Removing The Blinders

To start off today's rant, let us first define "government."  Government is a human institution designed to erect barriers to creativity that protect favored entities (regulation), be a parasite that leeches off of the productive parts of society (taxation) and provide life-long employment for those members of society who are unwilling or incapable of being creative or productive (bureaucrats).  Like bacteria, government will grow until it consumes all of the resources available within its jurisdiction.  In other words, there is no such thing as a "good" or "benign" government, and this is true in every form, in all places and at all times throughout history.

What prompts today's tirade is the annual repeating of the Indonesian government mantra, "We are incapable of managing within our limits."  Last year, it was this whining article, this year it's (naturally) even more dire.  In keeping with the character of all governments everywhere at all times, there is no discussion of laying off apparatchiks or scaling back government programs, there is only talk of how to steal more money from the productive parts of society to feed the parasite.

Let's begin with the vaunted government "tax amnesty" program.  This was conceived as a way to get people to fess up and pay in all those taxes they hadn't reported in the past, with the carrot being a 'promise' not to cause grievous bodily harm to those who 'voluntarily' threw themselves on their swords.  Everything was all optonistic at first, as the government crowed that folks would happily deal the government in on their personal wealth if they just weren't afraid of retribution.  In the old days, this was called a "protection scheme" used by mafia and gangs to extract money from local shop owners.

Turns out people really are as broke as they kept telling the apparatchiks.  The program has so far brought in less than 25% of the expected windfall the government originally represented to investors and bankers.  Stocks and foreign investment have duly registered their disappointment with this situation, as the market deflates like a farting balloon.

All of that would be bad enough, but wait!  There's more!

The next example of government beneficence recently in the news is the Natuna Gas Project.  Here we have a case of one of the largest estimated gas reserves in the world sitting under the Natuna Sea, and the Natuna island chain.  Let's forget just for a moment that this rich gas field is sitting right next to the South China Sea, and is surrounded by Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Brunei, in addition to Indonesia.  If this sounds like a recipe for disaster, it gets better.

The Natuna people have lived in these islands since before records were kept, and certainly longer than the 70-year history of Indonesian independence.  They dwell in relative obscurity, being at the very frontier of national boundaries and receiving attention only because they sit on top of a veritable gold mine.  Can we have a show of hands, how many folks think these people will directly benefit from the wealth under their feet for the past millennium or two?

Let's begin with government regulations, shall we?

Under current Indonesian resource laws (updated during the 2009 coal boom), the government wants to "partner" with a producer to drill and extract the gas.  The government wants the producer to take all the risk and expense, bringing all the necessary equipment to do the job.  The result is that the government will then own all the production and take ownership of all the machinery and infrastructure that was imported to produce the field.  Furthermore, under Indonesian cabotage law, all vessels used to import the equipment and cart off the gas much be Indonesian flagged in national waters.

In other words, you do all the work, cover all the costs, and we get all the benefits.  Such a deal!  Anyone who finds this a fair and equitable arrangement please contact me right away so I can manage your investment for you.

Naturally, the locals will be promised the sun, moon and stars in exchange for their cooperation.  They will be offered government indoctrination centers (schools) and government resource management centers (hospitals) that, if they are worth a damn in the first place, will soon devolved into deteriorating skeletons of empty promises.

Finally, once (if) the money starts rolling in, there will suddenly be layers upon layers of government apparatchiks, brokers and corruptors of all stripes with ladles in hand, ready to siphon off as much of the wealth as possible.  The locals will be forced to join in the festival of slime, or find themselves completely out of the loop, watching as tar balls and trash wash up on their once-pristine beaches.  And all this assumes the government can find a competent sucker to come in under its terms in the first place.

