How the State Starts, Implodes and Ends

The state is a peculiar institution that has dramatically changed over thousands of years.  Historically, the state was nothing more than a murderous and militaristic crime syndicate that ruthlessly plundered and murdered folks for the glory of the empire, its wealth and its real estate holdings.  Men were slaughtered, women were raped and women and children were carted off to slave markets which was pretty much the fate of the conquered.

The state is still a murderous and militaristic institution but these days it operates as a so-called benevolent democracy wherein the state legitimizes its plunder and murders with an election.  Nothing has really changed except that the illusion of freedom is a fraud that we happily accepted.  From kings and their courts to elections, presidents, prime ministers and and legislative bodies, We the Sheeple People eagerly embraced the state as the cornucopia of plenty.   Throughout human civilizations, there were always the elites who controlled money and power, as well as its concentration into the hands of a few.

The birth of Western Civilization attempted to change that paradigm and damn near succeeded.  Monarchies were busted up as was the feudal land holding system that bestowed privilege upon the titled aristocracy who were loyal to the crown.  To maintain absolute power, the elites needed a new paradigm that they could sell because power was no longer absolute.  Briefly, the state feared the people and was forced to allow them to flourish under the banner of liberty.  Humanity busted out of the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages and propelled themselves into Enlightenment that spawned a  new era of We the People power that embraced property rights, human rights, civil rights, political rights and natural rights.

It was a cataclysmic leap for humankind as progress in science, technology and the arts flourished as the middle class was born.  Freedom and free markets catapulted folks into a new reality of We the People power.  The elites were threatened with extinction and ferociously fought back.

They created the modern nation state complete with entitlements.  The elites understood that the Sheeple People would never vote away their power without getting something in return.  And thus socialism and the socialist state was born.  While the socialism of Mao and Stalin resulted in wiping out over 100 million folks, the soft socialism of the West was deemed the perfected reality of Marx wherein the elites were still in control of all money, power and resources.

For a while, everybody was happy.  The elites had the power and the Sheeple People got free food, housing, healthcare and other goodies.  There was a problem with the plan.  The state never had the resources to fund the promises to the people.  So they heavily borrowed to deliver the statist socialist goodies.  Governments borrowed so much money to fund the delusion of prosperity and well being that they literally bankrupted themselves.

Then headlines started appearing that the Greek bond rate was triple digit and that Greece was so broke that he needed bailout after bailout, which it got.  Then Spain and Portugal started going the way of Greece and it's even speculated that France and Italy aren't too far behind.  Today, Mish is reporting that the interest rate on Portuguese bonds had risen to 8%.

Herein lies the fatal flaw of the state.  It can only tax and borrow so much until it implodes.   Eventually, the taxes destroy the revenue producing economy and the interest on the debt eats up most tax revenues and then the entitlements are cut way back because there is no money to fund them.  What happens next is people marching in the streets opposing enforced austerity.

The Sheeple People can march and scream all they want but at the end of the day there still isn't sufficient money, not even in the fiat money universe, to meet their demands.  Governments will inflate the currency but this only destroys purchasing power and the people then need more and more funky money to provide basics like food, medicine and shelter.

Reality is difficult to swallow because it's painful but there is no way to avoid the pain and it will descend upon the West like a tidal wave.  The cradle to the grave entitlement state is on life support, as is the whole rotten financial system that fictitiously props it up.

Is humanity about to embrace a new paradigm shift and one that has no use whatsoever for the state and its plunder?  If the survival instincts of humans are any predictable barometer of future behavior, it's already playing out.  In Greece it's been estimated that up to 50% of all Greek GDP is underground and beyond the tax collectors reach.  In Spain and Portugal, the underground economy is growing rapidly.  Folks can and do reach a point when opting out of the state is their only viable solution for survival.

Governments understand what is happening.  They are talking about outlawing cash money because it's untraceable and so forcing folks into government traceable electronic money represents the last gasp of the dying modern nation state.   Understand that once the government loses its power to plunder, it really is toast.  But folks can resort to old fashion bartering and cyber-currencies like Bitcoin.  They may not be as convenient as government money but they work and will be embraced because stiffing the evil government will definitely become the new game in town.

