ALL TRANSACTIONS TO BE CONDUCTED IN THE PRESENCE OF A TAX COLLECTOR

From Sovereignman, April 17, 2012

by SIMON BLACK 

Vilnius, Lithuania

In the terminal collapse of the Roman Empire, there was perhaps no greater burden to the average citizen than the extreme taxes they were forced to pay.

The tax ‘reforms’ of Emperor Diocletian in the 3rd century were so rigid and unwavering that many people were driven to starvation and bankruptcy. The state went so far as to chase around widows and children to collect taxes owed.

By the 4th century, the Roman economy and tax structure were so dismal that many farmers abandoned their lands in order to receive public entitlements.

At this point, the imperial government was spending the majority of the funds it collected on either the military or public entitlements. For a time, according to historian Joseph Tainter, “those who lived off the treasury were more numerous than those paying into it.”

Sound familiar?

In the 5th century, tax riots and all-out rebellion were commonplace in the countryside among the few farmers who remained. The Roman government routinely had to dispatch its legions to stamp out peasant tax revolts.

But this did not stop their taxes from rising.

Valentinian III, who remarked in 444 AD that new taxes on landowners and merchants would be catastrophic, still imposed an additional 4% sales tax… and further decreed that all transactions be conducted in the presence of a tax collector.

Under such a debilitating regime, both rich and poor wished dearly that the barbarian hordes would deliver them from the burden of Roman taxation.

Zosimus, a late 5th century writer, quipped that “as a result of this exaction of taxes, city and countryside were full of laments and complaints, and all… sought the help of the barbarians.”

Many Roman peasants even fought alongside their invaders, as was the case when Balkan miners defected to the Visigoths en masse in 378. Others simply vacated the Empire altogether.

In his book Decadent Societies, historian Robert Adams wrote, “[B]y the fifth century, men were ready to abandon civilization itself in order to escape the fearful load of taxes.”

Perhaps 1,000 years hence, future historians will be writing the same thing about us. It’s not so far-fetched.

In the economic decline of any civilization, political elites routinely call on a very limited playbook: more debt, more regulation, more restriction on freedoms, more debasement of the currency, more taxation, and more insidious enforcement.

Further, the propaganda machine goes into high gear, ensuring the peasant class is too deluded by patriotic fervor to notice they’re being plundered by the state.

And just in case anyone falls out of line or starts thinking too much, they give a handful of people badges, weapons, and the authority to terrorize the population.

Whether direct taxation in the form of outright theft, or indirect taxation in the form of inflation, these tactics have been used for millennia to maintain privilege for an elite few at the expense of everyone else.

This time is not different.

At $780 billion, the US government’s budget deficit for just the first six months of FY2012 is more than the entire GDP of Indonesia. This is absurdly unsustainable, yet there is no end in sight to reckless spending habits… let alone paying back what’s owed.

Meanwhile, a whopping $5.5 -trillion- worth of US debt is maturing over the next three years. And it’s unlikely that foreigners will continue to generously loan their hard earned savings to Uncle Sam at sub-inflation rates.

Further, given the millions of new entitlement recipients, it’s unlikely that intragovernmental agencies like Social Security will have the cash flow available to mop up any meaningful portion of this debt.

That leaves the old tried and true options– direct confiscation from the people through debilitating taxes and capital controls, and indirect confiscation through painfully higher inflation.

Like the 5th century Romans before us, people may be ready to abandon civilization itself to escape the burdens placed on them by today’s ruling class. Only, by the time this happens, it may be too late to start doing anything about it.

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Related:

Record Number of Americans Renounce Citizenship
No Taxes, No Travel: Why the IRS Wants the Right to Seize Your Passport

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Why the Middle Class Is Doomed

From Zero Hedge:

Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds

The dwindling middle class, squeezed by higher taxes and costs, is losing its political voice.

The middle class is doomed by some very basic dynamics. Economic historian David Hackett Fischer laid out the fundamental dynamic in his book The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History.

By assembling price and wage data stretching back hundreds of years, Fischer found that cycles of economic growth spawned population growth, an expanding number of workers entering the market economy (as opposed to the non-market subsistence economy) and a demand-driven expansion of essential commodities such as grain and energy (wood, coal, oil, etc.).

In the initial phase, wages rise and commodity prices remain stable as supplies of essential goods expand and the demand for labor pushes up wages.

But this virtuous cycle reverses when the supply of essentials no longer keeps pace with rising population and demand: the price of essentials begin an inexorable rise even as an oversupply of labor drives down wages.

We like to think that modern economies have escaped this cycle, but that is hubris and denial, not reality, for the 20th and early 21st centuries have been characterized by inflation (the U.S. dollar has lost approximately 96% of its value since 1900) and wages have stagnated for the past 40 years: Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade’:

According to the Census figures, the median annual income for a male full-time, year-round worker in 2010 — $47,715 — was virtually unchanged, in 2010 dollars, from its level in 1973, when it was $49,065.

