John V. Walsh says:

Starve the Beast of Empire

Ax the Personal Income Tax

As we approach April 15, the day when we render unto Caesar what is ours, it is well to bear a few stark and simple numbers in mind.

The personal income tax for 2011 will haul in a hefty $1.09 trillion to the federal coffers. The estimate for 2012* is $1.16 trillion.

On the other side of the ledger, the best estimate of the known “national security” expenditures for 2012 is $1.22 trillion dollars.

That’s right; it takes the entire personal income tax, and then some, to cover the costs of war and Empire.

The total federal revenue from every source will be $2.47 trillion in 2012, so the war machine and its various appurtenances take an enormous bite out of the total federal budget.

There is a question of morality when the taxpayer forks over enormous tribute to bulk up a military Empire which visits death and destruction on untold numbers of people in the developing world – often with a public relations veneer of “humanitarian” endeavors. Historically antiwar tax resistance of various types has grown out of such moral concerns. The moral consideration bites harder when the wars are either sold on the basis of lies as W’s war on Iraq or are undeclared as with Obama’s on Libya, Pakistan, Syria and Iran. In the case of undeclared wars for which we pay, it may fairly be said that we have taxation without representation.

With the end of the Cold War long behind us, a powerful new alliance to end taxes for war and Empire is within reach. Consider the call of the conservatives, neocons excepted, when it comes to the income tax. “Starve the beast,” they cry. And quite obviously they have a point when one considers the nature of the “beast,” aptly named in this case. In fact, when libertarians and “paleocons” call for an end to the personal income tax and also an end to wars and Empire, their demand is not the insanity that some progressives would have us believe. We would do well to consider axing a big chunk of the personal income tax. Progressives would do well to embrace allies on the Right in fighting the taxation of death and destruction.

Hence a new coalition may emerge to cut the personal income tax. Such a coalition has the potential to be more powerful than any seen yet on the imperial scene. And it could deliver a crippling blow to the U.S. Empire. Hillary Clinton clearly fears this, referring to such an incipient alliance as the “Come Home America” crowd in her article in Foreign Policy on the “pivot” to Asia.

For their part libertarians and genuine conservatives would do well to consider wooing a new segment of the population to their anti-tax crusade, at the very least to oppose the most despised of taxes, the federal personal income tax.

[In the view of this writer, a view from the Left,] Not all taxes ought to be put on the chopping block. The corporate tax, shrinking for many decades, deserves a lot more influx from the swollen accounts of corporate America. Most important, the payroll tax which finances Medicare and Social Security is money well spent and hence deserves preservation. It is most appalling when Obama and the Obamabots call for cutting the payroll tax, not the income tax. In this case they are not starving the beast; they are starving the people, sometimes quite literally. And they are driving programs like Medicare into a weaker financial position whereupon the cry can go up that such programs are insolvent, unaffordable and must be slashed. We do not hear the average Jane and Joe raise a hue and cry about the payroll tax – and that quite wisely.

If you ask progressives why they feel that cutting the payroll tax is a dandy type of stimulus, they will tell you that the payroll tax is regressive and so it is fine to take an ax to it. But the personal income tax, with its panoply of loopholes, is profoundly regressive. Ask Warren Buffet. So by progressive logic, the personal income tax should be put to the knife. In fact, such cuts are a stimulus that will bring smiles to economists of many different persuasions from the Keynesian to the Monetarist. That smile would certainly spread to the faces of cash-strapped Americans. Ax that tax.

*p. 31 is most revealing.

John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com.

Fascinating! Here we have someone from the far left advocating for the end of the income tax! Doing so would cause our congresscritters to make some hard decisions, which is exactly what they need to do.

I agree with this, though I doubt that Mr. Walsh and I would agree on the ‘why’ of it. As a Libertarian, I believe all people are entitled to the fruits of their labor, and taxation is theft. This is why I would like the see the personal income tax end.

James Daniels agrees, noting on Freedom Bunker:

Frankly, my money should be my money and so should yours. This country did just fine without an income tax up until 1913 when Wilson gave it to the bankers.

I couldn’t agree more. Libertarian candidate for President Gary Johnson agrees: End The Income Tax & All Gov. Subsidies

What are your thoughts on taxation?

(hat tip to Freedom Bunker, Antiwar.com, Piazza della Carina, and Dissident Voice)

Update

In the interest of fairness, here is a paper put out by The Cato Institute explaining how starving the beast will fail: http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj26n3/cj26n3-8.pdf

Footnotes