The Oath & a Question
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine. – John Galt from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
A question to Objectivists everywhere. I’ve seen many of you post this oath, thereby identifying with it. But do you really?
US Government Budgets
Federal Revenues
Let’s take a look at the US budget to see what I am referring to:
Total receipts
Estimated receipts for fiscal year 2009 are $2.7 trillion (+7.1%).
- $1.21 trillion – Individual income tax
- $949.4 billion – Social Security and other payroll taxes
- $339.2 billion – Corporate income tax
- $68.9 billion – Excise taxes
- $29.1 billion – Customs duties
- $26.3 billion – Estate and gift taxes
- $47.9 billion – Other
(from Wikipedia: 2009 United States federal budget – Total Receipts )
By those figures (and not counting the excise, customs, estate and gift taxes that are hard for us individually to avoid), that means that 80% of total federal receipts (revenues) come from individual income taxes and payroll withholding (including FICA/social security withholding).
[ 1.21 (income tax) + 0.9494 (FICA) ] / 2.7 = .799777... or 79.98%
Federal Spending
Now let’s look at expenditures:
Total spending
The budget for 2009 totals $3.1 trillion.
- Mandatory spending: $1.89 trillion (+6.2%)
- $644 billion – Social Security
- $408 billion – Medicare
- $224 billion – Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)
- $360 billion – Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending
- $260 billion – Interest on National Debt
(from Wikipedia: 2009 United States federal budget – Total Spending )
Not even counting for ‘social’ influences and direct social-welfare type spending in the ‘Discretionary spending’ budget*, let’s just look at the social spending on social security, medicare, medicaid and welfare. Keeping mind that federal spending on unemployment entails ‘extensions to benefits‘ via the various stimulus plans, this works out to close to 53%* of Federal US expenditures going directly to one or another form of ‘social program’ or social welfare system:
[ 0.644 (Social Security) + 0.408 (Medicare) + 0.224 (Medicaid/SCHIP) 0.360 (UI/Welfare/etc) ] / 3.1 = 0.527741 or 52.77%
Withholding is ‘voluntary’
Many people are not aware that the existing payroll withholding is a voluntary system. (although some employers may require it as part of your agreement to work with the company)
The Liberty Blog has a great article on the subject of how you can go about preventing or requesting that withholding not be automatically taken from your paychecks as per your rights.
… We Mutually Pledge …
If words are to mean anything, then are the words of our forefathers in the Declaration of Independence meaningless?
….we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
You may have figured out by now what I am suggesting or at least implying. If payroll taxes are voluntary, and if the majority of the US Federal Budget comes from you and goes to social welfare and redistribution programs, you have NO RIGHT to utter Rand’s famous oath!
YOU ARE VOLUNTARILY LIVING FOR THE SAKE OF OTHER MEN!
Yes, the alternative is Tax evasion – breaking the law. Is wealth distribution in any form a fair, moral and just law? Are you going to continue to obey unfair, immoral and unjust laws for convenience sake? Is your freedom so negotiable to you that you are willing to continually allow it to be infringed for expedience sake?
Implicit (and complicit) support of such a system requires that the products of your abilities and efforts and therefore your very life is on loan, your property is at the discretion of such a government and your entire existence and the freedoms you assume to have as a result of it are subject to the whims of such a moral system.
* In addition to excluding ‘social’ mechanisms in discretionary spending, this number also excludes the cost of bureaucracy in general including redundancies and waste, the cost of federally funded pensions and other costs associated with the size of big government.
(If you agree with any of my perspectives in this post, please forward this on to like minded folks. Also please leave a comment or send me an email to express your support at treii28@hotmail.com. If there is enough support for these ideas, I will help pick up the ball and suggest further action. If all I get is apathy, I will not)
In regards to this, if I get enough feedback, I’ll post my suggestions to follow. I have discussed with some my ideas and they do not entail immediately incurring the wrath of the IRS. The threat alone may well be sufficient if it is handled properly and with undeniable intention!
Scott,
Anyone who is reading this has heard or read of people jailed and/or fined for failing to file an income tax return or for not paying the tax prescribed by the IRS code. The problem does not go away even if we succeed in dodging the withholding tax.
When a so-called voluntary action is thus required, we are face to face with something irrational. A request backed by the power of guns is never voluntary. It is theft.
