The background: On Inauguration Day 2009, 2 million people converged on Washington, D.C.

“Two million people don’t gather in one place unless things are really good, or really bad,” we observed that day. There is a fine line between the two.

Almost three years later, on Oct. 11, 2011, we stepped in the proverbial crotte when we suggested in the 5 Min. Forecast that the disappointment of “the crowd” that had gathered on the National Mall that day had manifested itself in two ways: the Tea Party on the political right and Occupy Wall Street on the political left, suggesting there are “uncomfortable parallels” between the two movements.

“Absolutely not!” cried a representative sample from the Tea Party. “The Wall Street protesters are the virus. The Tea Party is the antidote. The stark and direct contrast between the two groups could not be more noticeable. We have one group demanding everything for nothing (Wall Street protesters). The other group is demanding the government stop taking, regulating and restricting everything.”

“Maybe you should spend more time finding libertarian values within the movement,” countered another voice, “which I strongly believe is our last hope. Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is bringing the widespread outrage against crony capitalism and bought government into the headlines. Don’t assist in the mainstream media’s attempts to marginalize them.”

The debate broke out a week to the day after I had attended a meeting titled Conference on a Stable Dollar: Why We Need It and How to Achieve It, hosted by the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. One notable attendee I had the good fortune of meeting at the conference was a gentleman by the name of Ralph Benko. Mr. Benko, a Forbes contributor, has been in his capacity as fellow at the Lehrman Institute arguing for a new, improved gold standard for three decades.

“No contortions are needed,” Mr. Benko wrote the day after the conference, suggesting one idea unifies the popular protests, “to cross the bridge between the ‘profiteer-hating’ #OWS and the sober reformers gathered in monetary conclave by the Heritage Foundation. The official website of Occupy Wall Street contains an entire forum dedicated to the gold standard. While by no means unanimous, a theme emerges that elegantly is summarized by one of the activists there: ‘Gold and silver. Been honest money since the dawn of time. The only money that has ever worked….’”

Indeed, in the preface to The Case For Gold, the minority report from the presidential 1982 Gold Commission, Ron Paul provides for common ground between the Tea Party and those who would Occupy Wall Street. “Whenever governments are granted the power to purchase their own debt,” Dr. Paul writes, “they never fail to do so, eventually, destroying the value of the currency. Political money always fails because free people eventually reject it.

“For short periods, individual countries can tell their citizens to use paper, but only at the sacrifice of personal and economic liberty.”

The Case for Gold, Dr. Paul’s “Lost Gold Bible,” was written to demonstrate “as clearly as possible the choice available to us: political (paper) money or commodity (real) money… Making the wrong choice will jeopardize our political freedom and destroy the possibility of restoring a truly productive economy.” Never have those words wrung as true as they do today… whether you’re a curmudgeonly Tea Party conservative or a dirty Occupy “hippie.”

Ironically, the kerfuffle between the two groups arose while we were convening for our Agora Financial Reserve Safety & Survival Summit in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. We screened our new documentary, Risk! for the audience assembled there. Risk! follows a unique set of entrepreneurs as they wend their way through an increasingly regulated economy fraught with litigation and other onerous hurtles to success. As such, we’ve been ruminating on the role of the entrepreneur as the engine of the economy and sole creator of jobs for well on two years now.

The entrepreneur is the antithesis to the politician and benefits most from economic freedom. The society as a whole prospers as a consequence. (You’ll have to view the film and decide on your own if we got the premise right!)

“We have a melting place of ideas,” Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, says in an interview we conducted for Risk!

We have the desire, the know-how and the goods. But frankly, we often find ourselves fighting our own government.

What’s changing American society is that we used to be people who did things by ourselves. We were brave. We went out there and we fought for the next generation. We gave more to our government than we expected back. Now it’s shifted. Now there’s a large portion of society, about half of Americans, getting checks from the government. It’s entitlement.

You’re entitled to all these things, and if you don’t succeed, it’s not your fault, it’s the companies’ fault, and you’ll sue them or the government owes you this.

Today, we have a mind-set among a large portion of our population of entitlement, which is very, very different than our parents’ generation and their parents’ generation, where you come here with nothing, it’s a gift to be a citizen here and it’s such an opportunity.