Meanwhile, those companies who were stupid enough to hang a shingle under the government's oh-so-equitable rules are finding themselves under attack with few options for relief or response.  GOOGLE has been hit with a US$400 million tax bill for 2015 alone, with the past five years under the microscope, and its only options for appeal are the Indonesian tax office (good luck) and/or the Indonesian courts (hahaha!).  In other words, their only option is to ask the very leeches who live off GOOGLE blood to stem the flow just a bit.

Don't get me wrong.  I really don't like or trust GOOGLE, but this makes for a great case study of government greed and desperation.  After years of corruption, bloated hierarchy, mismanagement, convoluted and overlapping ministries, waste, sleaze and slime, the government finds itself running out of options to perpetuated itself, with the one obvious option of cleaning up its act being quite far off the table.

Under Indonesian tax laws, GOOGLE has two options: pay the government's tax claim, or face years of audits and court hearings to determine if this money is actually owed.  Given the government's track record, GOOGLE will end up being liable for the money AND being out all the lawyer and court fees, as well as penalties and interest.  Great options, ne l'est pas?

Notice that the article mentions the one tool to which all governments always resort - force (read guns property confiscation and grievous bodily harm).

What all this boils down to, and Indonesia is by far not the only or best example, is that governments are destructive.  They stand in the way of real people making real profits and creating real things.  They are protection rackets that take money for the promise of protection from phantoms, while failing to protect people from the real threat - government itself.  The reason that governments appear to dance so well is their habit of constantly shooting themselves in the foot.

The reason that all governments are corrupt in all places and at all times is that they are collections of people who have been granted exclusive use of force to collect money that pays themselves.  If this is not a classic recipe for disaster, then nothing is.  Corruption and waste are natural by-products of organizations that produce nothing and get paid for it at the point of a gun.

Humans have yet to devise a system of governance on a large scale that does not eventually become its own worst enemy.  It is a parasitic institution that is utterly dependent on its ability to suck the life out of everyone who submits to it.

The only viable option is to have the smallest possible scale so that the 'leaders' are as close to the people being governed as possible.  In this way, 'leaders' can only be as corrupt as the communities they 'serve,' and the ability to escape corruption is as easy as a short move away to a neighboring community.

What we, the real people, must disabuse ourselves of is the notion that there is any such thing as benign government.  It does not, nor cannot exist.  At some point, the parasite always turns on the host in order to promote its interests over all others.  It is always a negative force that produces nothing and offers no rewards.  It simply takes, and when threatened, it takes more, until the host expires and rids itself of the infestation.

It is thus that we part with our new mantra, "All governments are always destructive at all times and in all places."

The War On Fun

For the last seven years, we have lucubrated beyond the bounds of propriety around here.  It's gained us a loyal little following of very smart people, and we really appreciate all the folks who stop by regularly to listen to us enumerate our inner-most hopes and desires.  Thanks y'all!

Just thought I'd get that off my chest, because I was starting to asphyxiate from the weight of it.

So what's going on around the ranch, or tempat pertanian yang luas berikut gedung-gedungnya as they say around these parts ('ranch' is one of those words that doesn't translate into Indonesian).

As you regulars already know, we've started up Indonesia's first cabaret.  Like the word "ranch," it's a bit hard to translate a 500-year-old Western tradition into Indonesia.  Things like satire, double-entendre and dry wit just don't exist in this culture.  It is hard to translate something that is untranslatable, and humor is one of the hardest.  Doesn't stop me from taking up the challenge, though.  There is certainly enough interest in it, and being the only one of anything is usually a good thing.

The kicker is trying to raise investment.  How do you describe something that doesn't exist?  Basically, to fully appreciate what I want to do, I have to actually produce the show, and at that point, I don't need the investment.  It's one of those glorious Catch-22s in life.

There is a method to my madness, though.  Or so I like to think.

Since economic tracking became wide-spread, it has become axiomatic that entertainment and education are the two best industries to survive an economic downturn.  The problem is, you can't be like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and say, "Hey kids!  I've got a barn, let's do a show!"