Thus despite having paid U.S. income tax during most of my working life, I have a full and perfect right to say:
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.
Thus is why it requires a more intelligent approach then simply becoming a solitary martyr. I have (many) ideas to that end, but I will stick my own neck out no further if I’m the only one willing to do so!
(among other things, an actual revolt may not be necessary if the threat of such a revolt is bold, loud, widespread and sincere. And keep in mind, of that 80% number, the vast majority of it is paid for by less than 5% of the population. You don’t need large numbers to be bold, you just need enough of those that pay the most)
John Galt worked as a railroad hand for twelve years, presumably paying some taxes along the way. No mention was ever made, that I can recall, of Galt ever not paying the taxes that the state demanded. The point of taking a laborer’s job, of course, was to minimize that demand. If Galt had ended up in jail for tax evasion he couldn’t have done anything during that time to organize the strike.
Taxes are taken by force. Given the present fact that taxes exist, one has to ask, “What would best serve my life right now?” The answer to that question is seldom “jailtime.”
@Jennifer Kerns
Didn’t they? Did he stop producing entirely? Did the others? Taxes are on incomes. What do you suppose the gold coins minted by Midas represented? Before the gulch do you suppose they stopped producing and failed to trade the products of their goods between one another outside the tax systems? Was withholding a portion of the ‘earnings’ from what they produced in the gulch (or for other ‘strikers’ outside of it) the only acts that were violations of law? (Does the name Ragnar mean anything?)
Have there been tax revolts in the past in America? Short of people initiating force in those situations can you point to any that were jailed as a result of such dissent? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion )
The current political movement is dubbed the ‘Tea Party’. What was the original Tea Party? What is it remembered by? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party )
What do you suppose would have happened to any of those individuals had they been caught by the current ‘state’ in power (the British authorities?)
How did they address those risks or respond to them? (Beyond what I already expressed by way of the words from the Declaration about lives, fortunes and sacred honor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_Liberty,_or_give_me_Death! NOTE: wordpress nukes the ‘!’ on the end of that url, you may have to add it manually to get that page to show up)
Are you aware that the taxes that were the cause of the Boston Tea Party are a mere fraction of the percentages we all face every day? (or at least any of those that aren’t on a government entitlement role – the tax in question that spawned that revolt was a 3% tax. Most Americans are subject to a 35-45% liability just to federal taxation and social security/medicare withholding. And the top 5% [about 7 million taxpayers] of wage earners carry more than 61% of that cost. The top 1% carries 40% of the total burden)
All these people are championing the will of the founders – none (or at least very very few and even those are marginalized as ‘nuts’ or ‘militia members’, etc) are embracing them. That’s the point of this post.
I agree with Peter’s comments above. There is nothing voluntary about our tax system other than the Orwellian inverted application of the term, used by politicians, to attempt to hide the totalitarian nature of their actions. When one is compelled, at the point of a gun, to act against one’s will, as is certainly the case with the collection of taxes in this country, then it cannot be properly claimed that one is “living for the sake of other men”. The proper formulation is to say that one is being ENSLAVED for the benefit of others. The choice “to live” is a free, voluntary action. Enslavement is something imposed by force.
You are right to be concerned about sticking your neck out by becoming a tax evader, because there is ample evidence to know that our government has no hesitation in being willing to chop it off. To address this issue, the alternatives are either an armed revolt and civil war as you discuss above, or a significant cultural realignment in favor of a true understanding of individual rights, as advocated by Ayn Rand. While this latter approach may or may not be successful, it is the path I have chosen to currently adopt. You may be familiar with my John Galt Pledge website (http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/) where taking the pledge is a proclamation of the following:
“I take this pledge as a personal Declaration of Independence. As a sovereign individual, I assert the exclusive right to my life, my liberty and my property, as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. As government is properly instituted to protect my rights, I oppose, and declare as unconstitutional, all actions taken by government that violate the very rights it is charged with defending. I support a return to the principle of individualism upon which this country was founded. And rejecting any initiation of the use of force as being wholly inappropriate, I support a society based strictly upon voluntary association and free trade among its people.”
So far, 453 people have been willing to publicly proclaim their support for this position. When this idea is fully understood by a larger segment of the population, and is discussed openly in society, then we will have the cultural revolution that we need to lead us towards true freedom. Today’s goal is to built that underground army of intellectual activists who will spread this idea through society until it goes viral. That is the purpose of my efforts. I would like to see thousands of people take this pledge and then work to spread the message.