The American dream is not a guarantee that you are going to succeed. It’s just a guarantee of equal opportunity to try to succeed. It’s not a guarantee of equal results.

The popular uprisings of both the “right” and the “left” — as onerous and misleading as those political wedge terms can be — would benefit from a return to a system of honest money in which, to quote Dr. Paul again, “the people are in charge, not the politicians and the bankers.”

“No reason why the Tea Party can’t unite with Wall Street protesters,” writes a third voice from the fracas in The 5, “and really sock it to those nervous suckers who occupy the Hill.

“2012 is already shaping up to be an especially dramatic year.”

Amen. Bring it on.

Regards,

Addison Wiggin

Politics, Paper Money, and the United States Entrepreneurial Culture was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Doug: Consider what seems to be brewing in the Tea Party movement. It’s just a straw in the wind, of no real significance itself, but a foreshadowing of something ominous. All the false hope this Tea Party movement is creating impresses me as similar to what was going on in France in the late 1780s…

L: I think I can guess, but why do you say that? As much as you dislike the government, isn’t it a good thing that so many people are finally fed up with it and at long last are showing signs of willingness to throw the bums out?

Doug: Well, you know I don’t like making predictions, so I’m not prepared to say that it’s a terrible thing, but it’s at least a double-edged sword. Of course it’s nice to see that there are people out there who are unhappy with the status quo, with the so-called two-party system, and with the Republican party in particular. But the process of “throwing the bums out” has gone on since Day One, and it’s accomplished absolutely nothing. The system itself has degraded hugely. And more than ever before, government draws the absolute worst type of people and totally corrupts those who might be decent. That’s because government is so overwhelmingly powerful today.

L: Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. But why the Republicans in particular? Isn’t the stupid party as bad as the evil party?

Doug: As you know, I’ve always distinguished them this way: the Democrats definitely don’t believe in economic freedom, but they say they believe in social freedom, while the Republicans definitely don’t believe in social freedom, but they say they believe in economic freedom. Neither believes in both – that would make them libertarians.

L: [Chuckles] So, it’s what they lie about that really distinguishes them. Or, more to the point, it’s not what they believe, or say they believe, that drives them, but what they don’t believe. Not what they value, but what they fear. It’s not love but hate that is the guiding principle of American politics.

Doug: Exactly. Like most of what we see in politics, it’s completely perverse. The only good thing about the Democratic party is that they’re at least consistent: they are collectivists and statists through and through. They are collectivists in what they say, and they are collectivists in what they do. That gives them the appearance of being more honest than the Republicans.

L: They may be crypto-communists draped in red, white, and blue, but at least they’re consistent?

Doug: Yes, but not the Republicans. They say they value freedom and the individual, but their actions give lie to those claims, and they give freedom a bad name. It makes you reluctant to use words like “free market,” when you have the likes of the hostile and mildly demented McCain, and the bent and clinically stupid Bush claiming those principles for what they do.

L: Makes me mad. It adds insult to injury that Ronald Reagan got elected on essentially libertarian rhetoric – smaller government, lower taxes, getting the state off the little guy’s back, etc., and the signed appropriations bills that saw government grow by huge, then-unprecedented amounts. Many people today think the Reagan years prove that less government is a bad idea!

Doug: Remember what the Reagan team used to say, “If not us, who? And if not now, when?” As it turned out, it wasn’t them and it wasn’t then. The worst enemies of individual liberty are knaves that claim they’re for it but utterly betray it. And incompetents and ineffectual fools who say they’re trying to save freedom by increasing the size of the state.

L: Alas for Bartleby the scrivener. Okay, so back to the Tea Party, a sort of rebellion on the right, could this not push the center of debate in the right direction? A little?

Doug: It might, just as buying a $1 lottery ticket might make someone a zillionaire. The French Revolution also probably seemed like a good idea at the time, if only because it wanted to overthrow a totally corrupt ancien régime.

The problem with the Tea Party movement is that it has no underlying philosophical basis. Without that sound foundation, it’s either going to fail or transform into something really ugly. On average, Tea Party members know something is wrong. They’re disgruntled, and they want change. Not the Obama type of change – but what? You just don’t know which direction they may go, and there are some very disturbing directions they could end up taking.

L: Such as?