One thing is certain - things will never be the same.  We can't go back to what obviously is a big fail.  Exactly where humanity ends up as it once again embarks on another major paradigm shift is anybody's guess.  Third world and Asian nations are likely to come out on top because these folks aren't pampered and spoiled like whinny westerners, and poor third world folks already possess razor sharp survival skill.

The real tragedy?  The glorious rise of the West will meet a most inglorious death unless its people change and that's not about to happen until all is lost.

Democracy, the god that failed & how the 1% use it to enslave the 99%

Once upon a time the world was owned and controlled by kings and queens, princes and princesses, lords and ladies, and absolute rulers. There were the ruling elites, the upper class, the propertied class, the moneyed class, the educated class, the bureaucratic class and everybody else was a serf of sorts and expected to be compliant slaves – that’s what slaves do, they serve their masters. Such was the fate of humanity for thousands of years. The 1% and the 99% have existed for as long as humans have existed.

The ancient Greeks experimented with democracy and the ancient Romans introduced the republic (embraced by America’s founding fathers to minimize state power) but for the most part folks were not deemed to have any rights.

Then the unthinkable happened. In Europe, Western Civilization was born as folks started to clamor for political rights, property rights and natural rights. Monarchies began to topple, theocratic powers were usurped and the revolution for human liberty began. Although Europe was a bloodbath on and off for nearly a millennium, the great political theorists and intellectual challengers who conceived and fought to implement such foreign concepts as non-repressive forms of government and individual sovereignty finally succeeded. Eventually, limited personal freedoms and rights translated into much wider economic freedoms which elevated industry and trade while spawning an economically strong middle class.

To be sure, the road from human serfdom was long and bloody and there were territorial wars, civil wars, religious wars (some of the bloodiest of all wars) and the wars fought for conquest and empire. As Europe was a chronic bloodbath, many feisty folks just packed up and headed across the pond to a strange new land. While US history is also replete with its own horrors like slavery and the ruthlessly unjust treatment of native Americans, no nation is without its sins. Still, America was the first human society truly designed for mass human liberty even if on a somewhat selective basis.

The grand experiment worked wonders as power and wealth was shifting away from the 1% and to the 99%. Shorn of their shackles, mankind prospered for the first time in human history and at an unprecedented rate.  A strong and flourishing middle class was born as free markets were delivering good and services, and prosperity for the masses (99%) was achieved. There was peace instead of war and government had limited powers.

But the 1% started screaming “holy shit, we can’t let that happen.  We can’t allow the lowlife people and the unwashed masses to be in charge with free markets and sound money so we will work to transfer that power back to us.”  But the folks had tasted liberty, loved it and so selling the idea of servitude was a daunting and challenging task.  However, the 1% have always been extraordinarily clever. This time around they concocted warm and fuzzy ideologies like socialism, statism, Marxism, communitarianism, globalism, environmentalism, progressivism, collectivism and other ‘ism’s’ to lure the people away from their liberty and prosperity.

These days, the remnants of power, royal families and the world’s elites are now concentrated in 20th century statism (government control of everything), finance (banksters transferring wealth from the 99% to the 1%) and corporatism, plutocracy, oligarchy and monopoly.  Democracy was a most powerful weapon to lure folks away from freedom and to entice them to voluntarily submit to tyranny.  Since democracy in its purest sense is unlimited majority mob rule, the elites only need to control democratic political institutions like the Republican Party and Democrat Party.

The thieving and plundering elites no longer needed whips, chains, shackles and armies to subdue the people. All they needed to do was sell democracy and get us to vote ourselves back into slavery and they accomplished it by offering all kinds of "freebie"s like free food, free medical care, free housing, free education and free everything. And thus the Free Shit Army was born.  But buried deep within the sinister plan was the blueprint to boot humanity back to the plantations, servitude and feudal gulags.   It was a brilliant strategy that worked beyond their wildest expectations.  The people drank the poisonous Foolaid and voluntarily voted away their liberty.

And thus, the small window of human liberty was nailed shut; only this time around the Sheeple People voluntarily marched back to the slavery plantations of the 1%.

Moral of the story: giving any government any power is the equivalent of voluntarily enslaving yourself.

