In all the budgets of our public bodies, at the federal, provincial, municipal levels, there is an item — and not the least — which is not at all allocated to pay a public service. It is the one that bears the name "debt service".
The debt is surely not a public service, but rather the tribute to a public enslavement. The money allocated each year for this purpose does not build nor maintain a single bridge, not even a square inch of pavement.
However, it is the most sacred item of the budget, the one least discussed, or rather, not discussed at all. "Incompressible expense," they say. Incompressible, but expandable, because it is generally going to increase with the years.
All that has been built in the country, like roads, bridges, schools, churches, public establishments, was done by the population of the country: some working at it directly, others producing what is needed in all sorts of things to satisfy the needs of those employed by the public sector. Therefore, it is the fruit of the population's collective work. And yet, it is the population of the country who are thus taxed every year, to pay interests to some persons who, in no way, have helped with the work, who even often are perfect strangers.
Therefore, the taxation mechanism is a robbery mechanism, a legalized robbery, but a robbery just the same.
All the cities, all the towns, all the villages, have in their budgets this item that takes by force the money of the citizens without giving them anything in compensation.
The robbers work exactly like that, but with this difference: the robbers, those whom everybody calls robbers, act without authorization. They run some risks, like prison and the penitentiary, while the robbers to whom the citizens' taxes go do not risk anything; they do not even have to move from their place to get the hoard. Our municipal councils, our school boards undertake to execute the robbery for them and to devoutly pass on the fruit to them. The police, the authorities, the law come only on those who neglect or who refuse to thus give up their money. The punished will be he who dares to say "no" to the agents of the robbers, to the tax collectors. He will lose his house. He is not quite told "your money or your life!" but "your money, or the road for your family!"
It goes the same way with the provincial government and with the Federal Government, or it is prison for he who does not want to bow before the requirements of the agents of this legalized robbery.
Even when the money for the property taxes and the income taxes is really used to pay for public services, why tax the individuals in order to pay for the works, when the productive capacity of the country can, at the same time, provide both public developments and products to be put on the market?
If the people of the country can provide both, there is no reason to remove from them claims on private goods as a condition to allow them to have public goods. Well, the population is capable of providing both when there are hundreds of thousands of workmen who offer their services, which are not needed to make the production. A great productive capacity therefore is not used.
Facing the unsued productive capacity, the taxes, which diminish the claims of individuals on products answering their needs, are a robbery.
There are also the taxes imposed in order to finance what is called Social Security: Family Allowances, Old-Age Pensions, pensions for the invalids, allowances for the needy mothers, etc.
It is certainly just that, in some way, each person, employed or not, healthy or sick, has access to the necessary things of life. But in a world where production abounds without even employing all the available workmen, why remove from some to allow others to have something? Why take from Peter's plate to put in Paul's empty plate when the pantry is overflowing?
However, this is what is financially done by the taxes, because the financial system is false: it rations in front of abundance. To maintain it and to tax in front of abundance is to rob those who are taxed.
Therefore, here is another slice of modern taxes that makes up the legalized robbery. And there are others as well.
Today, governments are entering more and more into functions that are not particularly theirs.
It is not the role of the Government to do what the persons, the families, the free groups, the intermediary bodies, the local administrations are capable of accomplishing as well as, and even better than, the Government.
If any hindrance stops the individuals, families, intermediary bodies to accomplish well their proper function, the Government must intervene, not to do it in their place, but rather to remove the obstacle that the Government alone can well remove. It is the case of the purely financial obstacle. The absence of the means of payment in front of a powerful physical means makes up a vice of Finance.
If, instead of correcting this vice of the financial system, a correction that can only well be made by the Government, the Government taxes the citizens to take the place of the families or of the intermediary bodies, it commits many faults. It neglects its proper role. It allows a financial monopoly to endure and to grow stronger. It robs those whom it taxes. It interferes with what is not of its jurisdiction.
The Government thus becomes a robber at the same time as an invader. It gives as an excuse the financial powerlessness of the inferior groups, when it should suppress the source of this powerlessness engendered by a disorderly financial system.
All the governments do the same thing. The taxpayers are sucked more and more. It is not only their purchasing power that suffers a bit, but their personal freedom is sponged on by the growing encroachments of the State and its bureaucrats.
In the meetings between the Federal and Provincial Governments, it is mostly a question of dividing up the sources of the fiscal policy. That is to say, to decide what will be the part of the provinces to draw the money from the taxpayers. There are the federal rights to tax and the provincial rights to tax, but the rights of the citizens do not come into consideration. It is however for them that the governments exist: to protect them, and not to rob them.
When will there be a meeting of the governments' taxmen and the taxed to protect the rights of the second in limiting the powers of the first?.
Therefore, the legalized robbery that we denounce includes, at least:
What the Government takes away from the population to pay tribute to a system that gets the population into debt as the population develops the country;
What the Government removes from the purchasing power of the individuals, when offered production awaits for buyers;
What the Government takes in taxes to attend to functions that it must leave to persons, families, intermediary bodies;
All what it deducts from the fruits of existing production, when potential production stays in nothingness, owing to a vicious financial system that the Government refuses to correct;
All what this taxation system involves in heavy costs that would be useless under a system of sound finance, conforming to realities of modern productive capacity in the public sector at the same time as in the private sector.
The present mechanism of property taxes and income taxes, which keeps the governments so busy, is therefore a mechanism of legalized robbery. The robber above all is the monopoly of money and credit. The agents of the robber are the governments. The victims are the taxpayers, that is to say, directly or indirectly, all the population.
Subscribe