The Immorality of the “Buffett Rule”

The Red Side of Life Conservative Musings from New York ^ | 4/17/12 | RedInNewYork

[jmstein7]

An individual’s right to the property of the mind is so inviolate that it is enshrined in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution: “The Congress shall have the power … to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” It is from the minds of men that all other forms of property springs forth. The right to private property is integral to freedom – if men were to toil without the guaranteed ownership of their work product, whether created directly (invention) or bargained-for (income), we would be nothing but a nation of slaves. It follows – a priori – that any law or act that sanctions the seizure of income sanctions slavery.  Any such government act or sanction is therefore an immoral act of slavery – more properly, the act of enslaving.

If you disagree with this assessment, I propose a simple challenge – don’t file your income tax returns and don’t pay your income taxes. You know what the result will be – an audit, fines, and possibly imprisonment. Now, do you still assert that you are a free man?

The immorality of the “Buffett Rule” – or millionaires’ tax – is that it presumes the morality of the income tax. The premise and folly of this rule is that there is some “fair share” of income tax that is due and owing. By what standard do you measure the fair share of enslavement?  The implication of this rule is that those of greater ability are more deserving of greater enslavement by force.  This is an inescapable truth – wrap your mind around it. Under the present system, 53% of the population pays taxes, the rest do not. 53% of the population is therefore enslaved to the other 47%.

This goes to the basic intended purpose of taxation, which is payment for the services of the government rendered to the taxpayer (the basic social contract). Under the Constitution, un-Amended, the government was charged with protecting its citizens from violence, from within (police powers) and without (the military), and providing for the general welfare, which it defined as promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts, immigration rules, coining money (means of exchange), establishing post offices and postal routes (communications), establishing the administration of justice (Court system), setting standards for commercial intercourse between nations and states (to avoid a repeat of the pre-Constitution interstate chaos), and handling bankruptcies. That’s it. Those were the services to be rendered for the benefit of every member of society. Taxation, duties, imposts, and excises were payment for those specific and identifiable services rendered.

In the un-amended text of the Constitution, before the dubious adoption of the Income Tax (16^th Amendment), the Constitution severely limited the ability of the government to tax. All “Duties, Imposts and Excises [were to] be uniform throughout the United States.” Stated differently, no individual citizen was to profit from government services at the expense of another citizen. This was a basic tenant upon which the United States was founded, and it made the United States unique amongst the nations.

No arbitrary financial burden was levied against any individual – you got what you paid for. Under such a system, penalties for failure to pay taxes were just because such failure constituted theft – specifically theft of specific services rendered.  This no longer obtains today, where the government has become an agency of looting and an enabler of mooching – all at gunpoint. Today, it is the income taxpayers who are being robbed, regardless of their income tax burden, because they are not getting value for value.

53% of US Citizens are being robbed and looted – at gunpoint – to pay for the 47% who are government-enabled moochers. 53% of Americans are slaves to the 47%. And people like this current President – and Warren Buffett, with his teams of lawyers fighting the same taxation he advocates (think Netflix) - have the chutzpah to say that this is not enough.

The real question, American Citizen, is when will you say “I’ve had enough!”?

[Leep]

“..the Constitution..”

If you believe in that mumbo jumbo.

[loveliberty2]

"By what standard do your measure the 'fair share of enslavement?"

Now, there's a great question!!

Another might be a bumper sticker: What is your 'fair share' of enslavement?

After all, in its current usage by the President, "fair share" is just "slavery" by another name.

Government "masters" buy votes in exchange for retaining their "master redistributionist" status, while their "voters" yield up freedom for themselves and future generations.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C. S. Lewis

All who doubt the wisdom of Lewis might watch the video of the President's recent remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. There, Obama arrogantly misappropriated Jesus's spiritual challenge to individuals, claiming those words as validating and authorizing abusive use of coercive power by himself and his cronies to "take" from some in order to buy votes and accumulate more power to themselves--all in the name of "helping" the beneficiaries of such unconstitutional "takings."

Hear Samuel Adams:

"Is it now high time for the people of this country to explicitly declare whether they will be free men or slaves. It is an important question which ought to be decided. It concerns more than anything in this life. The salvation of our souls is interested in this event. For wherever tyranny is established, immorality of every kind comes in like a torrent, it is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice.” - Samuel Adams

And:

“The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.” - Samuel Adams

[jmstein7]

Thanks! I went back and bolded that in the blog. J

[NavyCanDo]

I would like to see someone give Buffett’s secretary a million dollar a year salary, and then after the first year when she is doing her taxes, answer this question to the whole country, Did her taxes owed percentage go up or down, from the previous year?

[jmstein7]

I would like Obama to answer the question:
What is the ‘fair share’ of enslavement?