Why pay taxes ?

The following article was written by Louis Even in 1953. That year, the total tax bill imposed by all levels of government in Canada represented 29% of the incomes of Canadians. Today, it is about 50%. This means that you work half the year for the Government. Not to mention the fact that all these sums are not always spent wisely by our governments. Governments are more and more greedy. In fact, they don't seem to realize that it is the people's money they spend, and not theirs. Do they really need all these sums?

Every year, the Fraser Institute of Vancouver calculates "Tax Freedom Day" – the day of the year that Canadians finally start working for themselves. All money earned prior to this day goes to one of three levels of government: federal, provincial, or local. In 2000, Canadians worked until June 29 to pay the total tax bill imposed on them by all levels of government. This represents a five-day improvement over 1999, when Tax Freedom Day fell on July 5. This is mainly due to the large budget surpluses accumulated by the Federal Government, $12 billion for its last fiscal year. But this surplus means, first of all, that Canadians are taxed $12 billion more than what the Government actually needs to run the country, that the citizens are deprived of $12 billion that they could spend themselves, certainly more wisely and efficiently, for things they really need. How can the Government justify this? This money should be returned to the taxpayers immediately!

Tax Freedom Day for each province varies according to the extent of the provincially-levied tax burden. The earliest 2000 provincial Tax Freedom Day fell on May 30 in Newfoundland, while the latest date is July 8 for Quebec and British Columbia. The total tax bill that is added up to compute Tax Freedom Day includes income taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes and also includes: profit taxes, health, social security and employment taxes, import duties, license fees, taxes on the consumption of alcohol and tobacco, natural resource fees, fuel taxes, hospital taxes, and a host of other levies too numerous to mention.

Alain Pilote

By Louis Even

One could also mention other taxes, quite heavy, included in prices, and levied, not by the governments, but by the banking system. But that is quite another story! For now, we will limit ourselves to the taxes levied by governments. These taxes are a plague.

"But all governments tax," some will say.

A plague does not cease being a plague because it is spread worldwide. If a thief attacks two people, the first victim is not relieved by the unfortunate fate of the second victim.

People join forces together, live in society. They create institutions, governments. They do it to be better off than if they lived alone, isolated, without any rules or laws. If people join forces, form an association, it is to benefit from this association, these institutions, and not to suffer because of them, or to make their lives more difficult.

Similarly, people do not establish governments to decide in their place, to organize their lives in their place, to determine what their standard of living will be, what they will or will not buy among the products offered to them on the market.

Every time the Government takes a dollar away from you, it is the Government that spends it in your place. It is no longer you who will put an order for something you like with this dollar: the Government will spend it, without asking your opinion. As the purchasing power of the Government increases, yours is reduced. As the power of the Government increases, your freedom is reduced accordingly.

In today's world, money is a licence to live. Without money, you won't go very far; you won't last very long. When the Government takes 50% of your money, it takes away 50% of your licences to live. Even by assuming that the Government uses this money to make your life more comfortable, the fact remains that you are the property of the Government, subjugated to its orders, for 50%. If the Government took all of your money, all of your licences to live, to support you as it wishes, you would be 100% its plaything. This would be absolute totalitarianism. You would be like a prisoner: even if he is well fed, he still lacks something precious — his freedom, the right to choose for himself.

The more taxed, the more the plaything of the Government you become. The rise of taxes is leading to totalitarianism. Not necessarily bloody totalitarianism in a Communist fashion, but State socialism, where the State is almighty. This is unfortunately the tendency of our so-called free countries.

"This is all true," some will reply, "but governments must tax us anyway. Don't they need money to run the country and pay for public works, etc.?"

Dear friends, if you want to champion taxes, I leave you this cause, and have only this to say to you: "Very well, pay taxes, pay a lot of them, pay them with love and enthusiasm; you may even pay mine if you feel like it, but please, never complain anymore about taxes or the high cost of living." As for me, I am of a different view. I don't see the need, with today's great production capacity, to deprive me of a pound of butter in order to build a bit of road, when there is the material capacity to build the road without reducing the capacity of the nation to produce butter, not only for me, but for all those who build the road.

Taxes may have been the thing needed in the past, at a time when production and manpower were scarce. When everybody was kept busy with producing consumer goods, it could have been necessary to reduce this production of consumer goods in order to free some workers and put them at the disposal of public works or enterprises.

But today this is no longer the case. The problem is no longer to find workers, manpower, but to employ them. Moreover, if production was not diverted to the production of goods that no one needs, or war production, there would be even more unemployed workers available.

"All right, but with what will you pay for the road?"

A road is paid for by the work of those who build it. And this work is paid by the work of those who make other goods that are consumed by those who work to build the road. Once finished, the road has been actually paid for by society.

"But money is needed to make the payments that will allow the transfer of goods from one person to the other."

Agreed. But money is nothing but a figure, a token, a symbol, and this symbol must be the exact reflection of physical realities, of production.

The production of public and consumer goods is simply the use of the productive capacity of the nation. Money is what allows the use of this productive capacity. If money was issued in keeping with the productive capacity of the nation, there would be no financial difficulties at all. There is no need to tax me, to deprive me from my licence to use part of this productive capacity, as long as the Government can use his part without exhausting the entire productive capacity.

In other words, as long as production can supply both public and consumer goods, there is no need to reduce consumer goods in order to get public goods. If our nation can build a road and produce butter at the same time, there is no need to deprive me from the means to buy butter in order to build the road.

"All of this seems logical. Nevertheless, the physical feasibility of building a road does not automatically make the money appear to pay those who build it."

No, because the present money system is not logical. The capacity to pay is not in keeping with the capacity to produce. So, people do without roads, or do without butter. We are physically capable of producing both, but financially unable to pay for both. This is absurd.

In today's system, realities depend on the symbol, money. Production depends on existing money, instead of money depending on existing production.

You can see the proof of it every day. It is also the reason why the most developed nations are financially the deepest in debt. Their national accounts record liabilities where they should actually record assets.

"I agree with all that you say, but there is nothing we can do. When money is lacking, we have to accept it, and act accordingly."

Do you really think so? Do you think that money is like rain or the sun, something that depends on natural forces, that we cannot change, and have to accept as it comes?

Do you think that money has been created by God in a definite quantity, and that there can be no more, no less?

Do you think that money is a sacred cow before which human needs must bow? Yet, in wartime, money is never lacking. Do you think that when the Depression of the thirties began, St. Michael the Archangel made all the money of all civilized nations disappear at the same time? Do you think that when the war broke out in 1939, it is St. Michael or another angel who brought back to the governments all the billions of dollars needed to finance six years of slaughter?

"Then, what is your solution?"

To correct the present financial system that is stupid, illogical, anti-natural, tyrannical, and diabolical, and turn it into a Social Credit system.

Then, instead of paying taxes all the time on everything, you will receive dividends, as our nation gets richer and more developed, as modern technology increases the production capacity of our nation.