Dakota Beacon

Tax season is upon us. Here’s a New Year’s opener using IRS data.

            FACT: The top 25% of all income earners pay 86% of all federal income taxes.

            FACT: The top 50% of all income earners pay 97% of all federal income taxes.

            FACT: About $3.50 out of every $100 paid in income taxes is paid by someone in the bottom 50% of income earners. Turn it around and it sounds like this. The top 1% of US income earners are paying ten times more federal income tax than are the bottom 50% of income earners.

            Anyway you slice it and dice it, the people who work hard to get ahead are getting screwed.

            So, why strive to get ahead?

            That’s the question a gentle, middle aged soul I once knew asked himself. Thinking out loud, that was his rhetorical question. He already knew the answer. After years of frustration he had caught on to what he called “the federal income tax scam.” Politicians, he believed, were buying votes with taxpayers dollars by providing constituents with an ever increasing glut of goods and services.

            Then came his epiphany. Why not live off the government like the other half of the population? At a minimum his tax bite supporting those who didn’t even file returns would be much less. Non-filers, after all, were living at his expense.

            What disturbed my friend even more were the subsidies, grants and giveaways for everything under the sun to include “climate change” (his idea of a pun). It wasn’t just the usual farm subsidies and education grants. He cited plenty of the off-the-wall expenditures including Steps to Healthier Girls, Environmental Justice Training Grants, Prisoner Reentry Job Search Help, Safety Belt Performance Grants, Healthy Marriage Promotion and on and on.

            Once on a rant there was no stopping him. He fondly pointed out inequities in “the system.” People outside North Dakota paid for our roads, bridges, health care and education. He cited tax data that for every income tax dollar collected from North Dakotans, the state received $1.23 in return. Minnesota, on the other hand, only received seventy-three cents for every tax dollar they paid. At the local level, a person scraping by providing for their family was also required to provide for some else’s family as well.

            As he wryly noted, Jesus’ words “It is more blessed to give than to receive” were now rigidly codified in law enforced by punitive measures if violated.

            In 1992 when America elected the Clinton administration, his suspicions were confirmed. As state and federal social programs expanded he saw a growing slice of his earnings going to support those programs. Adding insult to injury, he said he witnessed a commensurate increase in waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money. At that point he made a conscious decision to no longer achieve and excel at earning money.

            In other words, he chose to “retire” with whatever government benefits he could glean thus taking in enough to get by without paying more taxes than was absolutely necessary. He had acquired some government benefits and in a few years would receive social security and Medicare.

            His straightforward reasoning went like this. If voters were willing to elect public “servants” who would take care of them in exchange for a bit of their freedom, that was their choice. His choice was to recoup at least some of what the government had taken from him in taxes by claiming his share of benefits as soon as possible. After all, he argued, he had worked long and hard while the government took more and more of his income. Why shouldn’t he get something in return?

            He claimed he felt no guilt from transgressing the old American ethic of getting ahead through hard work. He indicated he understood a new ethic, an overriding unspoken ethic, affirming the right to live off one’s fellow man. This was his subtle observation of the public mind-set.

            True to his word, he dropped out of the work force and relocated to a lower cost of living area. He said he was “making a statement,” whatever that meant. About whom he spoke was not clear.

            National bankruptcy notwithstanding, the last I heard he, indeed, was living comfortably off his fellow man.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).