Can the Underground Economy Take Down the NWO, its Banksters & Thieving Governments?

Wolf Richter who runs the website Testosteronepit.com had a fascinating article about how the Italians are wealthier than the Germans.

A “Politically Explosive” Secret: Italians Are Over Twice As Wealthy As Germans

Germany’s federal government only had a minuscule deficit in 2012. But high taxes and the citizens’ greater willingness to pay them—though cheating is a national sport—have over the years extracted a lot of wealth from the people and transferred it to the government. In Italy, people have been more adept at hanging on to their wealth.... 

It could stir up a firestorm in Germany. It’s not just jealousy. Strung-out German taxpayers would have to be bamboozled into bailing out the mountain of Italian government debt that the Italians, whose median wealth is twice that of Germans, refused to pay for. It won’t sit well. Not at all.

While it's true that the Germans have born the financial brunt when it comes to bailing their southern European EU neighbors, there's a much bigger question here.  Why are the Italians financially better off than the Germans?  Germany is indeed the powerhouse economy of Europe as well as one of its more financially solvent nations.  Conversely, Italy and the Italian economy are boiling to death in its cauldron of unsustainable debt.

What is absolutely certain is that high tax nations tend to spawn underground economies, especially in bad economic times when the folks perceive that government no longer offers them any value.  The proliferation of underground economies translates to cash and/or barter economies that are beyond the tax collectors reach.  Folks who make the decision to just opt out of the system typically refuse to pay taxes to thieving governments and they also tend to opt out of the traceable electronic banking system.

While the growth of underground economic activity does vary from nation to nation and region to region, they are getting noticed.  ChiefExecutive.net wrote about the rise of the underground economy in high tax California and also discussed other underground economies.

What California’s Growing Underground Economy Says About Sacramento

The underground or “black economy” generally refers to transactions that go unreported to evade taxation. Most people associate this with the illegal drug or sex industries but when government policies seek to reach further into private activities it often has the effect of driving activities that are normally above ground such as repair, services, and construction into cash or barter transactions.

Countries such as the U.S., Switzerland and Japan historically have had relatively small, nonreporting and/or illegal sectors, a typical estimate falling between 8 percent and 13 percent of GDP. Most European countries with higher taxes and regulation report underground economies of at least 20 percent of GDP with countries such as Italy and Greece having at least 30 percent of all economic activity going unreported.

Economic studies have shown that when people believe the taxes they are required to pay are reasonable and the political leaders tend to spend their tax dollars wisely, tax compliance rises, and when the reverse is true more economic activity is driven underground. California is showing signs that it is beginning to share one more characteristic with countries such as Greece and Italy: Its black economy is on the rise.

Last December, the LA Times reported that Sacramento officials are increasingly agitated by employers who pay their workers cash under the table to avoid payroll taxes, workers’ compensation insurance and other government mandates. This is in addition to smuggled cigarettes and counterfeit apparel. Officials believe that these underground activities are costing California about $7 billion annually in lost tax revenue.

It's been reported that that up to 50% of all Greek economic output is underground and the Italian underground economy is 2nd only to Greece, all of which means that the Italian underground economy is substantial and probably growing.

If the Italians are wealthier than the Germans, it's because they are keep their money earned in the underground economy.  The underground economy is a very good thing because it represents a phenomena that is literally terrorizing big spending governments by depriving them of revenues and the power to plunder.  USA Today has reported on the underground economy.

Tax evaders in Greece, Spain and Italy better beware

In Greece, tax officials fly helicopters over residential areas to spot swimming pools of the alleged poor. In Italy, inspectors raid elite ski resorts to catch the down-and-out in their Ferraris. In Spain, taxmen snoop about homes rented to sun-seeking vacationers — then visit the owners who neglected to report the income.

Evading taxes is almost a national pastime in European nations such as Greece, Spain and Italy, and for years their governments largely looked the other way.....

Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and other countries are raising taxes and clamping down on those who have found creative ways not to pay them. Many people admit they cheat, but the wealthy say they are being unfairly singled out to cover for government overspending — and people in the middle class, who have seen their household incomes crumble, are bitter about losing even more to taxes.