Doug: They tend to be thoughtless and reflexive. They conflate some muddled feelings of “tradition” with an actual belief system. They operate on a stimulus-response basis. They’re religious in exactly the same way as fundamentalist Muslims. And they’re hypernationalistic.

“My country, right or wrong.” “Support our troops.” That sounds good, until you realize they’re just a bunch of heavily armed kids who are blindly doing what they’re told in some fly-blown place they can’t even find on a map. The Germans supported their troops when they invaded Poland. “Us” against “them.” Wave the flag. That sort of thing. It’s like a gigantic replay of the Milgram experiment. It’s just another dramatization of collectivism and jingoism.

L: The one that really gets me, and not just from Americans but from people all around the world, is: “My country, right or wrong!” That means you’re willing to support what you know is wrong. It’s pathological.

Doug: And a complete abnegation of individual responsibility. It’s almost a Pavlovian stimulus-response type of reaction, more appropriate to chimpanzees around a watering hole than rational humans who can think things out for themselves.

The very strong, atavistic, religious streak to Tea Party types is a related danger. Glenn Beck is one of their standard-bearers. He’s always admonishing people to do things because God wants them to. That’s potentially very problematical – which god? Yahweh? Allah? Probably not Thor or Baal – but maybe it’s Jesus. What would Jesus do if he were in the CIA in Afghanistan? What does Glenn Beck think the Holy Ghost would advise? So many people claim to know what their gods want everyone to do, and if a god commands you to do something, I suppose you have no choice in the matter. But they can’t all be right.

L: Unless you happen to be Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. Then you have a phone on your desk that gives you a direct line to God. Like the Bat Phone in Commissioner Gordon’s office. It lights up when God calls. Beep, beep, beep…

Doug: Or like that other guy… was it Oral Roberts who said he’d had a vision of an 800-foot-tall Jesus who said that if someone didn’t give him $8 million, he was going to die? There’s very little difference in the mindset of the average Christian and the average Muslim. Each side sees the other as dangerous, fanatical, and misguided – and they can both be right about that. Things haven’t changed much since the days of the Crusades.

L: I remember hearing about Roberts – but there were so many TV-preacher scandals. And to heap insult upon injury, Jesus himself reserved some of his harshest words for hypocrites. To engage in the hypocrisy of preying on your own flock, in his name, is about as low as you can go.

Doug: I should make clear here that I’m not trying to make fun of religion, per se. I understand that when people are looking for some type of spiritual reality, they are hoping to find something that makes their lives more meaningful than a dog’s, or a chimpanzee’s… and that’s laudable. But parroting some demagogue’s aberrant thoughts or blindly following words written in a book don’t impress me as paths to enlightenment.

I’m not trying to invalidate any person’s beliefs. I’m simply trying to get them to take individual responsibility and not fall into group-think.

L: Like Mark Twain or Robert Heinlein, it’s not religion itself I’ve got a problem with but the big churches, which are human organizations run by fallible human beings, that I often have a lot of problems with.

Doug: Yes. I’m well known for being an atheist, but I’m actually quite sympathetic to looking for spiritual truth; there’s no conflict whatsoever there. I’m all for it – I just haven’t found any proof for any religion that I can accept, and I don’t accept things just because “it’s been written,” nor because everybody else does. I don’t want to delude myself. Just because something may sound comforting doesn’t mean it’s true.

But that’s all a digression. The point is that it’s not just religion but a willingness to use the state to impose religious values on society that I’m afraid is a big element in the Tea Party movement. It can be fine for people to have personal values derived from their religions, but these people are coming together to look for political solutions to every real and imagined problem facing America today.

The fact that they are looking for political solutions to these problems is, itself, a formula for disaster. If they are successful, they will pass laws. And maybe, accidentally, some of those laws might do some good—

L: [laughs]

Doug: —but most of them are going to be just like the laws being passed now: arbitrary, ill-informed, misguided, symptomatic of group-think, and ultimately destructive. They are simply legal manifestations of the psychological aberrations of the politicians who enact them.

L: Weakening the separation of church and state.

Doug: Exactly. If you view religion as the quest for a spiritual reality, I have no problem with it. But, very unfortunately, whether in Christendom or the world of Islam, in reality it amounts to thought control and enforced morality. There’s a real strain of “old time religion” in the Tea Party movement. I don’t think the men who signed the Declaration of Independence would approve.