Overall, median household income adjusted for inflation declined by 2.3 percent in 2010 from the previous year, to $49,445. That was 7 percent less than the peak of $53,252 in 1999.

We can see this steady decline in wages in this chart:

The more recent fall-off is depicted in this chart:

Notice that the only age bracket with rising incomes is the 65 and over cohort; everyone younger than 65 has seen their income slashed. And this is assuming "official" inflation is accurate; if it understates real inflation (loss of purchasing power), then the income declines are actually much more severe than charted here.

As I have observed many times before, the middle class filled this gap between rising costs and stagnating wages with debt. This chart reflects this reality:

Household debt has soared far above wages. (Note that this chart is not adjusted to inflation; in real terms, wages have been flat for decades).

Now that the average household is heavily indebted with student loans, vehicle loans, credit card debt and mortgages, its ability to leverage a declining income into more debt is seriously impaired. So filling the gap between rising costs and declining wages with debt is no longer a possibility.

Living within their means and servicing their mountains of debt removes most families from the middle class. As a rough metric, I define middle class as any household with the following attributes:

1. Meaningful healthcare insurance, either provided by an employer or paid by the household

2. Significant equity in a home or other real estate

3. An income and expense sheet that enables the household to save at least 6% of its income

4. Significant retirement funds, either employer-provided or 401Ks, IRAs, income property, etc.

5. The ability to service all debt and expenses over the medium-term if one of the two primary household wage-earners lose their job, i.e. either the household has significant savings or its debts are modest compared to the household income.

Anything less than this basket of attributes is too precarious to qualify as middle class. These basics of financial security were standard-issue for the middle class in the postwar era.

A household could have all of the above attributes on an annual income of $40,000, or they may not have them with an income of $80,000, as "middle class" means some measure of financial security, i.e. owning assets and carrying a debt load that isn't large enough to crush the household balance sheet if income declines.

We can further understand the precariousness of many American households by examining IRS tax data. The top 25% of taxpayers--34 million workers out of a workforce of 160 million and 140 million wage earners--pay almost 90% of all Federal income taxes. Where Do You Rank as a Taxpayer?

An adjusted gross income (AGI) of $66,193 or more puts you in the top 25% of earners. The top-earning 25% of taxpayers reported 65.81% of all AGI and paid 87.30% of total federal income taxes ( $755.9 billion).

How much do you need to make to be in the top 50% of earners? Just $32,396. Fall below that level and you are in the bottom half, along with nearly 70 million of your fellow taxpayers. All told, that group earned just 13% of the income reported on 2009 tax returns. And they coughed up 2.25% of all the income taxes paid.

All these numbers mask the sobering reality that 38 Million Workers Made Less Than $10,000 in 2010-- Equal to California's Population (The Atlantic magazine)

If we dig into the data, we find that the top 25% (34 million workers) is really the top 33%, as only 104 million tax returns actually pay any Federal tax--and as noted above, the bottom 70 million paid a scant 13% of all Federal taxes while the top 34 million paid 87% of all income taxes.

Many Unhappy Returns? (America's aggregate 1040, from IRS tax data).

In 2009, the IRS reported 140.5 Million personal income tax returns were filed. From this starting point, 36.3 Million returns (or, one quarter of the total) are lost to the tax base because of losses, exclusions or deductions. By line 43, taxable income, only 104.2 Million returns survive. In aggregate dollar amounts, total income from all sources falls from $7.7 Trillion to $5.1 Trillion — a decline of more than one-third. This latter amount is what truly constitutes the tax base, since it is the income ultimately subjected to tax.

Of course Social Security taxes are paid by low-income workers, but this amounts to 7.6% of income--not zero, but not too punishing compared to Federal tax rates.

What all this reveals is that the middle class has lost its political power. Roughly 40% of all households receive a check or equivalent from the Federal government, while at the top Power Elite crony capitalists skim capital gains and pay an average of 17% of all income.

The 100 million dependents on the Federal government (Central State) vote to support their share of the largesse, regardless of the consequences to future generations, and the Power Elite crony capitalists buy political protection for their cartels and financialization scams. The dwindling middle class ends up paying most of the taxes even as their percentage of the population falls to the point that their political voice is drowned out by more numerous dependents and Elites that both favor the Status Quo.

The Federal government is supporting its dependents and its crony-capitalist Elites with borrowed money: $1.5 trillion every year, fully 40% of the Federal budget. It is in effect filling the gap between exploding costs and declining income, just like the middle class did until they ran out of collateral to leverage.

The dwindling middle class, now at best perhaps 25% of the workforce, has been reduced to tax donkeys supporting those above and below who are dependent on Federal largesse.

