MAXTAX: How to Divide and Conquer Your Own People

Historically, why have countries conquered other countries? Often, it was to enrich themselves. What if a government was already presiding over the richest country in the world? Then the goal might be to enrich themselves off their own people. What is the world's largest source of money? The American taxpayer. The question becomes how to maximize the collection of taxes. Here's how:

Guilt Tax
Cigarettes, alcohol, gas guzzling sports cars and a variety of other sins are taxed at a high rate. After all, we feel bad about using these things and feel a heavy tax is just. But it doesn't stop there. The more things that can be tagged as "bad", the more money can be made. Climategate attempted to label all industry as bad carbon producers, thereby opening the way to far reaching taxes that would dwarf anything that came before.

Regulation tax
Many regulations seem to be beneficial, such as pollution checks on cars. But verifying their compliance incurs a cost which typically must be paid by everybody. Fines also help pay for the regulations. Just because a new regulation would be more good than bad, that doesn't mean it should be passed. The additional complexity for citizens and businesses is already overwhelming, reducing the time they can devote to keeping their head above water. The fees or taxes add another cost. These can drag an otherwise good regulation well below the good/bad dividing line, making the costs far outweigh the benefits. But it is a moneymaker for the government.

Rich tax
I love this one because rich people are certainly in the minority, so their voting power is near zero, while the majority of voters pay no federal taxes at all, they do not see that they have any skin in the game. But they do pay dearly. The rich have gotten richer through this recession, increasing the disparity between rich and poor. We really need a working class that works hard and is paid well. This is a problem that is not being addressed. Instead, legislators want to take advantage of the disparity. Imagine being able to levy heavy taxes on the nation without them having any say in the matter. All you have to do is shift the wealth to the rich and tax them. Did they do this purposely, or was it just fortunate happenstance? Either way, a tax is not the answer. A rich tax is more likely to institutionalize the disparity than break it. And it trickles up from the workers whose sacrifice is feeding it. They just don't see it on their pay stubs.

Specific Industries
Identify some reason to tax certain industries more than others and you again have an easy target with no voting power.

National Security
We seem to be fighting wars on dual fronts, offshore and here at home, where extremists try to topple our government. The solution seems to be make the size of government larger, more well defended, more unassailable. But that in itself makes it more unstable and unsustainable, as economic swings and other factors cause it to reel wildly. But who in government can resist the prospect of such growth?

Real Estate, Sales Tax
State and local taxes attack citizens from another direction, in ways that often do not overlap how the federal government taxes. We don't pay federal taxes on real estate, but taken all together, all the sources add up to quite a chunk of money. It is difficult for any individual to know how much tax they actually do pay.

And finally, Everybody Else
Once it is shown that legislators went after all the other interests and collected higher taxes, and yet they somehow still need money, it's more palatable to levy another tax across the board that affects most other people. This can be done on the basis of some costs going up, inflation, etc.

Deception About the Facts
The debt ceiling talks are a great example of public denial of the problem. The "baseline" estimate of revenues, which most reasonable people would expect to be a flat line is really defined as a climbing curve. Are they really making a sincere effort to communicate how much of our money they are taking? Of course not, which is part of the strategy.

Divide and Conquer
The tax strategy involves whittling down the opposition to a voting minority, then finding an excuse to tax them. Then move on to the next minority and the next until everybody is tapped.