And that’s not all; there’s also a bit of a class problem brewing in the Tea Party pot. To use an admittedly broad and somewhat nebulous short-hand, we can say there’s still a visible lower, middle, and upper class in America today.

The problem with the lower class is that their emotional level varies between desperation and apathy. Both are destructive forces, really bad. It’s why most members of the lower classes are cemented there.

And the upper class, their problem is a poisonous mix of arrogance, greed, and delusions of superiority.

I’m a fan of the middle class, made as it is of people who want to work hard, create and run businesses, move up in life, and so forth. When a country doesn’t have a middle class, it’s in trouble. So, it’s a good thing.

But, entirely apart from the fact the U.S. is rapidly losing its middle class – which is another huge problem – the American middle class today has a dark underbelly, and that is a deep and driving fear. For one thing, fear of losing what they have; that’s a fear that’s going to grow like a cancer as the Greater Depression gets worse. For another, fear of outsiders – Mexicans and Muslims, for example. They fear anything that may challenge or change their culture. Fear is the lowest common denominator of the middle class.

The Tea Party is a middle-class movement that channels this fear into the political arena – and politics always caters to the lowest common denominator. Fear is very dangerous, it can have all kinds of very nasty results. Fear causes people to act irrationally.

L: And fear is most dangerous when combined with its ugly twin, ignorance.

Doug: The result is self-serving myopia, of which there is plenty in the Tea Party movement. They want to cut spending – but not for their Social Security benefits. They want less government – but they want the government to protect or “create” jobs. They want to close the borders – forgetting that we’re all immigrants. They want a “strong national defense” – but they forget that fear has turned the U.S. into a paranoid “national security” state.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party is just a hodgepodge of discontent and grumbling. Tinged with some inchoate rage around the edges. It stands for nothing. It’s simply a reaction.

L: No bright side?

Doug: Well, it has caused a reaction in the Republican Party, where most of these people came from, which is starting to realize that they could be hurt badly by this division…

L: They could be outflanked on the right.

Doug: Exactly. So they’ve come up with a new “Pledge to America,” which echoes that ridiculous “Contract with America” that the Republicans came up with in 1994.

L: We sued to call that the “Contract on America.”

Doug: I’ve read it, and it’s the most stupid political blather that you could ever imagine. The 1994 Contract was basically meaningless and unenforceable verbiage. It centered on making technical changes in the way Congress was run. Its net result was zero. Its lasting effect is that things are much worse today and destructive policies much more ingrained.

L: I just googled the new one, and here are the actual pledges:

• We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its framers and honor the original intent of those precepts that have been consistently ignored – particularly the Tenth Amendment, which grants that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

• We pledge to advance policies that promote greater liberty, wider opportunity, a robust defense, and national economic prosperity.

• We pledge to honor families, traditional marriage, life, and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values.

• We pledge to make government more transparent in its actions, careful in its stewardship, and honest in its dealings.

• We pledge to uphold the purpose and promise of a better America, knowing that to whom much is given, much is expected and that the blessings of our liberty buoy the hopes of mankind.

“To whom much is given, much is expected” – sounds like the communist dictum of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Doug: It may be worth deconstructing both the “Contract” and the “Pledge” in another conversation. But while the Pledge pushes a few gratifying hot buttons, it’s essentially wishful thinking. And outright lies. It’s as I’ve been saying, a mixture of religion, fear, and atavism.

The first one about the Constitution (which is a flawed document but defines a much better government than the one America suffers under today) sounds like a step in the right direction. But remember, these are Republicans – a bunch of unprincipled, shameless liars motivated only to feather their own nests. You can’t believe anything they say. At least you can believe the Democrats: they overtly promise to collectivize the U.S., and you can trust them to work hard in that direction.

L: Even Reagan, the great orator who might actually have believed some of what he said, couldn’t get the GOP to deliver on their promises. What chance do these Tea Partiers have of forcing the Republicans to do what they say they will do – if that can even be defined meaningfully?

Doug: Slim and none, and Slim’s out of town.

L: So, in sum, it’s a good thing that people are finally getting pissed off enough to rise up, at least a little, but being against something bad doesn’t make you for something good.