Entertainment is a fickle business.  To me, Monty Python is hysterical, but to a lot of people I know, it just mystifies them.  To me, Citizen Kane is a brilliant character study that broke every single rule of camera movement in place up to that time, but to many people, it's a boring old black-and-white movie with no special effects.

So how do you make fun of politics in a country where, for 30 years, such a thing got you a personal firing squad?  How do you play with sexual mores in a highly conservative culture where children still marry off in birth order and kids live at home until they get married?  How do you make literary allusions in a culture with precious little literature?

You can begin to appreciate the rather fine line I am attempting to tread.

But the biggest challenge is not culture, or language or any other controllable factor.  No, it's government.

I'm not the brightest monkey in the tree, but if I know enough to understand the relationship of entertainment to economics, then you can bet someone in government does too.

Sure enough, the Province of Jakarta went and raised a 30.5% tax on all entertainment, except oddly, golf.  As one might expect, government in desperate attempts to support useless bureaucracies  will, like all parasites, kill the host by sucking it dry.  Obviously, this kind of egregious tax has a massive chilling effect on people's desires to operate venues, bring or produce shows, and especially attend shows that are expensive enough just to cover costs.

Thinking that it will cash in on the survivability of entertainment in slow economies, the geniuses in government will do everything possible to kill operators and audiences, thus having the exact opposite effect of what was desired.

In the end, what we have is social engineering, whether intended or not.  Just when people need a couple of hours of escape from their misery, the government steps in to make sure that even that tiny relief is equally miserable.

More importantly, though, what we see here is a kind of proof that bad times are coming.  Governments, who steal our money to perform studies to figure out how to survive at our expense, are obviously seeing the writing on the wall.  And the evidence comes from a place where most people wouldn't look...entertainment.  I'm willing to bet there are similar moves around the world to suck on entertainment revenues, but I am also willing to bet that the horrific box office numbers from this past blockbuster season are a symptom, as well.

My bet is that we will start to see the rise of a massive underground entertainment market.  People will seek entertainment, and suppliers will find a way to circumvent the burdensome taxes and regulations trying to cash in on it.  Look for things like underground cinemas and cabarets presenting home-grown fare at very reasonable prices.  And since the places where these things will arise are not registered venues with broad market awareness, the place to start looking is in underground publications.

It is one of Nature's Laws that when government tries to squeeze the population a little tighter, more of them will slip through the fingers.

One thing is absolutely certain - art is like life, it finds a way.  No matter how hard tyrants and dictators have tried to control and suppress art and entertainment throughout the millennia, it has always found expression some how.  If there is a defining feature of human beings, it is that they create art for the enjoyment of others and the elevation of the spirit.

At a time when people will demand entertainment as an escape, governments will try harder to both control and profit from it, which will in turn cause art to (once again) go underground.  The one big hope is that when this has happened in the past, it led to great periods of creativity and explosions of expression.

That's one thing Hollywood has never figured out - it's not the budgets, but the limits that make creativity happen.

Tax Man Be Damned

Marco Polo

Folks who've been around here for a while already know that I am back into a major project, thus causing my unusual silence this past week.

Never one to hold still, I am now partnering up with some good folks to bring cabaret to Jakarta - something heretofore unknown.  In fact, a search for "cabaret in Jakarta" will return one hit for one show on one night last year at a rented venue.  Well, we can't have that, so I'm going to open a new venue with original shows and create a whole new form of cabaret unique to Indonesia.

But in the meantime...

I am really cheesed off at the whole damn tax situation - not just here, but globally.  I'm even more cheesed off at those slave-minds who dribble platitudes like, "Gotta pay your fair share," and "Taxes allow the government to operate."

For the latter, one EXCELLENT reason to banish taxes altogether.  Never met a government worth the price of admission.  All they are is make-work for folks who don't create anything but paper-trails and headaches.

As for the former, I could get hopping mad about that one.  My fair share of what?  Murder, mayhem, lying, cheating, corruption, graft, and a dozen other choice accusations.

