The Looming Financial Nightmare: So Much for Living the American Dream By John W. Whitehead!
(2020-02-26 at 14:53:54 )

The Looming Financial Nightmare: So Much for Living the American Dream By John W. Whitehead!

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frédéric Bastiat, French economist

Let us talk numbers, shall we?

The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is $23 trillion and growing.

The amount this country owes is now greater than its gross national product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens). We are paying more than $270 billion just in interest on that public debt annually. And the top two foreign countries who "own" our debt are China and Japan.

The national deficit (the difference between what the government spends and the revenue it takes in) is projected to surpass $1 trillion every year for the next 10 years.

The United States spends more on foreign aid than any other nation ($50 billion in 2017 alone). More than 150 countries around the world receive United States taxpayer-funded assistance, with most of the funds going to the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Meanwhile, almost 60% of United States of Americans are so financially strapped that they do not have even $500 in savings and nothing whatsoever put away for retirement, and yet they are being forced to pay for government programs that do little to enhance or advance their lives.

Folks, if you have not figured it out yet, we are not living the American dream.

We are living a financial nightmare.

The United States government-and that includes the current administration-is spending money it does not have on programs it can not afford, and "We The Taxpayers" are the ones who will pay for it.

As financial analyst Kristin Tate explains, "When the government has its debt bill come due, all of us will be on the hook."

It has happened before: during the European debt crisis, Cypress seized private funds from its citizens bank accounts to cover its debts, with those who had been careful to save their pennies forced to relinquish between 40% to 60% of their assets.

Could it happen here? Could the government actually seize private funds for its own gain?

Look around you. It is already happening.

In the eyes of the government, "We The People, the voters, the consumers, and the taxpayers" are little more than pocketbooks waiting to be picked.

Consider: The government can seize your home and your car (which you have bought and paid for) over nonpayment of taxes. Government agents can freeze and seize your bank accounts and other valuables if they merely "suspect" wrongdoing. And the Internal Revenue Service insists on getting the first cut of your salary to pay for government programs over which you have no say.

We have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but we are being forced to pay through the nose, anyhow.

We have no real say, but that does not prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn and forcing us to pay for endless wars that do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.

If you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes to the governments claims on your property and your money, you are not free.

It was not always this way, of course.

Early Americans went to war over the inalienable rights described by philosopher John Locke as the natural rights of life, liberty and property.

It did not take long, however-a hundred years, in fact-before the United States of American government was laying claim to the citizenrys property by levying taxes to pay for the Civil War. As the New York Times reports, "Widespread resistance led to its repeal in 1872."

Determined to claim some of the citizenrys wealth for its own uses, the government reinstituted the income tax in 1894. Charles Pollock challenged the tax as unconstitutional, and the United States Supreme Court ruled in his favor. Mr. Pollocks victory was relatively short-lived. Members of Congress-united in their determination to tax the American peoples income-worked together to adopt a constitutional amendment to overrule the Pollock decision.

On the eve of World War I, in 1913, the United States Congress instituted a permanent income tax by way of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution and the Revenue Act of 1913. Under the Revenue Act, individuals with income exceeding $3,000 could be taxed starting at 1% up to 7% for incomes exceeding $500,000.

It is all gone downhill from there.

Unsurprisingly, the government has used its tax powers to advance its own imperialistic agendas and the courts have repeatedly upheld the governments power to penalize or jail those who refused to pay their taxes.

Irwin A. Schiff was one of the nations most vocal tax protesters. He spent a good portion of his life arguing that the income tax was unconstitutional, and he put his wallet where his conscience was: Mr. Schiff stopped paying federal taxes in 1974.

Mr. Schiff paid the price for his resistance, too: he served three separate prison terms (more than 10 years in all) over his refusal to pay taxes. He died at the age of 87 serving a 14-year prison term. As constitutional activist Robert L. Schulz noted in Mr. Schiffs obituary, "In a society where there is so much fear of government, and in particular of the I.R.S., [Schiff] was probably the most influential educator regarding the illegal and unconstitutional operation and enforcement of the Internal Revenue Code. It is very hard to speak to power, but he did, and he paid a very heavy price."

It is still hard to speak to power, and those who do are still paying a very heavy price.

