amount. It’s insulting to see the utter contempt shown to those diminishing numbers of people who pay the freight.
Two things.
1. Taxes should be paid annually on Election Day at the polling place. That would be trouble for politicians.
2. Add employer direct deposit to the mix and many people don’t even read their check stubs anymore. I don’t, the missus is pretty diligent about it.
Here’s a challenge for Millenials (first, put the Tide Pods and condoms away): Read Marx’s Communist Manifesto AND the most recent Democratic Party platform, see if you can find any differences. (Hint: there aren’t many)
Matthew 22:21
it is done!
US Citizens have no more influence or representation with the US Congress than we did with King George III or his aristocratic Parliament.
RickeyG — The D platform is more communist than Marx!
@Uncle Al April 23, 2018 at 1:28 pm
> being taxed at 50% makes you only half a slave
That’s why I’m a True Constitutional Conservative™. I yearn for the golden age that never was. When I could be but two-fifths a slave.
@Jimmy April 23, 2018 at 1:49 pm
> Basically, we have an income tax because the American people are just stupid enough to accept it.
But that is the genius of The Founding Fathers. The representative republic distills the wisom of the people. Such as it is.
If only we could get the people to pay attention to The Issues™. And vote. Things could only get better.
Fur, I’m so glad you posted this!
Last week I was going through some very old boxes of papers and weeding out junk to get rid of. I came across many of my old college papers/essays and for some reason decided to keep a quarter’s worth of “Introduction to Marxist Theory” that was a required class. Part of that class was to have two “dialogue” papers with the professor. And I clearly recall having a terrible struggle understanding Marx and his theories AT ALL!
(This is going to be long, but I hope it will crack you up as much as it did me. What I find so hysterical is that despite having no prior understanding of Marx I, somehow, nailed the subject!)
This was my first “dialogue” assignment, four weeks in to the subject:
“There are at least two dynamics occurring around my reading/interpretation/understanding of the readings and discussions so far. One these leads me to believe that I understand nothing of what I have read and that the traditions or theories of Marxism are so far beyond their time (and even my time) as to be written in a language that only a scholar of abstract thought would comprehend. So far I am suspect of anything I think I do understand. That is, I probably do not understand — “really.”
Another conclusion I’ve reached (and it is indeed difficult to hold such a conclusion), is that Marx and company had truly great ideas about the formation of an ideal society but, for whatever reason(s), the point was either too difficult or risky to divulge. I feel stupid. I may as well be trying to decipher a code of some sort. Why can’t I understand this?
On the one hand I think I understand what he is saying about “alienation of labor” and “political economy” but there is something else I think he is trying to say that just isn’t as simple as these two examples. So why didn’t he just say it? I went back to the course intention for this class and I see that the primary purpose of this course “is the development of a meaningful and personal understanding of the nature(s) of Marxism.” In week four I am no more able to form answers to these challenges as I was five weeks ago. I listen to some members of the class form incredibly convoluted, abstract questions and discuss in an almost meta-language the works of Marx. They refer to him in an almost personal manner — as though they understand completely his viewpoints, motivations, torments and so on.
I hate to keep reading, just reading, word after word after word, without more than a glimmer of comprehension. For example:
‘Exchange and circulation. The result we arrive at is not that product, distribution, exchange, and consumption are identical, but that they are all members of one entity, different aspects of one unit. Production dominates not only over production itself in the opposite sense of that term, but over the other elements as well.’ Karl Marx: Selected Writings, David McClellan, 1977 (p. 351)
What does it mean, “Production dominates not only over production itself in the opposite sense of that term….?” What is the opposite sense? Nonproduction? Why is it important to point that out? If this is what he means, is it not obvious? me must be meaning something else. Or does he?
Then, in another example, point number “8” of The Economics, 1857-1867, he writes:
‘8. The starting point is to be found in certain facts of nature embodied subjectively and objectively in clans, races, etc. It is well known that certain periods of the highest development of art stand in no direct connection to the general development of society, or to the material basis and skeleton of its organization. Witness the example of the Greeks as compared with modern nations, or even Shakespeare. (p. 359)’
Something just doesn’t sound right to me about this statement. Marx often used terms like “It is well known,” or “it is a well known fact.” And to which “certain periods” is he referring? It seems intuitively obvious to me that art its expression do indeed go hand-in-hand with the general development of a society. Art has always been a reflection of what the society values or at least thinks about. Even the most agrarian cultures took time to scratch images onto their tools and weave them into their clothing. What in the world is he talking about?! I have no idea what he is getting at here.
But there are times when Marx is so lucid. It makes me think that because of these times that he is probably always lucid. But so much of what he writes sounds like the popular book, Dianetics, by L. Ron Hubbard; a book filled with some very different ideas and even some sound logic, but obscured by a strange sort of meta-language, whose intent it seems is only to obfuscate the simple truth and whose purpose is to cloak many common ideas in a mystery; thereby giving them a wonderful power when compared to their ordinary counterpart.
I have lost patience with Marx. I would rather be reading and deciphering Emily Dickensen. She really wanted to share her ideas. I truly wonder if Marx did or if he was being shy about the criticism that would come if he made himself plain. That is, was he only sending up a test balloon? I don’t know.”
I’d really like to share my final paper for this class — not because I was such a good writer, but because the whole thing cracks me up so much. Anyway, here is just one small excerpt from that paper:
“I will apply Marx to Marx himself by saying that he, too, [in addition to Hegel] was an Utopian. There is something very Utopian about a man who expected to live in the world while taking upon himself the responsibility for the well-being of his own children; whose only means of support was mostly writing unusual theories and the beneficence of family and friends and occasional “disagreeable” work. In the main, he was not himself living within the reality that he set forth so clearly to the proletariat.”
Again, all this came from someone who felt stupid and didn’t understand a damn thing about Karl Marx! LOL!
Abigail, remember Reagan’s famous quote: “A Communist is someone who reads Marx. An anti-Communist is someone who understands Marx.” (Working from memory so it may not be exact)
Sigh….HOUSE BILL 25…..abolishes the IRS and the 16th amendment. The answer to everything!
RickeyG — haha! yup, that sounds like Reagan alright! Thanks!
(I finally threw out my school books on Marx, too. They’ve been sitting on my bookshelves for decades. I always thought I’d at least try to read through them again to try to understand what some of my classmates understood about him. But as far as I was concerned, he was a crackpot on the order of L. Ron Hubbard. haha! I think Marx can be boiled down to this: He had a beef with God.)
Do away with the income tax–it is none of the government’s business how much money I make.
Create a FICA tax holiday; let everyone get a deposit of their gross amount, just for 6 months. The economy would take of like a rocket, and people might just get interested in making the change permanent.
why do we have Income Tax? …. simple answer …. Big Banks
it’s not a coincidence that the 16th Amendment & the Federal Reserve were created the same year
did you know that before this, when Wall Street started tanking, the big money, like Morgan, Rockefeller, etc. actually pumped $$$ into market sell-offs to stop runs & panic … by 1913 they figured out how to do it w/ your money
…. before this, all gov’t. was financed by tariffs
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ April 23, 2018 at 8:08 pm
I just noticed your gold plated Claymore mine. I like it.
@Tim Buktu: There’s a Claymore trailer hitch cover available now.
Cuts WAY down on tailgating.
https://www.moderntactical.com/gg-and-g/_/claymore-hitch-cover?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-9jNi_fR2gIVhR5pCh06PAPlEAQYAyABEgJ87fD_BwE
🙂