Taxes do not pay debt, they pay private corporations called "Central Banks" for the pleasure of using their money.  They can issue it in great huge piles and fast as they want to, and we all pay the price in inflation and debt service for the rest of our natural lives (and maybe beyond).

Taxes are a mechanism for social control.  They are a means to bend your personal habits to satisfy the international banksters.  They have NOTHING to do with repaying government costs or debt.  The banksters WANT us in debt, so they are happy to shovel out more cash to keep governments running.

Instead, taxes are used to force you and me to adjust our behaviors.  If the banksters don't want us to smoke, they get the governments to make new laws and raise taxes on cigarettes to make them too expensive for us little folk.

This makes sense to the banksters, not because they give a good holy damn about our health, but because nicotine protects the pineal gland - and thus the brain - from remote control through brain-wave entrainment through media and other electro-magnetic outlets (cell towers, etc.).

Beef is too healthy.  Makes us strong and all the protein builds muscle.  Can't have that, so the banksters want to raise taxes on beef until it is just too damn expensive to eat.

The one I really love is when a population starts to get too wealthy and independent, they spring all these new rules on you, or suddenly remeber rules that have been hiding for years, and then tell everyone they have to fork over penalties to shovel great piles of cash back out of the common man's hands.

This last one is especially egregious.  In Indonesia, they suddenly sprang this (obviously) little known procedure that requires everyone to file property tax receipts with their annual income tax returns.  But hey, at least they are nice about it, you have until September to fess up and pay a 2% penalty, or December to get a 3% penalty.

Keep in mind, this is NOT about paying the taxes.  When you buy a house or car here, you go down to one of the State banks and pay the VAT and get a receipt for payment, called a bukti.  No, this is all about not having attached a copy of the bukti to your annual income tax.

Considering NO ONE I know has ever done this, nor even knew it was required, everyone is running around in sack-cloth and ashes trying to figure out how to pay the penalties, which are levied against the purchase value of the property.

To call a spade a spade, this is complete and utter bullshit.

What this is - and no one in "government" will admit it - is an attempt by the banksters to cool down inflation.  Since the economy here is no longer running at a growth rate of 7%, as in years past, they need to siphon cash out of the market to cool things off, and this previously UNKNOWN regulation has been trotted out to basically yank millions of rupiah out of each and every person who owns property.

This is nothing more than social control and has nothing to do with the government's ability to pay debt or add services.  In fact, since the freakin' amnesty program started, the public services have gotten considerably worse, as if to show everyone how the poor widdle gummint can't pay to keep things going and needs to steal more money from us.

Bullshit.

Taxes are, and always have been, a means of controlling populations, from the time King George III raised the Stamp and Tea taxes and caused the American Revolution, to modern-day efforts to control out eating and smoking habits.  Taxes have nothing to do with paying government debts.

Let's take, for instance, the US.  In the first half of 2016, the US government COLLECTED a record US$1.4 trillion in taxes!  Under the Obama administration alone, the US government has collected US$20 trillion in tax revenues, while at the same time, leaving the country US$9 trillion deeper in debt.  The current US debt is US$19 trillion.  That means that Obama could have paid off the national debt and had a trillion or so left over to play with, but that's not the point, is it?

No.  If taxes were meant to pay down debt and offer public services, most countries would not have any debt.  But that's not the game the banksters play.  They want us bent over a debt barrel so they can harvest us for their pleasure.  And frankly, a government that can't operate on a trillion a year ain't worth having, is it?

By comparison, Indonesia's national debt is US$222 billion, or IDR4 quadillion, or just 27% of GDP.

It's time all these slave-minded folks who talk about "our fair share" and "supporting government services" get hog-tied and force-fed reality.