Regards,
–
C. Jeffery Small
I wanted to make yet another comment on this – if you want to argue that a loan stand is futile, I agree. If you want to argue for other ways just as effective, let’s hear them. If you want to suggest that it should not be done because the IRS will show up or that it’s still justifiable to utter the oath because of a threat placed upon you I still say bullshit! That is a Dr. Robert Stadler argument – pragmatism! Because we are dealing with people (or their agents in the IRS) our lives are no longer worth defending. Philosophical science of course should be approached distinctly from the real world! (sarcasm) I say again, bullshit!
That’s like finding a horde of cannibals on your doorstep who are intent upon eating you, but instead of putting up a fight to preserve your life, you instead offer your left leg if they spare you. They’re just going to be back, what then? Your left arm? After that start on the right side?
Strategy, sure. Do nothing because it’s not practical? OK, Dr. Stadler!
then it is already past tyranny if your assertion that it is ‘not voluntary’ is accurate. (and because no one intends to stand up to it and take a risk, it’s only going to get worse)
Consider something else, government is inefficient, jails are overcrowded, budgets are already strung to their limit even in government where they can print money if they need it (as we learned earlier this year when the Obama-nation churned out another 1.2 million in paper currency as part of the stimulus package)
How well do you suppose the government could be ready to confront such a revolt if it actually became necessary? Do they have jails enough to house 100,000 people? even 50,000 people? Can they afford that extra cost after losing that tax revenue? Can they afford to prosecute those individuals if they refuse to cooperate?
I’m also not suggesting an immediate revolt and even the threat is to be only to pay for ‘legitimate Constitutionally defined and authorized expenditure’. Not paying nothing, but paying with an enclosed “letter of intent” as to what you are not paying for and why. That too creates a sticky situation in that it makes a case for the prosecution in that you are in essence admitting to the evasion, albeit with ’cause’.
But consider that in respect to the following from enotes.com on Tax Evasion:
“Because of the many resources it takes to conduct a CID investigation, only a very small percentage of taxpayers or tax evaders are investigated by the CID. The IRS will use the CID only when it has strong implications of serious wrongdoing. Even in these cases, the CID will recommend prosecution only if it has built an airtight case against the suspect.”
http://www.enotes.com/everyday-law-encyclopedia/tax-evasion
That same page also cites that they rarely even consider pursuing a case that does not involve more than $70,000 in evasion due to cost effectiveness considerations. Such a movement could specifically discourage anyone with a tax liability greater than $70,000 to not participate in the revolt but instead encourage them to contribute to a defense fund.
Could they even afford to pursue 10,000 under ‘cost effectiveness’ conditions? What would the PR ramifications be of using that as a method to counter something organized as a public protest? The first person dragged out of their homes at gunpoint and put in prison would be a PR nightmare!
Finally let me make one more thing clear.
[Legal Disclaimer start]
At this time this and any other comments I have made should not be considered in any way to be a suggestion, instruction or command to ‘not pay your taxes’. I am discussing a possibility and a possibility only because I think it is a necessary topic to discuss.
Even if such a campaign were pursued, I would pursue it only to further the discussion and even if ‘action’ were supported it would be in the nature of a series of expectations of the taxpayer communicated to the politicians. The actions of the individuals involved would necessarily be their own choices, the communications in the nature of a declaration of a shared combination of individual opinions, desires and intentions.
[Legal Disclaimer End]
Read into that however you wish.
In addition to my previous refusal to recognize the individual income tax as voluntary (ordinary usage, without quotes), and my also posting my oath on the Galt’s Pledge page, I want to say that since the IRS has announce that they will no longer mail out Form 1040 ( http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978555687 ) in order to save $35 million, I will no longer file Form 1040 in order to save $39 for the software and $0.44 in postage.
OK, fine – since there is a threat — effectively potential or not — then it is not a ‘voluntary’ tax. So let’s consider some basic premises:
1. Whether a law is just or unjust, compliance is still a choice.
2. Any unjust law must necessarily extend from an unjust government.
3. Any acts, legal or otherwise are subject to risk under and unjust government.
Food for thought!
