The total tax rate on American families is pushing the 50% level. This level of taxation is theft of labor, equivalent to slavery. The charges by the President and his bureaucrats regarding “paying a fair share” of taxes demonstrate that few have any experience in or correct understanding of what business should be about. It is evidence that when bureaucrats see wealth, they go after it.
There is a reason they almost never retire but die in office. Very few have real-life business experiences. It is an elitist privilege to have had a powerful mentor or relative that allowed one to skip many steps to wealth, which is entirely different from working one’s way up in business by creating useful value.
Almost everything the government spends money on is analogous to the brick through the window. Spending money on national offense/defense, education, healthcare, law enforcement, righting perceived wrongs, etc., could all be reduced by an increase in self-government of the population and eliminating the red tape.
The aforementioned expenses are all efforts to restore the status quo of peace, prosperity, and the pursuit of happiness. There is no “government money.” The government either gets its money by taking it from the taxpayers or prints paper currency and declares it to be money, which exacerbates inflation, the hidden tax on everyone.
The core purpose of a business is to earn a profit and survive while conserving the investments of capital, materials, and labor. The point is to make something wanted or provide a service that elevates our standard of living. Anything else that happens is a byproduct, not the reason the business exists.
The byproducts would be things such as “full” employment, philanthropy, effects on the natural or work environments, equity, etc. Employee benefits are incentives offered to induce people to work for the organization.
“Fairness” and logic would require the beneficiaries of the increased standard of living to pay any necessary taxes, not the impersonal business itself. If the business causes adverse impacts or requires unique infrastructure, it should pay fees that address the situation, in proportion to its impact.
Favoring one business over another should not be a practice of government because it is not the repository of all knowledge. Business should not be taxed to provide for the national defense, for example, because those services all benefit real people who can be expected to pay their fair share, which relates to what they receive, not to what they can afford.
Governmental entities and tax-exempt Non-Governmental Organizations should be formed around the same set of understandings. The purpose of an agency should be some increase in the general welfare or collective standard of living, not any of the “byproducts.” Providing employment for out-of-office politicians in a tax-exempt think tank has no such general benefit.
When the purpose is accomplished or no longer needed, the agency should be eliminated, just like an unprofitable business. In business, almost everyone with real experience understands that there is a natural business cycle wherein products and services come into need and then become obsolescent, as do the skills of labor involved in the production. There is little need for buggy whips or barrel makers anymore.
Employment and process fluctuates in response to these needs, and technology improves productivity, which explains much of the increase in wealth of first-world countries. Individuals who fail to invest in themselves by periodically redeveloping their skills and maintaining their health will become less valuable to the business, but they can’t do this if inflation requires them to work multiple jobs.
If an organization is illustrated by a pyramid shape with the boss at the top and the rank-and-file workers at the wide bottom, the efficient way to respond would be to increase or decrease a side of the shape, not just the bottom. Adjustments should be made at all levels of expertise and experience.
Unions, education bureaucracies, and governmental entities that insist on protecting longevity and enforcing the last-in, first-out personnel process are acting to favor a byproduct of business, not the core purpose.
Strictly speaking, then, there is no justification for over-taxing any business so long as it sticks to its core purpose. It provides wages, goods, and services to its employees; those employees should be taxed on their benefits.
What would be the result of changing the tax code as described? Businesses would no longer need to lobby government officials for favorable treatment and tax relief. This would remove the opportunities for graft and level the playing field for businesses new and old, increasing the probability of competition among them, benefiting consumers.
Competition internationally would be improved, and the incentive for businesses to offshore labor would diminish. The conditions for creating monopolies that exploit labor and prevent competition would be reduced.
They would be able to concentrate more on doing what they do best in response to actual needs and creating new products as opposed to responding to outside governmental influence, increasing productivity and wealth. Bankruptcies would decrease. All taxation would be collected on individual returns.
Thus, taxpayers would have a firmer grasp on how much government was costing them compared to its benefits. All individual taxpayers should pay something because they all share nearly equally in the opportunity for benefits.
As it is now, some 48% of the population has an incentive to vote in favor of any taxation if they imagine a slight benefit to themselves, even if it’s revenge for another’s prosperity.
Politicians never acknowledge a “fair share” for them, nor do they ever propose a maximum rate for taxpayers. Wealth transfer from one group of taxpayers to another segment of the population is not a constitutionally justified function of government: it’s graft.
It’s past time to examine the value of our government. What is the war in Ukraine doing to improve your life? How about mandatory immunizations that jeopardized the health of more than were helped and caused the firing of others?
Government tries to do entirely too much, and most of it poorly.
Mr. Parker is a Texas registered architect, a Masters' graduate of Texas A&M, and a combat wounded USMC rifle company officer veteran of the Viet Nam War Tet Offensive of 1968.