Taxes are nothing more than a control mechanism.  Since the banksters are more than happy to print money and pay national bills, for a price, and use the strings and levers of government to make us all dance to their tune, there is obviously no incentive for anyone IN government to admit they are stealing our money for nothing.  Hell, it's not even money.  It's just paper with fancy colors and pictures all over it.  It has no value at all, but what we invest int it.

Best to let the great Marco Polo, who brought the concept of paper money back from China in the 1200s, tell us all about it:

"How the Great Kaan Causeth the Bark of Trees, Made Into Something Like Paper, to Pass for Money All Over his Country: The Emperor's Mint then is in this same City of Cambaluc, and the way it is wrought is such that you might say he hath the Secret of Alchemy in perfection, and you would be right!  And the Kaan [Kublai Khan] causes every year to be made such a vast quantity of this money, which costs him nothing, that it must equal in amount all the treasure in the world.  And all the while they are so light that ten bezants' worth does not weigh one golden bezant.  Now you have heard the ways and means whereby the Great Kaan may have, and in fact has, more treasure than all the Kings in the World; and you know all about it and the reason why."

Hmmm...and who is kicking the world's economic blessed assurance these days?

As George Carlin reminds us, it's all bullshit and it's bad for you.

Paying Through The Nose

What do you get from government?  I mean, in real unvarnished unblinking terms, what do you get for all the taxes you pay?

Most folks in most countries pay around half of their income in taxes, if you add up all the income tax, fees, sales tax, etc.  Half or more.  All that hard work and money you could be using to improve your family's life right now being sucked out of your pocket for...what exactly?

Most people might answer, "Safety, security, protection."

So, did all that safety, security and protection do any good during the Boston bombing or the Texas fertilizer explosion (bullshit bombing) or the Alabama fuel fire?  Did it protect anyone from riots in Greece and Spain, or school knifings in China?  Did it save all the folks who died in the ferocious winter storms this past season?  Did it stop the landslides in Indonesia?  Or the typhoons in the Philippines?  Or the earthquakes in Iran, China and Japan?  In fact, did a single penny/farthing/kroene/franc/yuan/rupiah save a single life of anyone you know?

On the other hand, how much of your tax money bought war planes and ships, weapons and armor, ammunition and nuclear fuel?  How much of your money paid for military and drones and bases and housing?  How much paid salaries and benefits for government officials?  How much paid for securing and maintaining government infrastructure?  How much paid for police that protect the government from you, not you from thieves/robbers/natural disasters/property loss?

And since governments are usually the ones starting wars either by policies or direct action, can it really be said that the militaries of the world protect anyone, since the need for them is caused by their existence?

How much of your tax money went towards protecting your investments when the stock market turned?  How much help did you really receive when your house was destroyed by fire/hurricane/earthquake?  How much security did all those tax dollars really buy?

The answer: None.  The extended answer: It caused more problems than it solved.

Governments and taxes serve only one purpose: to protect and enrich an elite at the expense of the labor and investments of the rest of humanity.

If, in fact, we receive no benefit and experience only loss from supporting government and paying taxes, then why do we continue to do it?  What does it possibly profit us to continue to support this system?

Promises.  That's all.  We get promises.  The only real security we receive...the only real service we receive from the layers upon layers of government we support and piles upon piles of tax money we surrender at the threat of bodily harm is the promise that someone will do something when some threat or real event may harm our lives or property.  That's it.  A promise.  And one that is rarely fulfilled, at that.

So why do we continue to serve this leviathan that we have created?  It's safe to say that the majority of people disagree with most of what their governments do with taxes, yet most of us continue to pay for and rally behind the single most perilous threat to our well-being that most of us will face in our lifetimes.  A few of us may end up in a position where we need a promise - unemployment insurance, disaster relief, etc. - but the reality is that those services are grossly overrated, when anyone actually receives them.

