"We the People" Are the New, Permanent Underclass in America By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead!
(2022-04-12 at 01:38:34 )

"We the People" Are the New, Permanent Underclass in America By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead!

"We are now speeding down the road of wasteful spending and debt, and unless we can escape we will be smashed in inflation."-Herbert Hoover

This is financial tyranny.

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 must foot the bill for the governments fiscal insanity.

We have been sold a bill of goods by politicians promising to pay down the national debt, jumpstart the economy, rebuild our infrastructure, secure our borders, ensure our security, and make us all healthy, wealthy and happy.

None of that has come to pass, and yet we are still being loaded down with debt not of our own making.

Let us talk numbers, shall we??

The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is $30 trillion and growing. That translates to roughly $242,000 per taxpayer.

Now the Biden administration is proposing a $5.8 trillion spending budget that notably includes $813 billion for national defense, $30 billion to "fund the police," and a plan to reduce the national deficit by roughly $1 trillion over 10 years through additional tax hikes.

It is estimated that the amount this country owes is now 130% greater than its gross domestic product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens).

The United States ranks as the 12th most indebted nation in the world, with much of that debt owed to the Federal Reserve, large investment funds and foreign governments, namely, Japan and China.

Essentially, the United States government is funding its very existence with a credit card.

In 2021, we paid more than $562 billion in interest on that public debt, which according to journalist Rob Garver, "is more than the annual budget of every individual federal agency except for the Treasury, the Department of Health and Human Services (which manages the Medicare and Medicaid government health insurance programs), and the Department of Defense."

According to the Committee for a Reasonable Federal Budget, the interest we have paid on this borrowed money is "nearly twice what the federal government will spend on transportation infrastructure, over four times as much as it will spend on K-12 education, almost four times what it will spend on housing, and over eight times what it will spend on science, space, and technology."

Clearly, the national debt is not going away anytime soon, especially not with government spending on the rise and interest payments making up such a large chunk of the budget.

Still, the government remains unrepentant, unfazed and undeterred in its wanton spending.

Indeed, the national deficit (the difference between what the government spends and the revenue it takes in) remains at more than $1.5 trillion.

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

Despite the government propaganda being peddled by the politicians and news media, however, the government is not spending our tax dollars to make our lives better.

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

We are not living the American dream. We are living a financial nightmare.

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.

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

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 IRS 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 United States of 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.

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 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, "United States leaders are essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan."

Of course, we are the ones who will have to repay that borrowed debt.

For instance, American taxpayers have been forced to shell out more than $5.6 trillion since 9-11-01 for the military industrial complexs 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.

The United States also spends more on foreign aid than any other nation, with nearly $300 billion disbursed over a five-year period. 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. That price tag keeps growing, too.

As Forbes reports, "United States foreign aid dwarfs the federal funds spent by 48 out of 50 state governments annually. Only the state governments of California and New York spent more federal funds than what the United States sent abroad each year to foreign countries."

Most recently, in response to Russias military aggression against Ukraine, the Biden Administration approved $13.6 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, with an additional $200 million for immediate military assistance.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in a 1953 speech, this is how the military industrial complex will continue to get richer, while the American taxpayer will be forced to pay for programs that do little to enhance our lives, ensure our happiness and well-being, or secure our freedoms.

This is 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.

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.

Unfortunately, we have become so invested in identity politics that pit us against one another and keep us powerless and divided that we have lost sight of the one label that unites us: we are all Americans.

Trust me, 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 Constitution starts with those three powerful words: "We the people."

There is power in our numbers.

As I make clear in my book "Battlefield America: The War On The American People" and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, 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).

Where we lose out is when we fall for the big-talking politicians who spend big at our expense.

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