Fisher found that this cycle ends in transformational political upheaval. No wonder; even as the class paying most of the taxes shrinks and is pressured by higher costs, the class of dependents expands as the economy deteriorates and the super-wealthy Power Elites continue to control the levers of Central State power.

Stuff White People Like n.135 - Humanitarian Intervention

From Jadaliyya, Apr 11 2012

by Marc Michael

[Image taken from Foodista.com.]

I usually get along with white people. For starters, I grew up in a white country. Some of my best friends are white. In my long history of befriending them, I have learnt one thing: if you want to retain white friends, you must adhere to a number of sacred rules: the stuff white people like. For those who are not familiar with it, there is a helpful website aptly titled by the same name. Although they‘ve managed to exhaust the concept with their 134 entries spanning issues as diverse as TED talks, Ultimate Frisbee or Asian Fusion Food, the site remains lacking in one glaring way, to wit, it failed to include humanitarian intervention. The following attempts to remedy to this bleak state of affairs.

When approaching prospective white friends, tips for solving the third-world crisis du jour can be very efficient icebreakers. However widespread a white conversational hobby, humanitarian intervention is also a thorny issue fraught with intricate codes matching the complexity of croquet or bridge. During the ensuing conversation, avoid openly belittling the value or intentions of humanitarian intervention, or of its less militarized cousin, humanitarian aid. They are, by nature, noble and typically exclude financial or geostrategic incentives. If these surface at a later point in time, they do not delegitimize the whole enterprise. They simply suggest it could have been done better. Stating otherwise will certainly ensure that your white acquaintances will talk of you as a heartless conspiracy theorist behind your back, or worse, and this will depend on how outrageous they find you, in your presence.

Unbeknownst to yourself, your choice of regions for humanitarian intervention will reveal a great deal about the depth of your character. For instance, a focus on blasting Palestinians suggests a rather traditional, impulsive, frontier-Orientalist personality whereas opting for Syria says you’re a more sensitive Kosovo intervention-type, who dreads a repeat Srebrenica. In contrast, caring for child soldiers in Africa tells the prospective white friend that you’re not only extremely devoted to the well-being of the wretched of the earth, but also that you tend to be knowledgeable about regions that regularly drop from the radar of cutting-edge mainstream infotainment.

In all this confusion, beginners will typically commit the faux pas of supporting all humanitarian interventions. It is of the utmost importance to maintain a semblance of taste in these matters. So while some interventions can be justified, based on geographical terrain—for instance, flatter is more open to intervention, like in Libya—or ethnic uniformity—too much diversity might lead to armed civil strife, like in Iraq—others will strike your friends as completely out of line. For instance, oil-rich countries with regimes that hold white interest close to heart, such as the UAE or Saudi, are a clear no-go, and so are neighborly aspiring white settler colonies, like Israel, that regularly confuse democracy for a weapon of mass destruction.

With the “Arab spring” on the menu, the height of sophistication this season is to introduce the notion of ‘types of intervention’. Although it might require serious research on specialized blogs and a subscription to the Economist, explaining in great detail the type you believe most appropriate for the context under scrutiny reveals a subtle personality attuned to the minute nuances of killing non-white people abroad. Should the strikes be preemptive, or should we wait until a certain number of oppressed innocents have died before putting our foot down?

Once you’ve decided upon this matter, you must further pick between interventions that aim at drawingdefensive curtains around specific zones of strategic white interest, surgical strikes that destroy the enemy fire capacity which a white government sold them the previous week, and physical military intervention which might ensure your current president won’t get another term in office. Alternatively, if you wear your heart on your sleeve, you may incense the unorthodox virtues of economic sanctions, guaranteeing local native children will starve in dignity, fully sheltered from international media attention.

Now that you’ve successfully added your new white friends on Facebook, you begin to think you can stop talking about how much it means to you to kill other people in far away places that you know little about—through “saving” them. Wrong. Since lobbying one’s representative lost its edge, it is almost as important to discuss intervention in cyberspace as it is at dinners. Digital media activism has replaced letters and phone calls as a paramount weapon in the arsenal available against global injustice. This mostly involves watching activist videos on YouTube to raise your friends’ and representatives’ awareness but liking links on Facebook usually matters almost equally in the cyber-guerilla warfare against oblivion.

For those who feel a bit constrained by the range of options, digital activism now finally allows you to put your money where your mouth is. After the adopt-a-starving-orphan and/or endangered-pet moments, white e-revolutionaries have seen their prospects for global justice expand significantly with the Adopt a Revolutionmovement. Bastard offspring of H. Clinton’s commitment to a human right to communication and of the “Adopt a Monk” movement, the website allows the concerned world citizen to provide a friend or kin—for Christmas or a birthday, for instance—the joyous gift of ‘adopting’ a Syrian revolutionary activist, i.e. covering all his phone expenses for a period of time. Unfortunately, at the moment, adopting Hamas ‘freedom fighters’ remains an unavailable option, except for Guantanamo Bay employees.

