Money is a human form of energy.
Taxation is the taking of energy from those who have it by those who can take it. The more powerful the tax collectors’ weapons, compared with those of the taxpayers, the more they can take.
Taxing authorities want more powerful weapons for themselves, and no weapons at all for taxpayers. Those most helplessly addicted to taxes want to disarm all taxpayers.
Extreme taxing authorities, like Pol Pot, know they aren’t going to last long, so they take everything they can get, including whatever lives are necessary to keep everyone else in obedience. Pol Pots and Fidel Castros spend more on guards and guns, their people lose enthusiasm for all work, and revolution is always right around the corner.
There’s another extreme. People with no tax rates, like the United States in the heady days between the Revolution and the adoption of The Constitution, thrive when left with all their own money to spend and invest.
Taxing authorities with long-term views try to find a tax rate at which they can keep people working, and paying, in the most economical way. A few sticks and lots of carrots work better than all sticks and no carrots.
Taxation is easier in Christian countries. There, believers either obey Jesus Christ or disobey Him. The smarter ones combine “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” with His bizarre “love your enemies” idea, and are doubly encouraged to give Caesar the little bits of created matter and energy that he’s so desperate to get.
Taxing authorities in Christian countries know that if they can get people to sign a tax form swearing they have told the truth, they know many people will not bear false witness, violating an order from Jesus. So, in Christian countries, tax collection is easier.
Taxing authorities know this. The worst of them hate it. “People must pay taxes because we are all powerful, not because there is someone more powerful than we who tells them to pay. Christianity makes us look like spoiled children who have to be mollified in the hopes we’ll grow up. We are much, much more than that!”
The phrase “body politic” has meaning to those who take things literally. We know that a living body with too little muscle to move its fat around will die. The worst tax collectors don’t care.
All tax collectors are merely front men. They are empowered by those who run the government. In modern democracies, public sector unions are highly organized, and usually determine who is going to be elected, thereby controlling the government. Their elected minions set tax rates, and their employees enforce it. Their operations are always in favor of the tax collector.
Love them all. It’s the only way we can help them overcome the hostile feelings many of them have toward the taxpayers whom all of them need to ravage to survive.
