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Surrogates With the recent presidential election and economic turmoil, I am reminded of a lesson learned over two centuries ago in Massachusetts. We all know the story of a group of disgruntled citizens dressing up as Native Americans and throwing boxes of tea into Boston Harbor. Free people want to choose where to spend their hard-earned cash. A new nation, of the people and by the people was soon conceived.  At some point in time, the demands of government exceeded the
willingness of the electorate to cheerfully provide. In order to
prevent another Boston Tea Party and to preserve their own power,
politicians had to devise new means to coerce the people to pay. As
people always seem happy to send the bill to others, an ingenious
solution was devised. In order to insulate itself, the government
would now use surrogates to collect from the people. In this case
the surrogate was business.A long time ago, back when I cared, I often spoke the following facts to quite a few deaf ears. Business exists to make money. A business pays nothing. A business passes along all of its costs to people. If it does not, it is no longer a business. The people were perfectly happy to see business taxed. Little did they realize that it was inherently impossible for a business to pay taxes. Currently many would like to see the greedy oil companies taxed. The oil companies would just shrug and pass the tax on to you, the consumer. Businesses don’t like to be taxed because it raises their costs and may lessen demand for their products. The surrogate system works for personal taxes also. Workers rarely have to pay taxes. Their employer pays the tax and leaves little notations on the workers check stub. People would panic if they saw the cost of Social Security, so matching Social Security was invented. Half of the cost is shown on the check stub and the employer matches the other half. This wonderfully devious system raises the price of everything until the business can no longer pass this expense to the consumer. Now the employer must pass the cost on to the worker in lower wages. Today we are a nation full of younger workers with no awareness of the small fraction of their productivity available for them to spend as they choose. Once upon a time, essentially everything we consumed was produced in America. Now most Americans cannot afford to buy American. Many criticize greedy companies for taking American jobs offshore. They are only doing what they must to fulfill their purpose. Our government encourages these actions in order to pacify the People, who would otherwise find themselves robbed of their birthright. Americans can no longer afford to purchase American made products. In turn, Americans no longer have the opportunity to create value in a land of abundance. Our freely elected government is now in the process of practicing true terrorism. To preserve our way of life, we must bail out the financial system. We must now pay a ransom of three thousand dollars per man, woman, and child to these irresponsible pigs. Whether through low wages or more Chinese products, have no doubt, you will pay it. As I inferred, all this makes no difference to me, but I thought you might be interested. ©11/07/08
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