I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, but I understood the thesis of this post to be that one cannot justifiably claim to live by the JG oath as long as one is paying taxes. But until the last day that John Galt showed up for work on the railroad, he was presumably paying some amount of income tax. Was Galt being inconsistent?
OK, fine – since there is a threat — effectively potential or not — then it is not a ‘voluntary’ tax. So let’s consider some basic premises:
1. Whether a law is just or unjust, compliance is still a choice.
Morality ends where a gun begins. This means not only that force is immoral but also that you can not expect someone to act morally (as they would under “normal” circumstances) when the choice is as stark as “your money or your life”.
2. Any unjust law must necessarily extend from an unjust government.
No argument there, but then I don’t think that any of the responders were implying otherwise. We know the expropriation of taxes through legislation is force and therefore, as I said earlier immoral but I refer you back to #1.
3. Any acts, legal or otherwise are subject to risk under and unjust government.
Hold on. While there may be immoral laws currently in force those laws are known, and their management is codified and standard. The kind of totalitarianism you are invoking is based on a capricious and malleable set of directives/laws that can be applied or not, enforced, over enforced or ignored at the whim of the guy commanding the guy holding the gun.
We are a long, long way away from what you are describing here and what Rand termed the ultimate inversion where a citizen only acts by and with the permission of government.
*NB* I am not suggesting that we ought to wait for it to get to that point however.
re: #3
Are our laws uniformly enforced? Are exceptions made for people based on any given reasons? Say, racial quotas or policies?
Are some afforded more options by way of the resources available to them? Say being able to afford the OJ dream team as opposed to accepting a public defender?
Granted, this applies to other problems that will be inherent to an extent within any given system, but in some of the other comments (I’m responding in three places to this posting) I referred to real-world realities equated to IRS/CID enforcement. Namely that they generally do not pursue evasion cases for liabilities under $70,000 due to utilitarian reasons related to ‘cost effectiveness’ and even then generally only if they have a strong case.
This is the case in many aspects of modern society. Just call 911 in Detroit some time and see how good of a response you get. This story comes to mind: http://www.thatsweird.net/news5.shtml
As does this quote of mine: http://thewildwebster.wordpress.com/facebook-stati/#finite_resources
“The reality is, that even with the greatest of intentions, an egalitarian design on social engineering will ultimately have to face the reality of finite resources. A reality that inevitably leads to some level of utilitarian decision making when assigning those limited resources.”
I ran into this in my Ohio situation as well ( http://thewildwebster.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/fun-in-ohio/ ). Not in that long story is the fact that when we called the FBI to report our being hacked, the agent asked me the damages then explained they wouldn’t even open a claim if the damages were less than $5000. And that was 12 years ago.
When you are in such a utilitarian scenario where the laws exist to justify politicians and the enforcement is not uniform but exists as either an ‘ad hoc’ (as we see wrong doing), agenda driven or some other non-just motive, what about that is not capricious other than the ad hoc?
Another great example, I heard a statistic not too long ago that the unsolved murder rate in Detroit was something like greater than 90% and that the old police chiefs goal was to bring it down to 85% which drew a lot of criticism during the election. Another story that went along with that was the fact that Detroit and Washington D.C. often swap as the ‘murder capital’, but that D.C. recently dropped in the ‘unsolved’ category due to some fancy bookkeeping in their unsolved case files.
When you end up with such a bloated government with such a wide ranging and over abundant collection of laws, rules, regulations and restrictions governing so many aspects of life, business and society, uniform enforcement of all of them becomes quite literally impossible.
My brother, by the way, is a cop. I also have friends in police work. Trust me, if a cop has in mind to cite you for something there’s a pretty damn good chance (if he is at all good at his job) he can find something. Whether it sticks in court is another matter – but there are so many laws, it’s not hard to find ‘something’ to charge you with. Maybe you parked too close to the curb, maybe too far from the curb, maybe to close to a corner. Perhaps your bumperstickers are in the wrong place or the hat on your dashboard blocks your view, the hamburger you were eating as you pulled out of the burger king is considered a ‘distraction’ or your failure to use a turn signal on time is a violation.
Most cops, fortunately, are descent folk. I don’t consider most politicians decent based on direct observation. When you get people driven by agendas, there may be conflicting agendas that prevent an outright centralized tyranny, but capricious application? Oh yeah! I see a lot of that!