Unemployment insurance hardly covers all the expenses we have to avail ourselves of the necessities of modern life.  Most unemployment checks won't cover rent/mortgage, lights/gas/water bills, internet, car fuel and maintenance, and all the rest (not to mention food).  The ridiculous part of this is that we need power and internet to file and receive unemployment insurance.  We need transportation to seek new jobs.  We need a permanent address in order to get unemployment insurance and apply for jobs.  We need the utility bills to prove residence in many cases.  In other words, the whole thing is a complete circle jerk.  You need all these things in order to get the 'promise' and the new job, but the 'promise' doesn't pay enough to afford the things you need to receive it all.  Catch-23.

Ask victims of any natural disaster, or wars of profit, or NGOs how much benefit they received in relation to the taxes they paid for promises.

In the alternative, if governments only received taxes from import/export duties, how much more motivated would they be to improve business relations with other countries, and to keep jobs at home?  And if you were able to keep the 50% of your income that is appropriated for promises, how much more would you be able to secure your family and save for a rainy day?  If your money wasn't squandered on useless 'public education', how much better schools could you choose from for your children?  How much more money would you have to buy goods and services that improve the economy rather than destroy it?

And how much better would life be if your hard work wasn't supporting banksters, multi-national corporations and political elite who provide absolutely nothing of value to the local economy while gulping down large helpings of your tax dollars and paying little or nothing themselves?

When it comes right down to it, what's more important: the welfare of your family or the vacant promises of 'security' and 'safety'?  In nearly every single case, could you provide more safety and security for your family using all of your income, rather than just half?

Does paying for licenses, inspections and plates make the roads any safer, or are you just as likely to get into an accident at any given time?  After all, licenses are handed out to just about anyone, so how does that make driving any safer?  And does paying all that money every year provide security for you?  Does it reimburse you a single penny/farthing/crown/shilling/yuan/rupiah if your automobile is damaged in an accident that is not your fault - especially if it is caused by the infrastructure promised by the government?

And if any of the promises made to you in exchange for your taxes fail when you need them, do you get a refund?  If I buy something at the store and it doesn't perform as promised, I get a refund, or at least an exchange.

So the question is, what exactly are you supporting with all that money?  Is it just a promise of safety and security?  Does it materialize when you need that service?  If, after a number of years, you haven't accessed any of the services, do you get a refund?

On the flip-side, how much money has your country paid to banksters in bailouts?  How much tax do the multi-national corporations pay that are exploiting your country's labor and raw materials?  Are your children receiving a quality education for the money, or are they regurgitating slogans and putting condoms on cucumbers while being trained to rat out their families?

Suppose on January 1st of next year, all people everywhere decided to stop paying taxes at the same time?  Suppose we called it "Global Liberation Day?"

How much better would the world be at that moment?

F.U.B.A.R.

Interesting article popped up on Drudge today saying that the number of US citizens renouncing their citizenship between 2008 and 2010 increased 1000-fold.  In the first half of 2011, the number was running at over 1,000, which indicated a possible doubling over 2010 numbers.

According to the article, the primary reason given for this rather dramatic move was the IRS.  It wasn't the level of taxes, which is bad enough, but the fact that the IRS lies to people about agreements it makes with them to settle past claims, and the overall nightmare that is known as the US Tax Code (code being the operative word here, since it is designed to keep anyone from knowing it).

Most folks don't realize that the US is the only country in the world that requires its citizens to file returns every year, regardless of whether they live and work in the US, or not.  On top of that, new regulations require the revealing of every asset, bank account and financial holding a person has outside the US.

Oh sure, some will say, that's because so many rich people, like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, hide their money in tax havens, and they need to 'pay their fair share.'  Of course, the law doesn't affect people like that.  They know what holes were written into the law to permit them to get away with hiding their assets.

If you know what you are doing, all you have to do is set up a couple of dummy corporations in the few remaining 'tax havens' and POOF!  You money disappears off the IRS radar.  Corporations know this and use it to their advantage, as well.

