QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong: I find it disheartening the more I try to advance my family to build a better future for them, the more I realize that the harder I work we do not really get ahead. I agree that taxes just keep moving higher and I am now looking for a job in my field to leave California. A friend of mine from school left Illinois and moved to Texas. He said he feels much better and is gaining ground instead of losing it. Has taxes been the driving force to create migration in advanced civilization?
ANSWER: Absolutely. I have written how Rome fell and just mapping the population of Rome you can see the fate of Illinois – people sell and just leave. It is different this time because, under socialism, the government has become abusive. When it came to integration, they sought to implement it by sheer force.
You simply can’t legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. Jobs are created by the wealthy who become wealthy because of their innovation as a vision – i.e. Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and so on. Hemry Ford’s vision created the auto industry. Bill Gates in bringing DOS to life, created the personal computer industry as did Steve Jobs. How much employment did just those three men create? Far more than government.
Government creates nothing to advance society or to increase GDP in any positive manner. It is a natural human response not to pay taxes and this is why taxes have been the number one reason for civil war and revolution. It is always resentful to pay taxes whereas to give money to help someone is rewarding. Taxes tend to support politicians and their pensions which they exempt themselves from everything from Inside Trading to Obamacare. If they must sell some asset to take a government job, it is tax-free.
The great welfare state has produced a large segment of fraud and kept many people down since they would rather be taken care of than working to take care of themselves. Even in prison, many people are sentenced to 10 or 20 years and the first thing they do is commit a crime to get back in where they do not have to pay taxes and they are taken care of. You destroy people’s lives for such a long-period for non-violent crimes and then expect them to have a fulfilling life thereafter?
Clearly, New Zealand once had a program where if a woman was pregnant and she had no idea who the father was, the government provided everything right down to a free home. They ended up with the highest percentage of women who had no idea who the father of their child was. Naturally, they did and he would jump out the back window when the social worker visited. They got everything for free then.
Any of these types of programs divide and conquer. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government doesn’t first take from somebody else. When you reach a state where 50% of the people depend upon the other 50% to pay their bills, you end up with class warfare and bitterness. The is the cycle where civilization rises, peaks, and then crashes when government becomes the enemy of the people.
