Things are bad — and many blame Big Business, such as Big Banks
and Big Oil, as they’re styled, for turning the screws on average
people. I’ve got no big love for either. The fact is they are
interested in money — your money. That’s what they do. Are you
shocked? But here’s the thing: If you’re careful with your money
and apply common sense, you can avoid being indebted to entities
such as Big Banks and even Big Oil. Because for the most part*
their exactions are voluntary.
You do not, for example, have to buy a $500,000
McMansion on a zero down five-year ARM that requires 50 percent of
your take home pay to stay ahead of. No Bankster put a gun to
anyone’s head to buy more home than they could comfortably afford.
People freely chose to do so, banking (ahem) that the
increase in value would counterbalance the high carrying costs.
Well, they lost that bet. But whose fault is it?
No law says you must purchase a $40,000 brand-new car that
broadsides you every month with a $600 payment. You can choose to
drive a more affordable vehicle, perhaps one bought outright, with
cash.
But, there’s a catch: Even if you live within your means,
modestly, in a home you can afford — and drive a car you can
afford — government’s exactions are inescapable.
And increasingly, unaffordable.
Personal anecdote: My wife and I
moved from high-cost Northern Virginia not far from DC back in 2004
to rural SW Virginia in part to lower our cost of living in
anticipation of the now-current economic problems besetting the
country. We sold our place and bought a new, less expensive place,
which enabled us to really buy the new place — outright
— so that we have no mortgage.
Neither of us have ever bought a new car in our lives.
Both our vehicles were bought used — with cash.
These two common-sense actions massively reduced the
amount of money we need to get by. And no loan officer or debt
collector plagues us.
But government does.
The taxes on our modest place out in the country have
risen by some 30 percent in five years (even as the market value of
our house has dropped by an equal amount) and now the county has
passed a new — massive — increase in the odious personal property
tax on motor vehicles. The new tax rate will amount to an $800
annual fee levied on a vehicle with a market value of
$25,000.
While we do not have high-dollar cars, we do have several
cars (two older trucks and a couple of older motorcycles). The
highest-dollar one we own is worth maybe $7,500. But we still end
up with a beefy bill from the county every year. To pay “for the
children” — who aren’t our children, because we don’t
have any — chiefly because we feel we can’t
afford any. But because other people who can’t afford kids
do have them, we and others like us get the
bill.
To pay for the local “education” system. The combined hit
every year — the personal property tax on the vehicles and the
real estate tax on our house and land — amounts to around $2,000.
That may not be huge by some standards, but it’s still a lot of
money for us — and over time, it’s a lot of money,
period. In just ten years’ time, the local wealth
redistributors will have stolen — and yes, that’s the right word
— $20,000 from us. For the privilege of owning things we already
paid for (and paid taxes on at the time of purchase) with money
that has also already been taxed.
It is a sum we can do nothing to reduce, other than by
becoming homeless and divesting ourselves of our
vehicles.
So, which is the more rapacious, relentless enemy of
economic security? Of liberty? The businesses offering
products or services we’re free to decline if we do the math and
calculate we can’t comfortably afford the cost? Or the inescapable
clutching claws of government — multiple levels of it — that
constantly filches through our pockets?
Instead of “financial reform” and recriminations directed
against Big Business, how about changing the law so that a man’s
house, once paid for, is his. Period. No more rent
payments in perpetuity to the county — the annual property tax —
that makes ownership a farce. And how about a rising against this
noxious business of taxing personal property, so that we can truly
own nothing except perhaps the clothes we’re wearing and whatever
small items we can carry in our hands?
We pay tax on the money we earn before it even reaches our
hands. At least twice, for most of us (federal and state taxes).
Then we are taxed every time we spend whatever’s left to us. And
then we are taxed again — endlessly — for the privilege
of “owning” the property we bought with that already twice-taxed
money.
People need to get their heads straight. It is not Big
Business that is the enemy. No matter how strong-arm its practices
may appear to be, they rarely if ever, involve the threat of men in
costumes with badges and guns showing up to compel your
participation.
Only the government can do that. And for now,
it is only government that is inescapable.
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*Exceptions include the for-profit business cartels, such
as car insurance and (lately) heaf-cayuh “providers” that
have secured a “mandate” forcing people to buy their product or
service.
