{"id":306710,"date":"2025-04-12T05:30:19","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T05:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=306710"},"modified":"2025-04-13T07:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T07:09:08","slug":"april-15-provides-a-wonderful-lesson-on-how-government-conditioned-americans-to-tyranny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=306710","title":{"rendered":"April 15 Provides A Wonderful Lesson On How Government Conditioned Americans To Tyranny"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Craig Roberts \u2013 paulcraigroberts.org April 9, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Americans have become so accustomed to living under tyranny that they are probably incapable of recognizing tyranny.\u00a0 Once upon a time, April 15 was the annual day of infamy.\u00a0 It was the day you had to pay your income taxes.<\/p>\n

Americans have been subjected to a tax on their working lives for less than half of their existence as a free people, or, to correct myself, as a former free people.\u00a0 With the gradual long-term demise of American education, helped along by the US Department of Education, the content of what Americans know has dramatically changed.\u00a0 Once they knew who they are and the principles on which their liberty rested.\u00a0 Today they know how to play video games, write software for programs that regulate their lives from instructions their cars give them to how the NSA and businesses spy on them. They know movie trivia, the affairs of celebrities, the standings of their college football teams, their golf scores, and the expense of their wives\u2019 remodeling of kitchens and baths.<\/p>\n

But they don\u2019t know much else, except the Democrats know that Trump is evil. And America and white people are racist and evil. And there are many genders.\u00a0 And illegal immigrant-invaders have the same, or greater, rights as American citizens.\u00a0 Just ask any Democrat federal district judge.\u00a0 And still \u00a0Americans vote for Democrats.\u00a0 In other words, the question is:\u00a0 Are the American people capable of self-government?<\/p>\n

The historical definition of a free person was a person who owned his own labor.\u00a0 Historically most people were not free.\u00a0 They were either slaves of serfs.<\/p>\n

A slave did not own his own labor.\u00a0 His owner did.\u00a0 His owner purchased the slave\u2019s labor when he purchased the slave. He purchased the slave in order to acquire his labor which was needed as there was no available labor force to hire. Instead, producers had to acquire a work force by making a capital investment, not by paying a wage. In place of a wage, producers had to purchase labor by purchasing slaves, often warriors who were captured in the black King of Dahomey\u2019s slave wars.\u00a0 Many black Africans who became slaves in the New World, were the defeated black warriors in Dahomey\u2019s slave wars. Those who themselves were fighting for slaves became, in defeat, slaves.<\/p>\n

The fact that a black warrior class, which constituted a percentage the slaves on 19th Southern cotton and tobacco plantations, never revolted, not even when provoked by Lincoln\u2019s \u201cEmancipation Proclamation\u201d when no while male adult \u00a0presence was on the plantations, is proof that the Northern propaganda against the South had hatred of Southerners as its purpose.\u00a0 It is amazing but a fact that the world view of every person on planet Earth is contaminated by propaganda accepted as fact.\u00a0\u00a0Almost every narrative people believe is false.<\/p>\n

A Medieval serf owned the largest part of his labor. The lord of the manor on which the serf lived had use rights to no more than one-third of the serf\u2019s labor, and serfs had use rights to a portion of the land.<\/p>\n

We can look at the lords use rights in the serf\u2019s labor as a form of taxation. A system of use rights predates and is different from a system of alienable rights, rights that can be bought and sold.\u00a0 But if we ignore the exchange, which involved the serfs rights to use the land in exchange for the rights of the lords to use the serfs\u2019 labor, we have the fact that serfs did not own the full portion of their labor.\u00a0 This is the identical position of all peoples who today labor under an income tax.<\/p>\n

In other words, the medieval era was brought back to Americans with the income tax in the second decade of the 20th Century.<\/p>\n

From their inception until 1913\u2013really until 1918\u2013Americans were still a free people.\u00a0 The income tax introduced in 1913, along with the Federal Reserve\u2013two disastrous events in American history\u2013turned free Americans into the serfs of the government.\u00a0 Your labor, and the income from it, no longer belongs to you.\u00a0 Your feudal lord, your \u201cconstitutional democratic\u201d government, has the same claim to your labor as a feudal lord had on a serf\u2019s labor in the medieval era.<\/p>\n