An example?  A US corporation, we'll call it CorpX, registers in Delaware, which has lots of corp-friendly laws.  It then sets up a wholly-owned shell corp in someplace like the Virgin Islands or one of the other Caribbean ghost nations.  It hangs out a shingle and pays some lawyer to get mail dropped at his office.  The shell corp then does business around the world.  Through accounting quackery, all profits are offshored in low-tax jurisdictions, while all losses are repatriated to the mother corp, which then uses them to offset income and avoid taxes at home.

This is how massive corporations with billions in income pay absolutely no taxes in the US, even though they are US-registered entities.

But this is off track a little.  They point here is that the tax code has become so onerous and heinous that people are literally forced to renounce their citizenship in order to stay out of bankruptcy due to tax burdens.  They little guy doesn't know or can't afford all the little comforts written into the code to protect the Big Guys.

The fact is that most expats pay taxes on income in the jurisdiction where they live, and most countries leave their citizens alone when they live outside the home jurisdiction.  Not the US.  It's long arm reaches out, and even when the expat doesn't owe taxes, due to local payment and tax treaty provisions, the IRS still wants paperwork.  If you don't know all the thousands of applicable rules, you are liable to quite easily miss one or two (hundred).  And when you do, the IRS comes down like vultures on a rotting carcass and eat you alive with penaties and fines and other fun things.

Of course, even renouncing citizenship doesn't protect you.  The US Code provides that any and all taxes and penalties that were due up to the point a person dropped their citizenship are still due in perpetuity.  Believe me, you made a mistake somewhere and they will hold it againt you until you die.  And then they'll take it from your heirs.

The mafia only wishes it had the 'power' and thuggery available to that bunch of thieves.

Recently, Indonesia strengthened its laws regarding citizens living and working abroad.  Any income they receive while working outside the country is not reportable at home, as long as it is taxed in the foreign jurisdiction.  It also allows folks to discontinue their NPWP, which is the local version of the Social Security Number (SSN) for a variety of reasons, including extended stays outside the country.  Granted there's a pretty stiff set of requirements, including an immediate audit by the tax man, but try that under any circumstances with an SSN.  You are virtually branded in the US at birth and can not extract yourself for any reason.  Even residents in the US who get an SSN while they are living and working in that country are stuck with it for life, and the IRS can and will come after their income and assets anywhere in the world.

I wouldn't have such a great problem with all this, except the code is written to protect the Big Guys and shaft the little guys.  The BGs pay little or no taxes by playing 'hide the sausage' in various jurisdictions and through various entities.  The LGs are the ones who get the sausage broken off on the relative pittance that they earn, and the pitiful bank accounts and occasional beach house in Tahiti.

If ExxonMobil or GlaxoWellcome or Citibank paid their 'fair share,' I'd feel a lot better about getting stiffed.  But when the burden rests on us little guys because the Big Guys lobby their way out of billions in liabilities, it rubs salt in the wound.

All taxes anywhere are a sham.  After all, what exactly has any government ever done to help you make money?  All I have ever witnessed anywhere in the world are a bunch of lazy do-nothings on the public teat sucking my life-blood for...what?  Does the government make any laws that help you or me earn a living?  Au contraire.  Does government protect us from predatory practices that threaten our livelihoods?  Banish the thought...they are a major part of the problem.  Does government do anything at all to aid and abet us little guys in creating and amassing wealth?  Hahahaha!

So just exactly what are we paying all these taxes for?  What services do they render us?  What benefit do they buy us?  In fact, outside of paying a bunch of lard-assed bureaucrats, bloated militaries and non-productive members of society, what do we get for all the trouble and money we go through to pay our 'fair share?'

Apparently, there are a couple of thousand people a year, and growing, who think that at least one country is so screwed up that it is easier to switch citizenship than fight the corruption and greed at home.  That's a sure sign of a sick system.

