Third Palmetto Republic

Have you ever taken a moment to step back and reflect on your life, your career, and your finances, only to see an image in your head that looks something like this?

Well, it’s no accident that you are in this condition. In fact, it is the deliberate intention of the federal government to get as many of us into that scenario as possible. The reason they want to do this is so that they can have an unlimited amount of money to spend through debt financing of the budget, using us as the collateral and the income stream to make their payments to their debtors.

Now of course it is more complicated than that, and so I recommend reading some books about the Federal Reserve and the progressive Income Tax to get some background on these topics. I’d recommend anything by Murray Rothbard as a good starting point. The point to take home is that the Federal Reserve can invent as much money as it wants, private banks are supported by this influx of assets and fractional reserve banking, and the US government is financed through debt, not taxes.

It is very simple however to prove my logical conclusion that the U.S. Empire is purposefully creating debt slaves to finance its operations and to further control our daily lives. The process revolves around two main engines: taxation and banking. Most people think we live in a Capitalist system with free markets and free individuals. That just isn’t true, by any definition of the word Capitalism.

First off, let’s look at taxation.

I’m a visual thinker and it’s easier to get the point across through an illustration, so let’s consider the plight of a hard working new American family: let’s say it’s a freshly married couple, both college grads, somewhere in their mid 20′s. If their annual household income is $70,000, this is what their federal taxes would look like:

Now my numbers may be off here but I think they’re accurate. Even if I am wrong, I’m still doing better than the IRS.

Anyway, I’m actually giving the feds a break with this tax sheet. In reality they also collect a federal gas tax, embedded corporate income taxes that affect the price of everything, and a host of other hidden taxes put in place to play favorites within industries. It takes years of law school and private practice to figure all of those out though, so I figured I’d stick to the basics. One item of note in this list that most people don’t realize is that your employer, in addition to withholding from your paycheck, also has to pay the federal government a matching amount of taxes for medicare and social security, so that’s 7.65% of your paycheck that could be yours if the government wasn’t taking it from your employer.

OK, back to our young married couple, just starting out in life. Here’s a chart illustrating what their income looks like after the federal government has taken their cut:

So, it’s about a 60/40 relationship, and this doesn’t include hidden federal taxes or any of the state and local taxes and fees. Our young couple is left with about $40,000 to fund their living expenses, including rent, car payments, student loans, groceries, utilities, etc. Like most young couples, they have high hopes for the future, so they save up what little they have left, let’s say $5000 a year. They plan to use that for things like a down payment on a house or a new car, or expenses related to having children.

Let’s compare that to the world where the federal government didn’t exist, and a state government adhered to the rules of capitalism (no income taxes, for one.) What would their pie look like after that?

What a difference! Obviously we are making two big assumptions here: 1) despite the economic prosperity guaranteed with capitalism, their income has remained the same, and 2) without the government stealing 40% of their money they would have the discipline to keep their expenses to pre-freedom levels. I’d say those two cancel each other out.

Even so, the next phase of creating debt slaves is abundantly clear: banking. You see, under capitalism, you would be able to keep your capital, and our young couple would have about $33,000 a year to spend on things like children, a house, cars, etc. They would have no need for banks. You can get a really nice car for $33,000, especially one made with non-union labor here in the South.

Back here in reality though, they don’t have that money. They are now forced to either do without, or to go into debt. Let’s say this young family takes their meager savings and makes a down payment on a house. They’re going to be in debt for about 30 years so they have to get a house that will hold the children they plan to have. When it’s all said and done, now they have a big monthly payment and even less to set aside as savings. They could have just paid for a house outright in cash if they were left alone to be free after just a few years of savings, but now they are basically indentured servants to the bank so they can have a roof over their heads.

The same thing applies to any other purchase: cars, medical expenses, the cost of having children, etc. Everything they do is tight and they have to stretch their money, and for what? It’s simple: the federal government taxes us so that we won’t have our own capital, so that we have to use debt financing so that the banks will get richer, so that the banks will continue to funnel money into the federal government, so that the federal government can continue to spend and grow its empire. The U.S. gets the privilege of the use of force to make this all happen. You are therefore a slave, because you are paying the debt of the government against your will. Try not paying your taxes, or not paying your mortgage, and see what happens. You may think that slavery is an inappropriate term here, but please tell me: just how much of your life does the government control before you are a slave? Think about it.

What’s worse, and what’s really insidious about the whole thing, is that people could also use their capital as investment. Imagine an economy where you don’t have to shoot to the top or make some miraculous move in order to have capital to use for starting a business, investing in a company, inventing a new product, etc. We hear the stories about the businessmen who conquered all odds and took extraordinary risks and became wildly successful, but what about the opportunity costs of all of those other would-be entrepreneurs that are stuck in a cubicle somewhere? What innovations are we lacking today because those individuals didn’t have the flexibility to try something new?

The U.S. Government doesn’t care. In fact, they don’t want us making such progress, because then we might not need them any more. Well I contend that we don’t need them now, and we must secede to be free.