Governments are so desperate for money because they've over-spent, over-taxed and over-borrowed that they are attempting to frame the crisis in the context of class warfare since they no longer have the cash, tax revenues or debt proceeds to fund entitlements that were never affordable anyway.  That's precisely what the French socialists led by Francois Hollande did and they promptly raised taxes on the rich to 75%.  Well, the rich as well as businesses started fleeing France in droves, a situation that only made the dire economic situation even worse.

The delusion that taxing the rich will solve all problems is just that - a delusion.  The famous French actor Gérard Depardieu  who moved to tax friendlier Belgium was already paying 85% of everything he earned to the French government and that was before the Hollande 75% tax increase, here.

“I was born in 1948,” he wrote, “I started working aged 14, as a printer, as a warehouseman, then as an actor, and I’ve always paid my taxes.” Over 45 years, Depardieu said, he had paid 145 million euros in tax, and to this day employs 80 people. Last year he paid taxes amounting to 85 per cent of his income. “I am neither worthy of pity nor admirable, but I shall not be called 'pathetic’,” he concluded, saying that he was sending back his French passport.

The 'tax the rich' strategy is a fraudulent con and many of the tax absconders are just ordinary working stiffs attempting to survive and feed their families in an economy that has gone very bad for them.  Reuters detailed the plight of one working man, here.

Working informally, he pockets about 2,000 euros a month. His wife, a domestic helper, also works unofficially, earning 400 euros a month when she isn't busy taking care of their four- and six-year old children.

Sitting across from him at the cafe, his friend Marco flashes a conspiratorial smile when asked which side of the law he falls on.

He did want to be on the right side, he says with a sigh, but realised the economics were against him.

When taxation becomes so punitive that working class folks don't have enough left over to eat and provide necessities for their families after paying their taxes, there is zero incentive to continue to participate in the system of systematic plunder.  The rich who who are plundered at the rate that French actor Depardieu was plundered by the French government (85%) have the resources to pack up and move to tax friendlier abodes.

Governments do indeed understand capital flight and the underground economy, and they are prepared to declare war on ordinary folks who are just trying to make it in a world gone mad because survival in the NWO is verboten without government permission.  What is the government's weapon?  CASH - governments are restricting the use of cash with the goal of creating a 100% cashless, traceable and electronic fiat currency system.

The International War on Cash

The relentless war against cash payments waged by governments worldwide has perhaps gone furthest in Scandinavia. The ostensible reason given by our rulers for suppressing cash is to keep society safe from terrorists, tax evaders, money launderers, drug cartels and sundry other villains, real or imagined. But the actual aim of the recent flood of laws rendering cash transactions less convenient or limiting or even prohibiting them is to force the public at large to make payments through the financial system in order to prop up the unstable fractional-reserve banks and, more importantly, to expand the ability of governments to spy on and keep track of their citizens’ most private financial dealings.

Many nations have already passed laws that severely restrict cash transactions and the ultimate goal is clear - abolish cash as legal tender.  However, most nations still have legal tender laws so at best all governments can do presently is to restrict the use of cash in certainly transactions.

There can be no question that cash is king in the underground economy and, quite frankly, it's the only method of survival for the multitudes caught up in a nasty economy with nowhere to go.

It's probably also true that the underground economy is the only free market economy left on the planet.  As underground free market economies based on voluntarism proliferate they will indeed start to replace the statist planned economy in a most significant way.   Governments and bureaucrats determined to maintain their power and control will resort to anything, including murder and military dictatorship, to keep folks from engaging in voluntary commerce.

Surviving Economic Calamity Thru Creative Resistance

Americans intuitively comprehend that something is radically wrong even if they don’t understand why it is happening or what caused the economic implosion and calamity. As the economic misery piles up and government becomes increasingly powerless to solve problems, folks are indeed justifiably scared and trembling as they comprehend that life as they know it is has never been more gravely threatened.

First, it’s important to understand precisely what brought America to her knees and created a situation that is literally wiping out the middle class. The evil and insidious root of the poisonous tree that resulted in the downfall of American prosperity is 1913 the Federal Reserve Act that spawned the warfare-welfare state. The sole purpose for the creation of the Federal Reserve was the massive concentration of wealth and power by taking economic power away from the people and free markets, and transferring that power to the ruling elites and the political class. For a concise and scholarly understanding of the Federal Reserve, I highly recommend reading The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin.

