Taxation: whoever dreamt up such a silly scheme?
A scan of headlines compels the conclusion that a great deal of trouble in this world is caused by taxes. They force heads of state to stash their wealth abroad and thus bring down entire governments.
Every year, harassed taxpayers have to fill out reams of forms and forfeit large chunks of their life’s savings to sate rapacious tax authorities.
Taxes cause so much suffering that we can consider them an unmitigated evil. Nobody has a good word to say about them except the tax sharks, who make their living from them. So let’s get rid of them.
Well, then, how is any government going to pay its bills? Easy. They print money, right? So let the government print the money, figure out how much it needs to function every year, set that aside to distribute among its various agencies and release the remainder to circulate in the economy.
I call this the Jesus Plan. The Jews of Jesus’ time disliked having to pay taxes to Rome. They asked Jesus if that was God’s will. Jesus asked them to hold up a coin and tell him whose image was on it. It was Caesar’s image. Jesus said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Caesar had produced the coins, so the taxpayers were only giving back to him that which was already his.
By following the Jesus Plan, we could eliminate one step in the cycle. The government would not have to tax us, because it would already have all the money it needed. It may be uncharitable to say so, but I suspect that the only reason it has established the current convoluted system is to remind us that we are its slaves.
Pragmatist
