Why Americans Need to Just Starve the Beast

Governments only survive so long as the people confer legitimacy upon them and it's very much an issue of trust. Once trust flies out the window and governments are perceived as corrupt and unjust, folks start seeking ways to stiff the government with the goal of ultimately collapsing the government.

The Greeks are notorious for not paying taxes to its corrupt and thieving government and it is estimated that 40-50% of all Greek economic activity is underground and beyond the tax collectors reach, here.

If you think there's been a tax revolt in the U.S. -- or even California -- consider Greece. The estimates we've heard, from the sources that seem the most reliable: 40-50 percent of the Greek economy is underground. i.e., untaxed. When we were in Spain, people there were embarrassed that the estimate was as high as 25 percent. In the U.S., the usual estimates are less than 10 percent.

Unlike Europeans, the American people have a very long history of being obedient and tax compliant citizens because Americans have a far higher degree of trust when it comes to the government. However, that paradigm is changing as folks wake up to the stone cold reality that American isn't the land of the free and the home of the brave but the land of the slave and the home of the fee. All centralized governments ultimately fail and the bigger they are, the harder they fall. The US government at all levels has grown so large, so powerful and so oppressive that Americans are finally beginning to notice.

Gary North writes, here.

Americans are learning how to beat the system, cheat the system, and outfox the system. As the bureaucrats tighten their many nooses, Americans are finding ways to slip the noose....The heart of every legal system is legitimacy. If the government — family, church, or civil — is viewed as legitimate, people who are under its jurisdiction cooperate. They add self-government to external systems of sanctions. If they refuse to do this, the government’s enforcement system cannot force them to obey consistently. The system does not have enough resources to enforce compliance.

At some point, the government loses its ability to gain its goals. Collecting more taxes in Greece is not possible. The Greek government can promise austerity, but it can gain this only by reducing spending, not by collective more taxes. The same is true of Spain. The same is true of Italy.

If the people who live under the regime think the regime is corrupt, they cheat. They feel no guilt. If they think a law is immoral or stupid, they refuse to cooperate. The government can do little to change this outlook, other than shrink. No government does this voluntarily.

The federal government is now at the limit of enforcement. The bureaucrats write 83,000 pages of new rules every year, yet the country changes only slowly. The bureaucrats think they are in charge. They are not.

Governments understand that compliance must be voluntary, based on fear and despite the size and draconian powers of the US government, it really doesn't have the raw and absolute power to police and control the activities of 310 million folks.  Americans are finally becoming a nation of vigorous tax cheats because they fully comprehend that the system is designed for plunder.

It seems to be that as the United States federal government and the Presidency in particular have gradually morphed into something more like a European monarchy, our attitude towards its sovereignty has shifted.

We have a Treasury secretary who cheated on his taxes. But he is not the only one. There are probably more people who buy goods and services via the internet and catalogues who don’t pay sales taxes than people who do. We’ve been rehabbing our 132-year-old home for several years now, and I can tell you, some subcontractors expect to be paid in cash under the table. We follow speed limits when we think they are being enforced only. Dads let their teenaged kids drink beer. People cross the state line to buy fireworks, or any good when the sales tax is lower. People on unemployment compensation stretch it out so they can work on their eBay business.

Retirees buy discount drugs from Canada. Families share prescription antibiotics with other family members for whom they have not been prescribed....

And most people have absolutely no moral compunction about any of these violations of the either the spirit or the letter of the law, because deep down they no longer believe that the law, especially the tax code, represents any compelling moral principle, nor do its dictates seem any longer to be fair.

Read the rest here

Forbes 

. The liberty and prosperity of the American people will depend on their willingness to reject this hideous monster called government. Americans need to stop feeding the monster because that's the only way to kill the monster - we need to just starve the beast. The beast will not voluntarily relinquish its absolute power nor is it suicidal. The beast is a ravenous, thieving and murderous glutton that voraciously consumes everything in its path.

Americans started a Revolution in 1776 on a British Stamp Act tax so puny that no one in America today would even notice the tax. The Declaration of Independence is an indictment against King George because of his taxation policies. The language contained in our historical Declaration of Independence aptly describes the tax tyranny Americans experience today as inflicted upon them by their state and federal governments.

“..when a long train of abuses and usurpations…evinces a design to reduce them…under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”

“He has made judges dependent on his Will alone”

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their acts of pretended Legislation”

“For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent”

“He has…..destroyed the lives of our people.”

“A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people”.

As the government confiscates more and more of earned income from those who produce to fund its massive redistributionist schemes, nonstop wars, pork and fascist corporate welfare state, Americans keeps sinking further into poverty and misery.

Government is out of control, corrupt and unaccountable at both the federal and state level. Government power grabs come at the expense of personal liberty and the prosperity of its citizens. Government monetary and fiscal incompetence are robbing us blind.

Even worse, a nation once renowned for its extraordinary civil liberties is being churned into a Nazi style police state.

Democrats and Republicans are notoriously bipartisan when it comes to hacking away at civil liberties and economic liberties. Once a proud, strong and wealthy creditor nation, American is now a pathetic debtor nation marching toward extinction.

America is at a critical intersection in its history – we either reject the almighty state as the cornucopia of plenty and we demand our constitutional liberty or we just surrender to totalitarian slavery.