Bad as the Federal Reserve is, the damage that it could inflict was restricted so long as the dollar was still tethered to gold. When Nixon de-tethered the dollar from gold in 1971, the dollar then became a 100% pure paper fiat currency and we got 2 economic and liberty destroying fatal diseases 1. Banksters Gone Wild and 2. Government Gone Wild.

The resulting harm created by the Federal Reserve can be pictorially presented to show its devastating impact on the middle class.

1.  Production Worker’s Hourly Wages in Gold (Source: ZeroHedge.com)

2.      Inflation has soared and the purchasing power of the dollar has shrunk.

3.      The tax burden has dramatically increased.

4.       To maintain their standard of living, Americans resorted to debt.

The above charts document a substantial decline in real wages, a decline in the purchasing power of the dollar, an increase in the tax burden and an exploding consumer debt. That is precisely what the Federal Reserve intentionally delivered, especially after 1971.

But not all folks were equally affected. The poor and middle class were hit the hardest while the rich got richer. Economist Robert Reich stated “The richest 1 percent of Americans last year took home 23 percent of total national income. Back in 1980, the richest 1 percent took home 8 percent of total income. The last time the top 1 percent took home more than 20 percent of total income was in 1928, just before the Great Crash.” I’m not in agreement with the Keynesian economic policies advocated by Reich but he’s correct in his disclosure that the rich are getting richer and the poor and middle classes are getting poorer. Little does Reich understand that the exact policies that he endorses created the great economic disparity.

As the economic carnage grows, there is virtually no hope that the economic mess will reverse itself in the immediate or near future. At best, all folks can do is prepare and plan for a survival strategy. However, just because our tyrannical rulers may be insanely committed to shock and awe economic destruction for no purpose other than to maintain their absolute power doe not in any way imply that the situation is hopeless for the people. In fact, the elites have sown the seeds of their own destruction because the system is so far gone and so out of whack that it’s impossible for the banksters and the elites to do anything to reverse the destructive course that they charted.

Hope lies in Starving the Beast know as Fedzilla (government) through the building of underground economies that will include voluntarism, agorism, trade among individuals, bartering, cyberspace currencies like Bitcoin, homesteading for food self-sufficiency and just about any productive and voluntary economic activity that can be accomplished that is beyond the ever watchful eye of the government.

Government only survives so long as folks perceive a value in supporting the government by conferring legitimacy upon the state and its institutions. It’s all a matter of trust and when trust flies out the window, folks will literally stripe the government of its legitimacy by opting out of the system. Nowhere is this premise more validated than in Greece.

Greece is bankrupt and the Greeks have become notorious for just opting out of the system and not paying taxes. In a PBS article, here, Paul Solman wrote an article titled In Greece, Underground Economy Fuels Financial Crisis. Solman is only partially correct because he blames the Greek aversion to paying taxes to the thieving and corrupt government to be the root cause of Greek financial problems. However, Solman accurately describes the magnitude of the Greek underground economy “If you think there's been a tax revolt in the U.S…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..” The US has a very powerful and ruthlessly efficient system of civil asset forfeiture and the government will seize your property, clean out your bank accounts and leave you penniless and homeless if the government believes that you are non-compliant. The secret to Starving the Beast in America requires advanced planning, thinking and the ability to be clever and smart about it. Never advertise or brag on Facebook or social media or in any electronic communication venue that you are proudly ripping off the government.

Successfully Starving the Beast requires a far more subtle approach. Many folks have jobs and are linked to the system with automatic paycheck deposits and they must file tax returns. Folks should file tax returns on all traceable income because the non-filing of tax returns is a giant red flag that gets government attention.

Much is being written about the 1099 independent contractor economy, here and here. One of the biggest obstacles facing the government is its ability to collect taxes. So long as folks are employed as employees, the government easily got its share of plunder right off the top via the federal withholding tax and the Social Security tax, along with other taxes including state taxes. Enforcement of tax collections was never really much a problem for the government so long as most folks were employees. The government didn't need an army of tax collectors because employers functioned as the primary tax collectors for the government.

