Will more tax revenue improve quality of life for the 99%?

Occupy Wall Street is most likely one of the most diverse social movements to ever take form in this country. There are so many different messages and goals within these protests, that it would unfair to associate the whole group with any one specific message that happens to come out of the camps. Thanks to OWS, things like the Federal Reserve, banker bailouts, and special interest groups have now taken center stage in American political discourse. However, some other less advantageous memes are creeping into this growing counter culture and have become the main point of focus for the mainstream media.

I’m talking primarily about the “tax the rich” angle that is being championed by such establishment mouthpieces as Michael Moore, Warren Buffet and Rachel Maddow. I’ll admit, it does sound appealing considering that most of the country’s biggest corporations pay no taxes [1], but is this vengeful approach really going to improve anyone’s quality of life, or is it just going to funnel more of our wealth into the government and military industrial complex?

It’s definitely not right for average people to be weighed down with massive taxes while multinational corporations get off the hook, but if we ask for higher taxes on them we are inadvertently approving of our own taxation. Before we get too carried away and start asking for nebulous government measures, let’s stop for a minute and make sure that these measures will actually serve our cause.

I’m not saying we should leave the tax structure as it is, and I’m certainly not saying that the robber barons should keep their plundered loot, but just that we should approach this whole situation with care and caution so we can come up with a plan that will actually work. We don’t want to “cut off our nose to spite our face”, so to speak. We have the potential to enact real change, so let’s make sure that we’re actually going to get what we think we’re going to get out of some of the requests were being led to make.

By saying that we are being led to make these requests I am suggesting that they are originating from the establishment, through the media mouthpieces I mentioned earlier. One does not have to look far to uncover the motives that these characters have in getting behind this tax plan. Without even getting into Rachel Maddow’s connection to Anglo American elite through her Rhodes Scholorship, we can easily see that the company she works for, General Electric/MSNBC, received bailout money [2] — bailout money that was made possible by tax revenue.

Warren Buffet’s story is even more interesting, as he is somewhat of the ringleader in this tragic scam. It was his August editorial in the New York Times that reintroduced these ideas into the public consciousness. In his article [3] he tries to play the part of the naive old man by suggesting that he has absolutely no clue why the tax structure is the way it is, when his whole life has been spent hatching plots to keep his riches stashed away. From cheating on taxes [4], to conning his way into bailout money[5], this robber baron has shown that he is no naïve old man and he knows the tax system better than the IRS. His hypocritical antics show an obvious attempt to mislead the public into generating another cash cow for him and his globalist cohorts.

The government is in the financial sector’s back pocket; that is why people have been protesting, so it doesn’t make much sense for us to trust the government with the job of “redistributing wealth”. If someone robs your house, do you trust his getaway driver to give you back the stolen possessions?

The government is responsible for taking over 12 trillion dollars [6] that was extorted from hard-working Americans, and placing it in the hands the people who were responsible for causing the recent great depression. It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to put that same organization in charge of making sure that money gets back where it belongs. Even if they get their entire incomes taxed they will still have the ability to steal it back through fractional reserve lending, hedging inside deals, creating derivatives, and receiving bailouts. These are the processes through which they rob the working class blind, so to enact lasting change it is necessary for us to not allow these unnecessary practices in our business interactions.

As recognized by Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920s, “Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.”

Taking away the special privileges and public influence that these elites hold is the key to removing them from their illegitimate thrones. It is this influence, and these special privileges that allow them to get massive tax breaks, legal protection, government funding and bailout checks. The solution here should be more centered around things that we should STOP doing, instead of things that we should START doing. Furthermore, even if this money actually does stay out of the hands of the aristocracy, it is pretty much guaranteed to be squandered and mismanaged by the government. After all, they are the ones who decided to cut public services at the same exact time they channeled over 12 trillion dollars to multinational corporations and banks. This is a sum that far exceeds the kind of revenue that taxes generate over several years, just to give you an idea of how directly these bailouts affected the austerity measures that followed.

With a massive public debt, weekly threats about “government shutdown” and new wars, it is not likely that any new tax revenue would be allotted for beneficial social services. The chances are far greater that this money will go toward bureaucratic budgets, aircraft carriers, atomic weapons and other frivolous expenses, as it always has. You can’t use a broken system to fix itself; it just doesn’t make sense.

SOURCES:

[1] http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2011/11/corporate_taxpayers_corporate_tax_dodgers_2008-2010.php
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120106870.html
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html
[4] http://www.greeleygazette.com/press/?p=11129
[5] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/04/05/65496/buffett-champion-of-bailout-is.html
[6] http://pubrecord.org/nation/8622/pentagon-papers-wall-street/
[7] Sir Josiah Stamp, The Legalized Crime of Banking – Silas W. Adams (1958)

J.G Vibes is an activist and artist who has been studying occult history, theology and government for most of his life. In 2007 he began hosting electronic dance music events and establishing Good Vibes Promotions as a respected name in the counter culture. It wasn’t until 2008 that he began to fuse his philosophic ideas with his events, this was around the same time that he began writing and putting together the plan for his book Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance. Since then he has established a record label and a website that hosts a wide variety of activist information that is frequently updated. www.goodvibespromo.com (facebook page updated more frequently)