And acting only with the permission of the government. You can’t be serious when you say that is not the case. Have you not seen the stories of the girls fined for running a lemonade stand in the northwest? ( http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/06/ap/strange/main6748628.shtml )
You need to register to vote. You need a license to drive. You need a license to open a business. You need another license and an inspection if you plan to cook food as part of your business. You need a permit and frequent inspections if your business is dealing in any kind of chemicals or livestock or cultivation. If you want to build, you need a permit for that too, and likely an inspection. You might need permission of the EPA if your construction or cultivation is on or even near a wildlife habitat.
Want to throw a party? You might need to get special permission for that. Want to get married? Sorry, need a license which requires a blood test. Having a baby? You’ll have to get it certified! Getting a pet? Need a license for that too! Want to pull something behind your car? That needs a special license too! If it’s big enough, you even need a special drivers license endorsement for it and you’ll have to stop every so many miles to get weighed. You also need a special endorsement if you plan to drive a motorcycle or carry passengers as a way to make money.
Do you know, that if you are launching off model rockets or flying kites, you need permission of NASA or the FAA respectively if your rocket or kite go above a certain altitude? If you want to hold an assembly, you need a permit for that. Want a gun? Need a permit for that too and a background check! Want to carry it? Sorry, need another permit for that! I could go on.
Need permission to act? I’m surprised they haven’t required us to get a permit to f’king breath! Oh wait, that will probably be offset with carbon credits through cap and trade.
One of the comments I made when posting a link to this on my facebook is akin to the disclaimer. It’s not a call to ‘act’ but a gesture to say what isn’t being said. If the same old methods fail same as always, consideration of forgotten methodologies may become necessary if the desire is to truly return to a society based on liberty and justice. Akin to the disclaimer, this may not even require an action – perhaps even raising the notion in public forums will go far enough to communicate to representatives that the public trust in them is waning based on repeated failures on their part.
So I’d like to ask a question that I asked on my facebook to those that do not personally see it as ‘time yet’ or view it as something they are not yet prepared to do.
If you saw someone doing it based on the facts listed in the post, would you support them or call for their prosecution?
Would you contribute to, say, a financial fund to help the participants in any such dissent to defer legal costs should they incur a governmental response?
@Jennifer – re: “until the last day that John Galt showed up for work on the railroad, he was presumably paying some amount of income tax. Was Galt being inconsistent?”
What were Galt and the others doing though? They were offering to society only what society’s ‘creed’ was claiming was the most virtuous contribution from anyone in it. They were withholding the ‘ability’ of their minds and were only willing to take a job that was the lowest possible job one could take.
The best example of this in the book is the case of Owen Kellogg ( http://thewildwebster.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/ive-been-workin-on-the-railroad/ ). I was surprised not once but twice to realize on my second reading that he shows up multiple times in the book. That link relates to the last time you see him in the ‘looters’ world as he and Dagney are walking the tracks after the train is left deserted by it’s crew.
He expresses the same kind of sentiment very early in the book when he leaves Taggart Transcontinental. But in reality did they stop producing products of their minds? Granted, Galt’s Gulch was an afterthought – they didn’t take this stand, the ‘strike’ of the mind, only because they had somewhere to run. Galt’s Gulch was created after the fact as somewhere for them all to congregate for one month out of the year.
Were not the products of their industry in the gulch on US soil and thereby subject to the same US law and thereby constituting tax evasion when they profited from them? Do you suppose if Thompson and Ferris found a way to discover the Gulch’s location that they wouldn’t make that argument and try to arrest or otherwise penalize everyone there and seize their property for violating the law that forbid people to quit? Why did they feel secure in the Gulch? Why did John feel secure in his apartment? Or did he entirely?
All those men took a risk. All the founding fathers took a risk. Revolution against the crown, had they lost the war, would have likely meant executions for anyone that could have been labeled a leader of the revolt. In the least it would have probably resulted in some kind of jail sentence and seizure of their properties and resulted in a far more tyrannical rule of the colony states.
It’s a shame that the founding fathers valued their lives more than anyone alive today.
[...] It’s one that I’ve actually spoken on in the past such as with my previous entry on Galt’s Oath. For lack of a better term for it, I am going to call it ‘anti-pragmatism’, but it is [...]