The handful of conspirators who snuck a medieval fiscal policy into free America were far more clever than the American population and legislative leaders.\u00a0 They brought the income tax in at such a high threshold and such a low tax rate that no threat was perceived.<\/p>\n

Some decades ago I wrote the story.\u00a0 When the constitutional amendment to pass what was an unconstitutional income tax was presented to states for ratification, few states had citizens with sufficient incomes to be subject to income tax.\u00a0 I remember that the Georgia legislature said it had no objection to the income tax, because there was no one in the state with an income large enough to be subject to the tax.<\/p>\n

What the state legislatures overlooked is that once an income tax is in place, all that is needed is a \u201ccrisis\u201d and down go the thresholds and up go the tax rates.\u00a0 This happened to Americans with the First World War.<\/p>\n

Instead of seeing April 15 as the day Americans turn over to a master a share of their year\u2019s working time, Americans experience a bonanza.\u00a0 They get a \u201ctax refund,\u201d a gift from the government in time for their summer vacation. For them, income tax withholding is a form of forced saving. They are overwithheld and denied the use of their money all year and then receive it as a \u201crefund.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imagine their view toward the income tax if they had to pay the full amount annually on April 15. If you hadn\u2019t been withheld, you would be faced with an income tax payment the size of a mortgage payment, car payment, and credit card payment combined. Your view toward the government would not be the same as the view that results from being handed a refund.<\/p>\n

From the government\u2019s standpoint, this is the advantage of the withholding tax.\u00a0 You never see the money in the first place. Your salary is the take-home amount.\u00a0 The employer pays the tax for you.\u00a0 You file a \u00a0tax form, and money from the government appears.<\/p>\n

Government regards it as wonderful how stupid Americans are, and \u00a0stupid Americans regard it as wonderful that the government sends them money every year for their summer vacations.<\/p>\n

How exactly do you make a government this corrupt and a people this stupid great again?<\/p>\n

Prior to the income tax the work force received weekly pay envelops with cash.\u00a0 What workers earned was not recorded in order that it could be taxed by withholding.\u00a0 No one needed a bank.\u00a0 The income tax turned your work time into a criminal offense should you misstate it on your income tax return. Thus, for the first time among a free people a workers work and how he reported it became a possible criminal offense leading to the imprisonment of the \u201cfree\u201d worker. \u00a0 If truth be known American taxpayers have been subject to worst punishment than slaves on 19th century cotton plantations.<\/p>\n

Yet, after 100 years there are no protests. Serfdom is so institutionalized that it is not recognized.<\/p>\n

Taxation has many inequities. \u00a0I will point out one of them\u2013the narrative of a capital gain. \u00a0Let\u2019s take the example of a home. \u00a0Over time house and land prices rise with inflation. \u00a0For example, when I was in high school the price of an upper middle class house in the city in which I lived was $20,000 \u2013 25,000. \u00a0After decades of life in the house its value would be much higher. \u00a0If the property is sold, the government will say you have a capital gain in the price rise. But the price you receive is the replacement cost of the house. \u00a0You have no gain. \u00a0Indeed, after closing costs and real estate commission, you cannot replace the property with your net\u00a0receipts. \u00a0So where is the gain? \u00a0The same holds for financial instruments. \u00a0There is no such thing as a long-term capital gain.<\/p>\n

For investment properties you can avoid the capital gains tax by reinvesting the sale proceeds into another investment property, but this avenue is not open to homes used for residence.<\/p>\n

There are short-term capital gains from, for example, financial market participants conducting arbitrage or front-running stock trades and making a penny or fraction of a penny per share in large volumes. \u00a0In reality this is ordinary income from a day\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Americans are accustomed to thinking of inequities in the tax laws in terms of loopholes for the rich, but the worst inequities go beyond the special pleading and lobbying successes of organized interests.<\/p>\n

For most of our history the US government was financed by tariffs. \u00a0If we could return to tariffs as the basis for government revenue, we could regain our freedom.<\/p>\n

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