'Bama crackers and the Constitution.

OK Brad . . . Make your point

Brad,

Make your point!

I realize that my analogy is shocking to many, offensive to some, and perhaps silly to others, but . . . don't you think it is important to realize that before any government can collect one dime in taxes, someone had to create that dime through hard work, risk or innovation.

It seems to me that we all need to keep that on the front of our minds as politicians spend public money with a cavalier attitude toward the taxpayer.

The place my analogy breaks down is that the public treasury belongs to the public. Unfortunately, the machine that uses those assets to serve the public is inefficient at best, and in many cases, severely corrupt.

As such, we must demand accountability and stewardship on the part of public officials. They must be constantly reminded that the money they cast about was produced at a personal cost to the individual tax payers. It is not simply "tax revenue". It is money that, if left in the hands of the producer would have been used to send children to college, improve personal standards of living . . . maybe even buy another set of tires on track day.

Maybe it is a healthy thing to view the politician who stands on the stump telling us all the good things he or she is going to do as the ole' massuh tellin' us what a good Christmas it gwin be! Maybe we should remind them that before they can give it back, they have to take it away first . . . so they damn well better make sure that the value they return is greater than the value they take.

As Ev Dirkson said, "A billion here, a billion there, and it can add up to some real money."

Hope I made you think!

 

Me thinks thou dost protest too much!

Roger,

I guess I am tainted having been raised in the South. A hatred of confiscation by fiat is a cultural holdover from reconstruction.

Submission to authority is not slavery. Slavery is a system whereby the fruit of one's labor is confiscated and distributed according to the dictates of another man's conscience.

Therefore, if you work for wages, and your are allowed to keep the wages you have earned, it is employement - not slavery. On the other hand, if work is demanded of you under threat of punishment without compensation, one could call it slavery - unless said work is meted out as punishment for some crime.

WERA slavery? I think not! No one is under compulsion to join or particpate; however, if you do, you are subject to the rules of the organization.

If review boards and courts are not government, then what is?

By the way, what kind of law do you practice?

 

Re: Analogy holds

Do you honestly think people would be more responsive to paying a seperate fee for each of the hundreds of services we take for granted daily?

I doubt it.

 

So get together with your like minded friends and neighbors and vote the offending politicians out of office or repeal the offending property tax legislation.

Wonder what would have happened to Slaves who tried that?

 

surely they would have been taxed into submission.

 

A way to adjust Bromberg's anology to make it more accurate(this has been touched on too.) it to imagine that tax collector coming to your house, kicking you out into the garden shed AFTER he has smacked the shit out of you with a nice leather whip... he then moves back into the house where he screws your daughter and wife AFTER he has smacked the shit out of them with his hand or the aforementioned whip. After he's all done with that his oldest son takes a jab at the ladies. Of course he moves to the garage and drives away in your truck with your racing gear in tow.

Of course you really have to strain with this scenario bacause the tax collector probably is either gay and wants your son or he just can't get it up.... must be a bean counter accounting thing.