Doug: It’s as laughable as the fascists being against the communists. And this isn’t the first time. Remember the Constitution Party? I think it still exists, but it’s been an abject failure, because, I think, all they really had was a name that sounded good. They had no principles and didn’t even understand the original Constitution has been interpreted out of existence. The Libertarian Party, too, I have to say, seems to have lost its internal gyroscope. They want to be big and successful now, hooking up with mainstream names like Bob Barr. It’s basically a bunch of losers and wannabes.

L: So much for “the party of principle.”

Doug: This is inherent in politics. Unfortunately, there are no political solutions to political problems.

L: Rent seeking pretty much precludes that. But let’s back up a minute. You said earlier, somewhat tongue in cheek, that a successful Tea Party might accidentally enact some laws with positive consequences. I would guess, for example, that a lot of them are hard-money advocates. If they could actually gain the upper hand or become the swing-vote that forces the Republicans to accept some of their demands, they might get the dollar put back on the gold standard. That’d be a big step in the right direction, wouldn’t it?

Doug: That’s possible, but the only way we can make progress, at this point, is not by passing more laws – even ones you and I might think are marginally good ideas – but by repealing the laws that have already been passed. That would allow the free market to correct the economic distortions all these years of government meddling have created, as it should.

The problem, fundamentally, is that people keep on looking to the government to solve their problems. So they come up with a new party or a new movement, and they propose new laws. This is not just the wrong approach, but the exact opposite of the right approach. The only way to get back on the right track is to undo the expansion of government and interference in the economy we’ve seen over the last 100-plus years. Repeal the laws, abolish the agencies. Get rid of it all, and free to the market to administer its harsh but effective treatments.

Instead, these people just want new and different laws. The prognosis is not good.

L: But… that never happens. Well, George Washington could have been king, and I’ll always respect the fact that he declined, and the government still got larger. Leviathan never willingly relinquishes power.

Doug: No, it doesn’t. It’s exactly analogous to a cancer. That’s why I keep saying that things will get worse than even I think they will. If we have a conversation on this subject a year from now, I expect we’ll be in the midst of real crisis and chaos such as few Americans can even imagine today.

L: Heavy stuff again, Doug. If America is beyond the point of no return, as you say, the whole world economy is in it up to its neck as well. And the investment implications…

Doug: As I’ve said before: liquidate, consolidate, speculate, and create.

L: And diversify your political risk.

Doug: Definitely. It’s well past time to prepare for the day when you’ll need to get out of Dodge, fast.

L: Well… thanks for another sobering assessment.

Doug: You’re welcome. It may not be pleasant to face the facts sometimes, but they are still facts; you either face them or face the consequences of ignoring them.

Doug Casey and Louis James
Whiskey & Gunpowder

November 1, 2010

Doug Casey on the Tea Party Movement was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Therefore I did not “see” any of that happen in real time, and cannot vouch for what happened one way or the other. I have seen some after-the-fact coverage on CNN and MSNBC, but just a little before I could get around to changing the channel.

But now I’m concerned about the accusations of racism being hurled at the Tea Party protesters. In particular, charges that they shouted epithets at black members of Congress as they were headed for the Capitol chambers to vote.

If that charge is accurate, it points – at the very least – to pretty poor crowd control on the part of the Tea Party organizers. I do not believe they are so morally deficit as to condone something like that, or so politically tone-deaf that they wouldn’t realize how an incident like that can damage and even destroy a movement.

So, I turned with interest to an article forwarded to me, “Anatomy of a Racial Smear,” by Jack Cashill. It appears to be a pretty well-reasoned article, even though it appears in a neocon rag (The American Thinker) that I don’t usually cite approvingly.

“Tea Party protesters scream ‘nigger’ at black congressman.”

That’s the headline on an article Cashill says was written by reporter William Douglas, and published by the McClatchy Newspapers chain. I couldn’t believe a supposedly respectable newspaper chain would put something that inflammatory in print, so I started Googling, and here it is, right on the chain’s site.

The question then becomes, is it true? And Cashill does a convincing job of taking that headline apart, word by word, as well as the article itself. Truth, it appears, is pretty elusive. The smear, you come to believe, is everywhere in that McClatchy headline and article.

