Taxing My Patience

As per my now-annual custom, I waited until the absolute last minute to calculate and file my income taxes this year. We ended up owing another $1300 (which we had to borrow in order to pay, because we have no money.)

This excruciating exercise is so unAmerican. I reject the notion that any American should be obliged -- under penalty of perjury, fine or imprisonment (as we are) -- to accurately determine and disclose the full extent of his activities and assets to nameless bureaucrats intent on devising ever more ingenious ways of dispossessing him of his wealth. We might as well be opening our homes to thieves, revealing where we keep the jewels, to let them devise whatever pretext they can to take whatever the hell they want.

We are slaves, nothing more, nothing less.

I spent the better part of two days collecting my records, inputting data, and messaging software to deduce what my obligation would be this year. (It is impossible to "divine" the "correct" figure. Ten different professionals using the same software would deduce 10 different results.) The software, at first, said I owed over $10,000! Only by digging deeper and scrutinizing every loophole -- filling out depreciation schedules, applying for child tax credits, and learning what I needed to know to avoid paying the dreaded tax -- was I able to get the number as low as I did, effectively paying just 2.61% of my wealth to government.

The software told me I paid $73 this year to run actual "government" (law enforcement, courts, etc.) and ten times that for "national defense". However the remainder of the $3,674 I supposedly paid ( I know, the numbers don't match up) funded numerous social services: Social Security, Medicare, community programs, none of which benefit me or my family directly. Even our national defense contribution benefits others, not US, inasmuch as our forces are stationed in 135 countries (70% of the world), defending whom exactly?

We are the Beast. And we feed the Beast with our taxes and our mounting debt. Like sharecroppers, we pay "the land lord" with our labor and wages. But it's never enough. Each year we go deeper and deeper in debt, trying to pay off what we "owe" -- until we own nothing.

We effectively own nothing in America today. Our homes, even if paid off, will be confiscated if we do not pay the property tax -- or if, by "eminent domain", government bureaucrats determine that another owner would better serve the government.

The whole stinking, fetid waste of government needs to be destroyed. There is no other way of pulling back from the universal socialist dependency, monolithic waste, pervasive flim-flam and general lawlessness that pervades every government and quasi-government institution.

America will collapse. And collapse hard, together with much of the world. Only the meek will inherit the earth. And Americans are anything but "meek".

I guess it all needs to happen in order for our real Savior to return -- to be recognized for who He is.

EDIT: There's almost hope in this summation of America's problems and prospects by VDH.