by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead \/ April 6th, 2021<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not living the American dream. We\u2019re living a financial nightmare.<\/p>\n
The U.S. government\u2014and that includes the current administration\u2014is spending money it doesn\u2019t have on programs it can\u2019t afford, and \u201cwe the taxpayers\u201d are the ones who will be forced to foot the bill for the government\u2019s fiscal insanity.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been sold a bill of goods by politicians promising to pay down the national debt, jumpstart the economy, rebuild our infrastructure, secure our borders, ensure our security, and make us all healthy, wealthy and happy.<\/p>\n
None of that has come to pass, and yet we\u2019ve still been loaded down with debt not of our own making.<\/p>\n
This financial tyranny works the same whether it\u2019s a Democrat or Republican at the helm.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s talk numbers, shall we?<\/p>\n
The national debt<\/a> (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is $28 trillion<\/a> and growing. That translates to roughly $224,000 per taxpayer.<\/p>\n The government\u2019s answer to the COVID-19 pandemic has been to throw more money at the problem in the form of stimulus checks, small business loans, unemployment benefits, vaccine funding, and financial bailouts for corporations. All told, the federal government\u2019s COVID-19 spending has exceeded $4 trillion<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Biden administration is proposing another $2 trillion in infrastructure<\/a> spending.<\/p>\n The amount this country owes is now greater than its gross domestic product<\/a> (all the products and services produced in one year<\/a> by labor and property supplied by the citizens). And the top two foreign countries who \u201cown\u201d about a third of our debt<\/a> are China and Japan.<\/p>\n That debt is also growing exponentially: it is expected to be twice the size of the U.S. economy<\/a> by 2051.<\/p>\n Essentially, the U.S. government is funding its very existence with a credit card.<\/p>\n We\u2019re paying more than $300 billion in interest every year<\/a> on that public debt, not including what COVID-19 just added to the bill. That breaks down to more than $2400 per household<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to the Committee for a Reasonable Federal Budget<\/a>, the interest we\u2019re paying on this borrowed money is \u201cnearly twice what the federal government will spend on transportation infrastructure, over four times as much as it will spend on K-12 education, almost four times what it will spend on housing, and over eight times what it will spend on science, space, and technology.\u201d<\/p>\n Clearly, the national debt isn\u2019t going away<\/a> anytime soon, especially not with government spending on the rise and interest payments making up such a large chunk of the budget.<\/p>\n Still, the government remains unrepentant, unfazed and undeterred in its wanton spending.<\/p>\n Indeed, the national deficit (the difference between what the government spends and the revenue it takes in) is expected to be $2.3 trillion for fiscal 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n If Americans managed their personal finances the way the government mismanages the nation\u2019s finances, we\u2019d all be in debtors\u2019 prison by now.<\/p>\n Despite the government propaganda being peddled by the politicians and news media, however, the government isn\u2019t spending our<\/em> tax dollars to make our <\/em>lives better.<\/p>\n We\u2019re being robbed blind so the governmental elite can get richer.<\/p>\n This is nothing less than financial tyranny.<\/p>\n \u201cWe the people\u201d have become the new, permanent underclass in America.<\/p>\n In the eyes of the government, \u201cwe the people, the voters, the consumers, and the taxpayers\u201d are little more than pocketbooks waiting to be picked.<\/p>\n Consider: The government can seize your home and your car (which you\u2019ve bought and paid for) over nonpayment of taxes. Government agents can freeze and seize your bank accounts and other valuables if they merely \u201csuspect\u201d wrongdoing. And the IRS insists on getting the first cut of your salary to pay for government programs over which you have no say.<\/p>\n We have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but we\u2019re being forced to pay through the nose, anyhow.<\/p>\n We have no real say, but that doesn\u2019t prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn and forcing us to pay for endless wars that do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.<\/p>\n If you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes to the government\u2019s claims on your property and your money, you\u2019re not free.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t always this way, of course.<\/p>\n Early Americans went to war over the inalienable rights described by philosopher John Locke as the natural rights of life, liberty and property<\/a>.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t take long, however\u2014a hundred years, in fact\u2014before the American government was laying claim to the citizenry\u2019s property by levying taxes to pay for the Civil War. As the New York Times<\/em> reports, \u201cWidespread resistance led to its repeal in 1872<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Determined to claim some of the citizenry\u2019s wealth for its own uses, the government reinstituted the income tax in 1894. Charles Pollock challenged the tax as unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor. Pollock\u2019s victory was relatively short-lived. Members of Congress\u2014united in their determination to tax the American people\u2019s income\u2014worked together to adopt a constitutional amendment to overrule the Pollock decision.<\/p>\n On the eve of World War I, in 1913, Congress instituted a permanent income tax<\/a> by way of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution and the Revenue Act of 1913. Under the Revenue Act, individuals with income exceeding $3,000 could be taxed starting at 1% up to 7% for incomes exceeding $500,000.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all gone downhill from there.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, the government has used its tax powers to advance its own imperialistic agendas and the courts have repeatedly upheld the government\u2019s power to penalize<\/a> or jail those who refused to pay their taxes.<\/p>\n While we\u2019re struggling to get by, and making tough decisions about how to spend what little money actually makes it into our pockets after the federal, state and local governments take their share (this doesn\u2019t include the stealth taxes imposed through tolls, fines and other fiscal penalties), the government continues to do whatever it likes\u2014levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly\u2014with little thought for the plight of its citizens.<\/p>\n To top it all off, all of those wars the U.S. is so eager to fight abroad are being waged with borrowed funds. As The Atlantic<\/em> reports, \u201cU.S. leaders are essentially bankrolling the wars with debt<\/a>, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, we\u2019re the ones who will have to repay that borrowed debt.<\/p>\n For instance, American taxpayers have been forced to shell out more than $5.6 trillion since 9\/11<\/a> for the military industrial complex\u2019s costly, endless so-called \u201cwar on terrorism.\u201d That translates to roughly $23,000 per taxpayer to wage wars abroad, occupy foreign countries, provide financial aid to foreign allies, and fill the pockets of defense contractors and grease the hands of corrupt foreign dignitaries.<\/p>\n Mind you, that staggering $6 trillion is only a portion of what the Pentagon spends on America\u2019s military empire.<\/p>\n The United States also spends more on foreign aid than any other nation ($50 billion in 2017 alone<\/a>). More than 150 countries around the world receive U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance<\/a>, with most of the funds going to the Middle East, Africa and Asia. That price tag keeps growing<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n