All the while the government continues to do whatever it likes-levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly-with little thought for the plight of its citizens.

To top it all off, all of those wars the United States is so eager to fight abroad are being waged with borrowed funds.

As The Atlantic reports, "For 15 years now, the United States has been putting these wars on a credit card.. United States leaders are essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of United States Treasury bonds by United States-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan."

If United States of Americans managed their personal finances the way the government mismanages the nations finances, we would all be in debtors prison by now.

Still, the government remains unrepentant, unfazed and undeterred in its money grabs.

While we are struggling to get by, and making tough decisions about how to spend what little money actually makes it into our pockets after the federal, state and local governments take their share (this does not include the stealth taxes imposed through tolls, fines and other fiscal penalties), the police state is spending our hard-earned tax dollars to further entrench its powers and entrap its citizens.

For instance, American taxpayers have been forced to shell out more than $5.6 trillion since 9-11-01 for the military industrial complex’s costly, endless so-called "war on terrorism."

That translates to roughly $23,000 per taxpayer to wage wars abroad, occupy foreign countries, provide financial aid to foreign allies, and fill the pockets of defense contractors and grease the hands of corrupt foreign dignitaries.

Mind you, that staggering $6 trillion is only a portion of what the Pentagon spends on the United States of Americas military empire.

That price tag keeps growing, too.

In this way, the military industrial complex will get even richer, and the United States of American taxpayer will be forced to shell out even more funds for programs that do little to enhance our lives, ensure our happiness and well-being, or secure our freedoms.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in a 1953 speech:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [..] Is there no other way the world may live?

This is still no way of life.

Yet it is not just the governments endless wars that are bleeding us dry.

We are also being forced to shell out money for surveillance systems to track our movements, money to further militarize our already militarized police, money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts, money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply, and on and on.

Are you getting the picture yet?

The government is not taking our money to make our lives better. Just take a look at the nations failing infrastructure, and you will see how little is being spent on programs that advance the common good.

We are being robbed blind so the governmental elite can get richer.

This is nothing less than financial tyranny.

"We The People" have become the new, permanent underclass in the United States of America.

It is tempting to say that there’ is little we can do about it, except that is not quite accurate.

There are a few things we can do (demand transparency, reject cronyism and graft, insist on fair pricing and honest accounting methods, call a halt to incentive-driven government programs that prioritize profits over people), but it will require that "We The People" stop playing politics and stand united against the politicians and corporate interests who have turned our government and economy into a pay-to-play exercise in fascism.

We have become so invested in identity politics that label us based on our political leanings that we have lost sight of the one label that unites us: we are all United States of Americans.

The powers-that-be want to pit us against one another. They want us to adopt an “"us versus them" mindset that keeps us powerless and divided.

Trust me, the only "us versus them" that matters anymore is "We The People" against the police state.

We are all in the same boat, folks, and there is only one real life preserver: that is the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The United States Constitution starts with those three powerful words: "We The People."

The message is this: there is power in our numbers.

That remains our greatest strength in the face of a governmental elite that continues to ride roughshod over the populace.

It remains our greatest defense against a government that has claimed for itself unlimited power over the purse (taxpayer funds) and the sword (military might).

This holds true whether you are talking about health care, war spending, or the United States of American police state.

While we are on the subject, do me a favor and do not let yourself be fooled into believing that the next crop of political saviors will be any different from their predecessors.

They all talk big when they are running for office, and when they get elected, they spend big at our expense.

As I make clear in my book "Battlefield America: The War on the American People", this is how the middle classes, who fuel the nations economy and fund the governments programs, get screwed repeatedly.

George Harrison, who would have been 77 this year, summed up this outrageous state of affairs in his song Taxman:

If you drive a car, I will tax the street,
If you try to sit, I will tax your seat.
If you get too cold I will tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I will tax your feet.

Do not ask me what I want it for
If you do not want to pay some more
Cause I am the taxman, yeah, I am the taxman

Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
Cause I am the taxman, yeah, I am the taxman
And you are working for no one but me.

Reprinted here with the gracious permission of "The Rutherford Institute" - Dedicated To The Defense Of Civil Liberties And Human Rights!!