Check it out. Read Cashill’s article, and while you’re at it, definitely check out his links – a video of the Tea Party protesters shouting at the congressional Black Caucus (see if you can hear the “N” word) and an audio link of House Majority Whip James CIyburn, who walked with the Black Caucus contingent, admitting to Keith Olbermann afterwards, “I didn’t hear the slurs.” (Maybe that’s because there were none?)

Use of the word “nigger” has no place in our political discourse, of course, or in protests. But so far the only place I’ve actually seen or heard use of the epithet is in that McClatchy Newspapers headline and article.

Videotapes are everywhere today. Has anyone actually seen or heard a tape where the Tea Party protesters at the Capitol used racial taunts or epithets? If so, please bring this to my attention. Short of some real evidence, all we seem to have is the “word” of members of the Black Caucus and an apparently biased reporter. I wouldn’t take the word of a Black Caucus congressman if he had both hands on the Bible, they are such propagandists. Ha, that’s probably true with any Member of Congress other than Ron Paul, so maybe I’m being racist myself in singling out the Black Caucus. But they are very conspicuous propagandists, and they’re the center of this particular story.

I’ve personally witnessed only one Tea Party gathering, the original one on Capitol Hill last year, and that was as an observer. I wanted to see how many people showed up. What I saw were very ordinary Americans. Definitely not the Beautiful People you see at Washington soirées, both on the Left and the Right. Most of them probably were not exactly “sophisticated” in their way of expressing their concerns – ordinary Americans, after all, have better things to pursue with their lives than politics, things such as jobs, family, etc. But they were angry enough to get off their duffs and come to Washington to protest. That anger, however, was directed at the federal government’s messing up their lives, and our nation’s future. I certainly heard or saw no anger that was racist.

Isn’t this the kind of civic involvement all the “good government” types say we should be encouraging? Why is it (in the MSM) that only leftist rallies and demonstrations are portrayed as virtuous?

I am certain there are some racists in the Tea Party movement, just as there are in any broad-based movement. That doesn’t mean they define it, and from what I’ve seen, the Tea Party organizers have tried to weed them out. Heck, there are racists in any big civil rights gathering, only their racism is directed at whites. I see fear of homos and fear of Mexicans as much bigger problems on the Right today.

Do not mistake vehemence for something more sinister.

By the way, can anyone explain why the members of the Black Caucus were walking through the crowd? Where were they coming from? Since I didn’t watch the live coverage, I have no idea why they were there.

Congressmen usually take the underground Capitol Hill subway when going from their Senate and House office buildings (if that’s where they were coming from) to the Capitol for a vote. And if they are arriving by car, the car usually pulls right up to an entrance of the Capitol, so in that case they wouldn’t be walking a gauntlet through the crowd. Call me Mr. Suspicious, but it sort of looks to me like they wanted to provoke a reaction – not such a stretch for members of the Black Caucus. Call me Mr. Conspiracist, but I think I smell a set-up.

So, show me the videotape or recording evidence – not of vehemence, but of actual racism. If you produce it, I’m ready to condemn it. Short of that, I condemn the people who smear their opposition – without evidence – with such labels. That sort of group-smear may be politics as usual, but that’s why most Americans hate politics as usual.

A note to my liberal friends:

If you are uncomfortable with the vehemence of the protests, all I can say is, get used to it. It’s only going to get worse in the years ahead, on both the Left and the Right. As the nation heads toward bankruptcy, “entitlements” will be drastically cut and taxes will be drastically raised. There are going to be a lot of pissed-off people.

Regards,
David Franke
Whiskey & Gunpowder

March 26, 2010

Do They Wear White Hoods at Their Tea Parties? was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

I’m like a former child star, tidying up the cell he shares with his prison boyfriend and wondering where it all went wrong…

How many of you are wondering on this latest April 15 — as I am — how this present slavery became so thorough?

I just grudgingly did my taxes. Turns out I owe my lecherous Uncle Sammy more money in fees and surprising amounts of progressive taxes than I can truly hope to pay in one natural lifetime. How could this have happened?

It’s a sad and sordid tale of misspent youth, ruinous debt and the women and booze that caused them. You see, I wasn’t always the stalwart Austrian economic schoolboy and ascetic doomsayer you’ve come to know and love. Like my fellow benighted consumer statists, I prayed in the same temple of credit worship and government trust.

I thought Citibank would lovingly provide my electronic toys and shiny vehicles at negligible interest forever and ever. I thought the government was giving me the best of every world with social security and the stock-boosted defined contribution plan.

