All Your Property Are Belong to Uncle Sam

July 1, 2008

Sometimes people say that if you don’t like your taxes, your government, their wars, their policies, etc., that you should just go somewhere else. This is an argument used by redneck right-wingers and quasi-commie social democrats; the “if-you-don’t-like-it-get-the-fuck-out” argument. Reasonable adults should be able to agree to disagree, without resorting to violence.

No, they tell me, If I don’t like being stolen from, I should just leave. If I try to defend myself from the thieves, they’ll shoot me. You see, the penalty is always death. This is what passes as a legitimate method for solving problems: if you don’t like it, we’ll fucking kill you.  Yeah, that’s mature.

But this argument has been exposed as absolute bullshit for some time#. The U.S. government has levied, or attempted to levy taxes on wealthy expats, for some statutory period (I think 5 years) on the presumption that they are expats solely because they are trying to avoid paying U.S. taxes.  This strikes me as a pretty suspect argument, insofar as it violates the two most-commonly cited justificatory arguments in favor of one’s obligation to pay taxes.

  1. The justification for taxes is usually: the government provides these things which you should pay for because you use them.
  2. Sometimes the justification is more sophisticated: if you didn’t pay for them, they wouldn’t be provided at all; it is necessary for all to pay so that some may benefit, the greater good and what-not.

For starters, does it matter why someone renounces citizenship? As a matter of equity and fairness, it ought not. A non-citizen is not using the government, is not “protected” by the government, and so on.  But, whatever. I’m not going to belabor the merits of these arguments at present.  I’m just going to conclude that for years, the government has essentially been saying that they don’t have to justify any level of taxation with even a pretense of benefit or obligation. (How’s that for “progressive”?)

If that hasn’t got you all worked up by now, it’s about to get a lot worse.  If you don’t like it, maybe you should leave.

Except, you can’t.

You probably didn’t notice this little provision inserted into the Heroes Act of 2008, passed by Congress on June 17.

[A]nyone voluntarily giving up his or her citizenship will be taxed on ALL of his assets as if he or she had sold them — paying capital gains on assets that have increased in value, even though they have not been sold!

Does anyone still disagree when I say that Taxation is Theft?  Can anyone, anywhere, honestly explain how this amounts to anything more than ransom for permission to live?

We don’t need a Berlin Wall to keep people enslaved.  The government can simply expropriate their properties (a practice generally admonished by “civilized” politicians) and take whatever they damn please.  This government, the Land of the Free government, has finally  succeeded in erecting an imaginary wall that keeps everyone imprisoned. You can’t really leave, not anymore.

+++


1. The not inconsequential question of why one is obliged to move, simply because he does not like what others are doing to him, without his consent, and
2. As others have noted, pretty much every territory on earth is controlled by one state who wants to steal from me, or another, and is populated by citizens cut from the same cloth as the idiot who tells me to get out of this particular country.


Posted in: Government is Slavery, Taxation is Theft, American Politics

Comments

4 Comments so far

  1. Mike July 2, 2008 4:49 am

    A non-citizen is not using the government, is not “protected” by the government, and so on.

    Hey now, this is America we’re talking about here! America’s gonna protect the everliving daylights out of you and everywhere else, no matter where on or off the globe. Didn’t you get the “America is Exceptional” memo?

    Sarcasm half off now, of course this latest only applies to millionaires above a certain level of total asset value. Doesn’t affect the ordinary chump who might just want to take the rednecks at their word and up and leave. But, oh wait… if we extrapolate the past 5 years’ inflationary decline in the value of the dollar out by say another 20, at some point even the lowliest wage slave becomes a millionaire.

  2. Wulf July 2, 2008 8:46 am

    I grew up in New York State. When I was in the Navy, I was stationed in Florida for 18 months of school. I moved my legal residence to my uncle’s house near Orlando and changed my residency to Florida.

    New York State tried to keep taxing me. They contacted the USN. They withheld my income tax refund because I had stopped paying income tax to them when I changed domicile. I couldn’t believe it.

    I called up the department of taxation and I was told by a man there that “you can’t just say you don’t live in New York anymore”. He demanded to know if I had any possessions remaining at my parents’ NY address. I was struck speechless by his attitude that New York had a right to that money. It was bad enough when I lived there, but when I wasn’t even there anymore?

    It taught me a lot.

  3. W. W Woodward August 11, 2008 10:31 pm

    13 Southern states attempted to leave the country in the middle 60’s but the government wouldn’t let them.

    Now the government is building fences to ?keep out the aliens? Any farmer/rancher can tell you, a fence doesn’t keep out the predators. It merely contains the livestock. Makes it easier to have fried chicken or a steak when you want one. We are being told that we will need passports to visit Mexico or Canada. Not true! We will need passports to get back into the country after visiting Mexico or Canada.

  4. Ryan Anderson August 25, 2008 11:24 am

    I don’t believe in the ideas your spreading. Look at in a positive manner. Yes, sometimes there will be abuse like Wulfs case; sometimes the government abuses their power.(W. W Woodward) I do not agree with either of these cases, but when your making a extraordinary amount of money you usually do not have the time to invest in others. Because just Like I need you to give me for example a product(Art, technology, ETC) you need me to grow your food. And Sometimes its nice to just give something away without knowing who it might go to. I know I don’t have the time in the world to check with the girl next door is doing well, But i always hope so.

    If you don’t like how your Tax dollars are used; instead of giving it a mafia like presences, go talk to your Representative and tell them what to spend the money on. Yeah Listen or They will be out of a Job.

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