Tax addiction does far more harm than any of the other addictions. There is a twelve step program for the tax-addicted:
- First, we admitted we were powerless over the desire for other people’s money—our lives had become unmanageable without it.
- We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity and self-sufficiency.
- Decided to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the God Who told us to love our neighbors and gave each of us the ability to make a living without taking from others.
- Made a searching and fearless inventory of our fears, realizing that often, we were lying to our neighbors in order to get money from them and power over them.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human that we would invent and magnify problems to justify taking more money from our helpless neighbors.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our desire to make a living by forcing our neighbors to give us money for which they had worked.
- Made a list of all the taxpayers we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other people addicted to taxes, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
When we love our neighbors, we do not steal from them. We do not lie to them, or try to frighten them. We respect them, and tell them the truth. We strive to obey the Commandments.
Two types of tax-recipients.
Some government occupations were mandated by The Constitution. These include the armed forces, post office, patent office, customs, etc. These represent the only tax-supported jobs that The Constitution authorized.
After a few generations, many people wanted government jobs. Over time, very large groups of people became dependent upon money confiscated from their neighbors. Medicine, environmentalism, education, welfare, and a whole raft of social “services” are funded with money confiscated from taxpayers.
The spiritual problem is that they choose “my neighbor must give me money”, in direct opposition to the command that “we must love our neighbor”. Soon, modest public sector incomes are replaced with lush salaries. Pensions and benefits explode. More people want a piece of the pie. Soon, the economy is reduced to vast hordes of people, viciously fighting against each other in order to impoverish the ever-fewer workers who actually do and make things their neighbors think are valuable.
Tax-addiction replaces actual, useful work.
The must useless tax-addicts work the hardest, not to do anything useful, but to maintain funding. Souls are often sold for more funding. The most desperate get the most funding, and the many useful government employees become an embattled minority. The notion of “public service” becomes quaint before it disappears, replaced by those who want ever more for doing ever less.
The biggest casualty are love and truth and the need for them as an underlying rule of living.