But with the economy tanking and necessity being the mother of invention, folks are now forced to discover new paradigms of survival and many of those survival techniques involved just opting out of the system to the extent that one can. Forms of passive resistance involve minimizing the ability of the government to track you through your financial transactions like bank accounts, credit/debit cards and any electronic financial transactions. Some folks have embraced the cash and money order economy because such transactions are untraceable.

Finally, folks need to seriously focus on what they can do to strengthen their survival skills while simultaneously being as invisible as possible to the government. The government has finally forced itself in one pickle of a mess because the welfare-warfare state has devastated the economy that feeds government revenues. Moreover, folks who feel angry and betrayed will do everything within their power to stiff the government because that’s basic human psychology in the best of times.

Moving forward, I absolutely do anticipate a massive growth in the underground economy because it constitutes the only reliable and viable mechanism for survival. Governments and fiat central banksters are destined to go down but we don’t have to go down with them. If anything, the human instinct to survive is our strongest instinct and if we are careful and cautious, it won’t fail us.

What's Really Wrong With America? Government and Centralization of Power - Switzerland Got it Right

 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote The Black Swan, a book and economic treatise on the necessity for free markets. Taleb believes that governments everywhere are way too powerful and that they disastrously intervene where they have no business intervening and to the detriment of liberty and prosperity. It's no surprise that Taleb was a diehard supporter of Ron Paul!

"I don’t care about [Ron Paul's] chances. I support him. We have no other solutions. It is my duty as a citizen and as a taxpayer who doesn’t want to be hoodwinked in the long term by bureaucrats."  Nassim Taleb, here.

Of course, the mere mention of free markets makes most Republicans cringe which is why Republicans rejected Ron Paul at the ballot box.  Free markets represent the absence of state power and the Republican Party is statist to its core.

Taleb recently wrote a piece for Foreign Policy that is definitely worth pondering..

Epiphanies from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb offers some extraordinary insights:

The most stable country in the history of mankind, and probably the most boring, by the way, is Switzerland. It's not even a city-state environment; it's a municipal state. Most decisions are made at the local level, which allows for distributed errors that don't adversely affect the wider system. Meanwhile, people want a united Europe, more alignment, and look at the problems. The solution is right in the middle of Europe -- Switzerland. It's not united! It doesn't have a Brussels! It doesn't need one.

I just came back from Lebanon, which I feel is the most stable place in the whole area. Every risk is visible to the naked eye there; you can't be harmed by something like that. The homicide rate is much lower than that in the United States. The media says it's chaos -- but it's not. In the end, it's stable because Hezbollah and the Shiites know that they have to live with the Sunnis and the Christians. It can't fall apart because it's a perfectly controlled mess.

We need smaller, more decentralized government. On paper, it might appear much more efficient to be large -- to have economies of scale. But in reality, it's much more efficient to be small. An elephant is vastly more efficient, metabolically, than a mouse. It's the same for a megacity as opposed to a village. But an elephant can break a leg very easily, whereas you can toss a mouse out of a window and it'll be fine. Size makes you fragile.

The European Union is a horrible, stupid project. The idea that unification would create an economy that could compete with China and be more like the United States is pure garbage. What ruined China, throughout history, is the top-down state. What made Europe great was the diversity: political and economic. Having the same currency, the euro, was a terrible idea. It encouraged everyone to borrow to the hilt.

The U.S. government should have no deficit. There's way too much debt. It is inexcusable when you have the highest standards of living in the nation's history! When you get rich, you should have less debt. There's a vicious element to borrowing when you're very rich, and having a deficit is an extremely dangerous game.

It's not likely that the Keynesians, the statists, the autocrats, the plutocrats, the oligarchs and totalitarian thugs of all political stripes will ever heed the sane advice of Taleb.

But one thing is certain: Switzerland is an incredible economic success precisely because power is not concentrated, it does not engage in wars and the Swiss just go about making themselves wealthy and prosperous by making and trading their widgets while avoiding all the costly and bankrupting pitfalls that plague the rest of the world.  Of course, unlike America the Swiss kept their Republic.  

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.