How Freedom Was Lost

Envy, one of the seven deadly sins, is not
unknown to Americans.

My

last column noted the absurdity of Obama lumping
the upper middle class in with the rich. The income
distribution in the US is so skewed that the rich
are found in the top one percent. The truly rich
with the accoutrements associated with that class
are in the top half of one percent.

Those points were lost on those Americans who
regard anyone slightly better off than themselves as
"rich." 
A slightly bigger house in a better
neighborhood, a BMW instead of a Toyota, and the
ability to go on vacation without going into debt is
all it takes to be rich in the minds of those whose
eyes are green with envy.

This observation led me to the realization that
freedom has been lost to envy.

Americans no longer know what freedom is. 
Historically, the definition of a free person
is one who owns his own labor. 
Serfs and slaves were not free, because they

do not own all of their own labor.

An income tax is inconsistent with the historical
definition of freedom. 
Today in America government has a claim on
every person`s labor, just as feudal lords, the
government of that time, had

claims on the labor of serfs and nineteenth
century plantation owners had on slaves.

Understanding that an income tax was serfdom, our
Founding Fathers wrote the US Constitution in a way

that prevented an income tax. 
This was altered in 1913 with a

constitutional amendment that some claim was not
properly carried out.

This first step in the enserfment of the American
people was taken in envy. 
The rich were the targets of the income tax.
Once in place, the income tax was extended by law
and by inflation until ordinary people were being
taxed at rates several times as high as the original
top rate for the rich.

After almost 100 years of income tax, generations
have been born into serfdom and accept the
government`s claim on their labor as normal, even
just. 
Some say they don`t mind paying taxes to help the
poor. 
They should look to see what share goes to the poor
and what share to war, armaments, 
and the bailout of the Treasury Secretary`s
rich friends.

The problem with a tax on a person`s labor is
that it subtracts from a person`s independence. 
Without independence, it is difficult to
exercise constitutionally protected rights, such as
free speech.

In former times, family farms and businesses
provided a measure of independence for many
Americans. 
Today, most work for wages and salaries. 
The only real avenue to independence is to
save part of one`s earnings and acquire enough
wealth upon which to live. 
For most Americans, the government`s claim on
their labor makes this impossible.

This is even more the case when government fails
in its regulatory responsibilities and allows
banksters to join in the plunder of the hard-pressed
citizens.

The inheritance tax, another product of envy, has
also done much to destroy the independence of the
citizenry. 
For example, family owned independent media,
once a source of independent power that held
government accountable, has been lost to corporate
media chains in order that families could pay
inheritance taxes.

The same people who complain of rule by giant
corporations support the inheritance taxes that
transformed the face of American business. A family
owned business has community roots and loyalties. 
A corporation`s owners are spread across the
country and abroad. 
Their interest is the share price. 
The consequence has been that many
corporations no longer even have national loyalties.

A corporation`s existence is not threatened by
inheritance taxes, but a family owned business is. 
An inheritance tax is a tax on assets
accumulated from income that has already been taxed. 
To raise the cash to pay the inheritance tax,
businesses have to be sold or taken public. 
Eventually, their ownership is divorced from
the community.

In the past, great wealth accumulations found
their way into endowments of private universities,
museums and public libraries, institutions that also
contributed to the independence of citizens from
government control.

Today even private universities and tenured
faculty have lost pieces of their independence. 
There are subjects that cannot be
investigated and opinions that cannot be expressed. 
We can rationalize the inhibitions by saying
that they are proper subjects for censorship. 
However, once the process of suppressing
thought and speech begins, it spreads.

The Tax Foundation has

calculated that tax freedom day arrives on May
29 this year if the federal government`s budget
deficit is included, as it should be, in the tax
burden. That means that Americans work 42 percent of
the year for the government, a higher tax rate than
was endured by medieval serfs and one approaching 
that of a nineteenth century slave.

In the nineteenth century, there were
"underground railways" that slaves could use to escape to freedom. 
In our time,
"underground
railways" are known as
"tax havens." 
Just as slave owners sought to abolish
"underground
railways," our owners today seek to outlaw
"tax havens."

Some Americans will reject these analogies. 
They can test the validity of the analogies
by refusing the government`s claim on their labor. 
Perhaps the best evidence of American serfdom
is that most Americans do not even have the ability
to test the validity of the analogy, because the
government takes its share in withholding tax before
wages and salaries are paid to us serfs.