Wealth envy is nothing new. In fact, we can thank wealth envy for our current income tax system. When the 16th Amendment income tax was being sold to the American people the proponents of a new federal income tax needed a way to get people to ask their states for ratification. Wealth envy was the key. The people were told that only rich Americans would ever have to pay the income tax, and virtually all of these rich people lived in the Northeast; generally in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York. The voters in states like Michigan or Kentucky had nothing to worry about. They would reap the benefits of all of this new federal spending without having to pay a part of the tab. Only the evil rich would be hit. The 16th Amendment sailed through.
You know, I think that what most of the people fail to realize is that government likes to play with wedges. The original issue of getting the 16th Amendment ratified was a wedge to enable the government to levy more and more taxes upon the people and to concentrate power in Washington. Everyone in Washington realized this fact, but, as was evident by how people reacted to the proposal, most people outside Washington did not. If they had, they would surely have shouted down this obscenity, for who wants government overlords constantly looking over your shoulder asking “how much money have you made today?”, or telling you “you can’t spend your money on that”? People did not, and still do not, realize that the government is taking us by a divide and conquer tactic. They divide us on the issue of the income tax, getting it passed so only the “rich” have to pay it. Once they have the wedge in the door, they can then expand the tax to lower incomes, because the “poor” still don’t have to pay, so vote for it, and the rich are now already paying, so why should they bother voting against it, because if they do, they are hamstringing themselves in the competitive market, so now the tax has spread lower, and will continue to do so until everyone is covered. They divide us on prostitution, gambling, and drug laws, and get away with it because the majority does not indulge in the activity prohibited. In prostitution, the majority do not want to appear in the eyes of their neighbors as adulterers, so they go along with the laws against prostitution, not realizing that the government is driving in a wedge to restrict behavior more and more down the road. Prostitution is illegal in almost every state because the people didn’t fight to keep government out of their private lives. Next government takes another step in controlling your lives, like they did in Georgia. If that succeeds, which thankfully it is looking like it will not, they will take another step, if it does not succeed, do you really think they won’t try again, only next time they will limit the law a little more so it will get passed, maybe only ban certain types of sex toys, instead of all of them. Drugs are classified according to schedules of restrictions, with those that are deemed to have “a high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” to be illegal. We are finally starting to get some push back on the classification of Marijuana, but only because it has been deemed to have some medical benefit. This is the wrong reason to be pushing back. The reason to be pushing back is because it is not the governments business what you do with your body! Who are they to be telling you what you can and cannot smoke, what you can and cannot inject, what is and is not bad for you? And do you think it will stop there? Are you kidding? (Each word is a separate link, you should read them all)
The fact that people are blinded by envy of what someone else has or does is just what the government uses to drive in the wedge. Don’t like it that your neighbor makes 10 million a year? Well, we’ll hit him with taxes for you and give some of that money to you! Do you think that there is someone who might be more poor than you are that will hit you next? Don’t like it that your neighbor goes to a brothel every night and gets all the poon tang he wants? Well, lets pass a law against that. Do you think that there may be someone out there more puritanical than you that doesn’t like what you do in your bedroom? Don’t like it that your neighbor enjoys pissing away his paycheck gambling and not providing for the upkeep of his property? Well, let’s pass a law against that. Do you think that there is someone else that doesn’t like some of the things you spend your money on? We must not forget that government is force, and that it can be used against you just as easily as for you.
If people were to look at any laws that the government passes as wedges to get their foot in the door, not as laws that benefit the majority of the people, because that’s never how they’re designed, then, and only then, would we cry “Stop! We don’t want that!”. The problem is, how do you educate the people on this, when government controls most channels of communication? Well, you’re reading it now. I think we have a unique opportunity with the rise of the internet, if we can keep the government from regulating it long enough, to educate the people against the evils of government, and to make some real progress back towards a free society.
