This Land is Your Land…
This Land is Your Land…
Have you ever stopped to seriously consider how large a percentage of your wages is taken by the government? Ever even tried to enumerate the myriad ways you are taxed, irrespective of the actual monetary amount'? Where I live there are, among other things, sales taxes (over four percent for most purchases but considerably more for some), income taxes (roughly five percent, for me at least), corporate taxes (six percent of state- taxable corporate income—you might consider this a type of sales tax since it ultimately impacts the costs of the goods and services we might purchase). Add to these the various "fees" charged for privileges such as driving your car on government roads (which is about all of them). Do not forget other licensing and registration fees either; whenever you employ the services of a surveyor, a lawyer or any other professional the state requires to be licensed, their fee is larger because of these levies.
We need not stop there, but let us do so for a moment. Leaving federal taxes out of the equation, I would guess that we have already exceeded ten percent of your income. Doesn't seem that high you say'? Just remember that when Israel clamored for "a king to judge us like all the nations" God warned them that such a sovereign would "take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and...of your flocks: and ye shall be his servants" (I Samuel 8:15-17). It appears from the context of this passage that the Lord finds ten percent a burdensome exacting from an earthly king.
Speaking of things earthly, or perhaps I should say earthy, I must not fail to mention the property tax. For the house and land I currently (ostensibly) own, this tax works out to approximately one percent of the actual market value of that property. 1 say one percent only because I have lived here less than a year. Toward this year's end, I anticipate they will be looking for another one percent. Assuming nothing changes—do not count on me holding my breath—they will have hands out for a similar cut the following December as well. Are you seeing the pattern here?
Suppose I had 100 sheep. For simplicity's sake let us pretend that my flock is unusually hearty, not at all amorous and that I do not keep it around for culinary reasons; in other words my flock neither grows nor diminishes year after year since they are neither breeding nor dying. To make this comparison more "apples to apples", moreover, let us assume 100 to be the number of' sheep necessary simply to clothe my family. As my house shelters my family, my sheep help clothe them.
Were sheep taxation to work as property taxation does, the state would come asking for one of my sheep every year. You can see that in a few years time my wool production capacity would be significantly reduced. My local government, the benevolent institution it is, however, would not dream of so hampering my production. Instead of annually taking from me a sheep, they request the market value of a sheep in federal reserve notes, "dollars" if you will, each year.
"What's your gripe, McCroskey," you ask'? It is not that the state is taking away some portion of my labors' fruit. My objection is that by repeatedly and indefinitely appropriating my sheep or their dollar-value equivalent, the government unequivocally communicates that it considers "my private property" to be, in fact, its own. The deed to my property serves ultimately as a rental agreement between me and the state. In terms of this issue's theme my dirt is not my own.
Whether it is sheep or a truckload of dirt or a room of my house or the cash ransom I must pay for any of the above, the fact of the matter is that the moment I claim myself unable to pay up is the moment I forfeit to the government that which was once considered mine, regardless of my circumstance and no matter how many years prior I purchased the property in question or paid off the mortgage.
To assert that the state regards my property as its property considering only the property tax is to say nothing of the issue of eminent domain (or condemnation), the power of the government to appropriate private property for its own use in return for compensation to the property owner. While there are limitations on when this power can be exercised, rest assured that the bounds are rather broad. Eminent domain, moreover, can be invoked no matter how you feel about handing over your house and land.
It can he argued that the reason we are taxed in so many varied ways is to obfuscate the government's total bill. Indeed politicians have become quite adept at doing so. I suggest to you, however, that property taxes and many of the laws regarding land use and seizure are more pernicious. For the government to say "if push comes to shove we can take not only a portion of what is yours but everything that you thought was yours" is both covetousness and thievery. You need not commit any crime; you need only be unable to pay tribute.
So long as we expect and accept that which our secular kings and princes promise, we too shall be their servants, and we will have to he content with the dwindling vestiges of the liberty our temporal forbears thought they purchased with blood and for which they risked their own sod. Lest we seethe, however, over the scraps Leviathan flings in our direction, let us never forget that our citizenship lies not in this country but in that of a far superior country (Hebrews 11:16), a heavenly yet remade earthly one where true freedom will at last be found when the King of kings has supplanted the petty tyrants who mistook our dirt for their own. We shall inherit the earth.