Stuff White People Don’t Like So Much

No decent rough guide to white etiquette surrounding ‘humanitarian intervention’ would be complete without mentioning the central absolute rule whose violation would seriously jeopardize all white friendships: never ask a white friend why ‘humanitarian intervention’ is a specifically white hobby. This taboo question might lead down one or four abrupt dead-ends, namely, white privilege, white man’s burden, white supremacy, and your friend losing his white temper.

This becomes evident if you’re fond of thought experiments. Try asking a white friend whether it would have been wise to recommend a preemptive UN targeted attack on US military production facilities in the spring of 2003, to prevent, for instance, a million Iraqis dying in the name of freedom fries. You may find your friend, choking on the difference between Bush and Saddam or Qaddhafi: Bush might have been a little trigger-friendly but he didn’t stoop so low as to kill his own people—sure sign of a non-white management style. In white corporate democracies, governments are service-providers, which generally exclude euthanasia. A government killing its own peaceful protesters would be a bit like Wal-Mart employees opening RPG-fire at the information desk or down the pastry aisle; absurdly bad PR. In liberal-speak, white privilege entails a government gifted with managerial common sense.  

About twelve years ago, the Global South realized that whites faced this extra hurdle of white privilege preventing them from a lucid grasp of their own predicament. For this reason, they issued a Declarationsigned by 133 countries, approximately two thirds of the globe and 100% of the non-white world, gently explaining that killing your own people and fighting over the leadership of your country is generally understood as sovereign politics, and that interfering with it wasn’t particularly legal. White leaders and policy makers immediately dismissed the reminder. French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, for example, launched his ‘putative referendum’ campaign. Humanitarian intervention was justified if whites could imagine Iraqis saying yes to carpet-bombing their own country in a hypothetical referendum—basing the idea on the necrophiliac’s motto: Qui ne dit mot consent [Silence gives consent]. It thus became clear that it wasn’t so much that whites felt a ‘right to humanitarian intervention’—a form of privilege assuredly—as much as they were self-invested with a ‘duty to protect’ the poor and oppressed of the world.

This dismissal takes us back to the good old colonial days, when the ‘duty to protect’, the white man’s burden, was very regularly invoked to support military interventions. What we fail to understand though is why. Why is white man’s burden so white? It is common Northern lore that white folks are genetically predisposed to greater empathy. They just care more. The time is not far-off when a white scientist is bound to discover whites have some gene that allow them to empathize more intensely with the suffering of people that regularly show up on the front page of the New York Times. Contra this genetic argument, it is best to treat the phenomenon as historically grounded and culturally-specific. The ‘duty to protect’ incumbent on the white-skinned derives from the same justification as the ‘civilizing mission’ so dear to the colonial project: Whites can govern best.

This form of contemporary white supremacy takes a slight twist of the imagination to fully grasp but remains within analytical reach: White governors don’t kill their own; democracies, i.e. white polities, don’t wage wars against each other. The impeccable syllogism according to which whites imagine their supremacy and their burden is that they have a duty to protect life because they do it best. From conservations to protectorates, zebras to Zambians, ecological disasters to oil wells, the humanitarian refrain is the same.

1) There is an equal right to life for all humans
2) White governments maintain life better
3) All government should be white.

At the end of the day, humanitarian intervention stipulates that there is a human right to life, and that no one is better placed than whites to take care of such a precious commodity. Whites keep life alive longer. The argument is unstoppable for once we accept that whites are plain better at life management, and that the legal sovereignty of nation-states can be overridden to save lives, there is no moral reason to resist a return to colonial administration of native affairs. After all, statistics demonstrate without a doubt that white governments take care of their citizens’ lives better—hence a responsibility to take care of the rest of the globe. The taboo surrounding the issue—the reason you can’t ask a white friend why humanitarian intervention is a white hobby—results from this oft muddled fact: just wars and humanitarian interventions tap into the deep and pleasurable roots of white supremacist sentiments.

Conclusion: What Can You Do?

So you want to save the world and make white friends, but you know that YouTube videos and family bake-sales to arm the Ugandan government against the LRA won’t be enough. You are God-fearing and warmongering, yet you suspect your government is more interested in doling out your tax monies to investment bankers than weapon factories. You want to participate in promoting global justice but you’re not perfectly white. And most importantly you’re getting deadly bored of being as passionate about invading a random country in the Orient as you are over watching your favorite football team win yet another decisive game. We have the perfect solution for you: be a real champ, go get yourself a machinegun and a ride to Syria. You might put your life on the line for ideals you’re not yet sure you fully subscribe to. On the bright side, you’ll be the stuff white people like, limbless and free.