TAXING THE POOR

05/07/2008


TAXING THE POOR

I have the copy of the Dothan Eagle, 27 April 2008, in front of me, the front page of the Accent section E, and I am looking at the two stories on the page, and the irony is killing me. The headline of the top stories reads “ Pinched by prices” it discusses the high food prices and how the poor are struggling, and the bottom story, “Bags go high-end for graduation gifts” talks about prices of hand bags and the only price in the article mentioned is $6,300, may be a used one for half that.

Sure, nothing to be ashamed of, we are a rich country and many among us can afford to pay that kind of a price for a hand bag. Do we not live in a country where we have a show called the “Life styles of the rich and famous” and the MTV shows teenagers having half million dollar birthday parties. I am not jealous mind you, I live a pretty comfortable life myself.

I am upset, however, about the taxes we have levied upon the poor of this country. But we don’t tax the poor in this country you say, but you are wrong and very much misguided, as the reality is the total opposite of what you are given to believe.

In the days of old, the kings levied taxes upon the local barons who in turn collected the taxes form the poor, as the king or the baron needed more money(in kind) they collected (took away) more from the poor ( I have watched Robin Hood myself).

My fellow Americans, you must understand the basic workings of the financial system if you are ever to survive, not just as a person, but even as a nation, in this land of the free and the home of the brave. Not just as a person but a free person and not an indentured slave.

May be this is all too complicated, but then I have admitted that this modern world is no place for a person with just an average intelligence. An IQ of one hundred ten and you are lost, anything below that and you don’t even count, you don’t even exist. So I will try to keep it simple, if your boss gambles ( like in a gambling joint) you may not get that next pay raise, can you see a connection? If not stop reading you are wasting your time, loser!
By the same token, when I said that free trade is reducing the elder care in China or that it increases child prostitution in the Philippines can you see a connection? If not, then the world is already gone way ahead of you.

So what does all this have to do with taxing the poor you say, everything, Everything.

Are you one of those who have been told that the rich pay taxes, or too much taxes? Read elsewhere in my blog, “tombstone001.blogspot.com”, the rich get rich not by creating money on their own, the rich become richer by usurping the fruits of the labor of others, period, end of the story. Therefore, as always the rich don’t pay taxes they just confiscate your money, by whatever means and pass it along to the government, how much of it they get to keep is how many politicians they can buy to conspire with them. Anyone talking about lowering the taxes is not trying to help the workers but trying to help the rich to keep more of the money they stole from you.


Look around you, you see some of the rich are doctors and lawyers, and business owners that come to work everyday, (or most of the days) they create jobs, provide services and some even have nicer homes than yours. These people are not rich by any means. The real rich are the ones you will never see, generally, not in your local grocery store or restaurant, and they don’t really need an office per se. They are the big time swindlers, they don’t create jobs for you and me or provide services, they are the gamblers who gamble big and steal money from you and I and move jobs overseas. They borrow “your” money from the Federal Reserve and gamble with it and if they loose big you and I must step in to bail them out (banking crisis?? Housing bubble?? Hedge funds??).

This is an indirect tax imposed on the working people of the United States, when the Federal Reserve or the treasury have to bail out the ultra rich, and it is the same people for whom the public is rallied by the talk radio and their ilk to support the lower taxes, when it is you the public who is paying for it.

Earlier I gave the example of the barons who raised taxes on the workers to pay the king, but sometimes the barons also raised the taxes to support their own life styles. And the same is the situation today. The reason you are paying extra for gasoline and food is not that there are huge shortages, there are shortages but most of the increase is due to the “speculation” by the rich and the so called institutions (also owned and controlled by the same rich), thus this is again a tax imposed by the “barons” on the working classes.

A major part of the problem is that when in the United States there is a talk of the poor, most people are thinking of the welfare mother in a ghetto and getting food stamps, no one making a forty thousand a year thinks that they are poor, once again if you are making not forty but even a hundred a forty thousand a year but are in debt, have kids in college, or just trying to keep up with the Joneses, you are also a poor working stiff, you are just too stupid to know it yet.

When I was young, my family and I were staying in a hotel where an actress “Saloni” of Pakistani movies was also staying, she was suffering from a sore throat and my father (a physician) told her that she required an injection of Streptomycin, an antibiotic, in her buttocks (I suppose), “ how shall I then be able to dance?” she asked of my father. Sadly, even as grown ups, we , sometimes, just don’t have our priorities right.