An article at the News and Record reports that Guilford County is seeking to shield more people from property taxes by raising the income cap above which people must pay their taxes. The article also reports that the city of Greensboro is sending money to some favored individuals to help them pay their property tax.
This all might sound very nice. However, it is also very unfair because some people are liable to pay their taxes while others are not. It punishes those who work to be able to pay their tax.
Recall that a progressive income tax is one of the planks in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. These actions by local government represent a progressive property tax. But we already have progressive taxes at the federal level. That ought to be counterbalanced by fair taxes at the state and local levels.
Unfortunately, those of us here in Guilford County live in a socialist-led jurisdiction; and that doubly applies to city of Greensboro residents.
” From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
Karl Marx
In 1900 , Frederick Charles Hicks criticized the concept “according to his needs” as follows. There are no issues with this principle as long as there is enough of everything for everybody. But this is not the case and probably never will, because “man’s wants tend always to outstrip his ability to supply them…. Therefore it will be necessary to have an agency for determining relative amounts of men’s needs.” Which will eventually lead to “absolutism and slavery”.
“The political system we will build is contained in a single moral premise: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force”, whereas “no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality—to think, to work and to keep the results—which means: the right of property”
John Galt
In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged her heroes continually oppose “parasites”, “looters”, and “moochers” who demand the benefits of the heroes’ labor. Edward Younkins describes Atlas Shrugged as “an apocalyptic vision of the last stages of conflict between two classes of humanity—the looters and the non-looters. The looters are proponents of high taxation, big labor, government ownership, government spending, government planning, regulation, and redistribution”.
“Looters” are Rand’s depiction of bureaucrats and government officials, who confiscate others’ earnings by the implicit threat of force (“at the point of a gun”). Some officials execute government policy, such as those who confiscate one state’s seed grain to feed the starving citizens of another; others exploit those policies, such as the railroad regulator who illegally sells the railroad’s supplies for his own profit. Both use force to take property from the people who produced or earned it.
“Moochers” are Rand’s depiction of those unable to produce value themselves, who demand others’ earnings on behalf of the needy, but resent the talented upon whom they depend, and appeal to “moral right” while enabling the “lawful” seizure by governments.
Wake up folks, you have the same thing in Greensboro/Guilford County.
Great illustrations, Fred. And you are right– we have precisely the same thing. It is amazing– and exasperating– that the citizens allow this.