Live and learn.

The 401(k) is a trap. The banks and the government — as usual — have given the populace enough rope to hang themselves with credit and intimations of retirement security…and the ability to borrow from the retirement account or even withdraw from it…at very high cost…

Try to take out that money you’ve been saving. I dare ya. See, the deal is that you cannot use it before the age of 59 ½ except under a narrow band of circumstances. If you contract with the devil, don’t be surprised when you wind up in hell.

If you need that money before you’re halfway through your 59th year — say to pay off those enormous debts that the banks were so happy to let you run up — then expect to pay a 10% vig off the top and then have whatever you save count as income on the year. In a progressive tax system, that means you get to watch roughly half of it disappear.

The 401(k) only works under circumstances that don’t exist in the real world. The fiat currency in which you save won’t be worth diddly by the time you are allowed to get it. Try to take it out before that and the government will kill you with fees and progressive tax.

And I certainly hope you don’t still believe the one about growth and interest outpacing inflation.

Looking back, the come-on does bear a strong resemblance to those internet scam letters I get in my inbox. The maliciousness of the scammer and the greed of the victim have to work together closely and well for the crime to take place.

“We’ll let you save pre-tax (taxes we impose in the first place) dollars, and guard your account (forbid you from taking it out without making it extremely costly).”

When I jumped ship from my last job to become your editor, I made the mistake of demanding all the money I’d trusted to Fidelity under the rules of the defined benefit plan. I wanted nothing further to do with them or the banks…but they sure don’t make escape easy or cheap.

For the love of God and the sake of liberty, don’t do it. Steer clear of these complications.

Having the government guard your retirement money is more than a little like putting a wolf on watch duty at the door of your hen house.

Much like Morgan Freeman’s character in The Shawshank Redemption told the parole board: I wish I could meet the young man I used to be, talk some sense into him. I’d tell him that the bankers and the government were not his friends, that those mortgages, credit cards and tax-deferred government accounts were not in his best interest.

Alas, it is too late.

I entered into this bondage willingly, but ignorantly. I didn’t have a clue how dangerous bankers and government gangsters were. I accepted the promises of ease and plenty and I’ve been justly rewarded for my gullibility. I suspect I’m not alone.

I don’t believe, however, that most of my fellow slaves have woken up yet. More and more, however, are starting to stir.

Surely millions of them will be sending off a hefty check to their masters even as they stew about how the government is bailing out rich, evil banksters.

As you read this I will indeed be joining a few folks that have some notion that government by its nature uses money that it doesn’t earn. They demand at least a little accountability, a little representation to go with the taxation. Roving Whiskey reporter Samantha Buker and I will be attending the Tax Day Tea Party in both Annapolis and Baltimore. (We’ll let you know how it goes.)

These Tea Parties will be held nationwide today. Folks want to know what the hell is going on with the money continually hijacked from their paychecks. But how many of them wonder at the criminality of the income tax itself, no matter what it goes to support? How many realize that greedy conmen in nice suits are eating out their substance, legally but immorally? Does anyone question the notion that government must be funded?

An income tax and a fiat currency: what a fine pairing. The one is a gun in the face and the other is a shell game. Both break the Eighth Commandment and both will lead to complete ruin.

Far be it from me to incite you Shooters more than I normally do. Whether or not you fund the fraudulent thug that is government is between you, your god and those with the power to investigate and arrest you. This tax day, I just want you to think very carefully about the whole shebang.

At the very least, stay the hell away from any enticements the government may offer. You have to earn an income in their paper and odds are there’s no way to keep them from tracking everything you collect…but instead of a 401k, you may want to look at gold and silver.

For those of you already entangled in the web of the defined benefits plan, tread very carefully. As we say here in the Whiskey Room: sometimes there is no forgiveness, only punishment.

And today your editor accounts for the sins of his youth.

Oh well, Baltimore is a fantastic place to make less money and ride out an economic disaster all while owing obscene amounts of money to the imperial government. The city never really picked itself up from the postwar urban freefall. Won’t be so good in the event of the collapse of industrial society, but if you’re gonna be down and out, this is the place to do it.

Regards,
Gary Gibson

April 15, 2009

A Tax Day Lament and a Warning was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.