Having paid taxes in a few countries, I know that most have a fairly straight-forward system with a single-page form.  It takes all of a few minutes to work up your annual dues and settle up.  I have never had to file less than ten pages in the US, and it takes the better part of a week or two to calculate and re-check everything before filing (God help you if you make a mistake).

What makes it even more egregious is that the IRS is nothing more than the collection arm for a private banking cartel called the Federal Reserve.  Sorry, but none of your taxes is paid to the US Treasury.  US citizens spend all that time and effort and money on tax preparation firms to pay back the Fed for all the money Congress has borrowed.

And here's the Big Problem...the US debt stands at around $15 trillion dollars, and there's not nearly enough money in circulation to ever pay it back.  It's an eternal game of 'bend over the barrel,' and we're on the receiving end.  Come next April 15th, remember whose fault it is that has caused you so much pain.  It was Congress who set up the Fed and Congress who borrowed the money and stuck you with the bill.

It's enough to make a guy want to renounce his citizenship.  Glad I'm a Texian!

The Family That Prays Together...

American families and friends are joining forces to survive the new depression.

It's about damn time! Having lived in the 'third world' for close to three years now, I for one celebrate this new direction in American cultural dynamics. Frankly, the primary difference between 'advanced' nations and 'developing' countries is the destruction of families. The only major advance that is so-called 'first' and 'second' world offers is the complete ruin of families, and the subsequent reliance on Big Brother for the daily bread and butter. The unintended (or was it intended) consequence of FDR's Social Security and LBJ's Great Society was the undermining of the family unit and the of the father as ultimate authority.

Here in Indonesia, there are low taxes, strong families and a complete reliance on self for survival. The result is a weak government, cheap health care and expanded economic opportunities. In other words, America could stand to learn from the 'developing' world.

In Indonesia, there is no MediCare or MediCaid, no Social Security, no welfare or subsidized housing, no food stamps, and a nearly 100% cash society. As a result, taxes are low, government regulation and control is virtually non-existant and families are strong and cohesive. The father is the ultimate authority and his value to society is judged by the success of his family. The family helps its own, with multiple generations living in a single or group of houses. All members of the family are expected to contribute to the overall needs of the family, and even children who move away to other locations for work send home monthly stipends. The family contributes to educating the children and by pooling resources, can hope to get some or all through collage so that they can improve their income and thus contribute greater amounts to the family wealth.

Health care is cheap and there are multiple alternatives. One can get therapeutic massage, two hours for less than $5. One can choose traditional hearbalists, acupuncture, western-style pill-popping, and any of a number of other options, for low cost and easy access. Doctors build up their practices because they are effective, not because they have a staff good at milking the government teat, and they compete with the traditional herbalists and reflexologists. A doctor visit runs about $18, and that is not a co-pay, that is the out-of-pocket cash price. If the individual requires surgery or long-term care, the family shares the burden, not the society. All decisions regarding a member's care are kept within the family and not delegated to some anonymous review board or (God forbid) a government agency.

Due to a virtual lack of government regulation and no army of tax-paid nincompoops with guns running around enforcing laws willy-nilly, the family can freely pursue many avenues to generate income. If the house has a large forecourt and there is a good cook in the family, they can open a small restaurant in front. No licenses, permits or jack-booted thugs demanding a cut. The only regulation is the market. If the food is good, the portions fair and the price reasonable, the customers come. If it gets a reputation for making people sick, they stop coming. Very simple and effective and uses no tax money whatsoever. Grandma can take in laundry. Mom can open a small store. Dad can operate a motorcycle repair. If you are good at something, you open your own business; no DBA, no permits, no bullshit. Dad is expected to have the job outside to bring in the paycheck, but Mom can operate any number of businesses out of the house while watching the kids and there's no need to day-care.

For those who go off in search of work, there are rooms for rent, called kost, that run about $40 a month, and a bowl of meatball soup costs around 50 cents. If you are fairly successful, you can rent a house for less than $2,000 per year, your monthly electric bill for high usage runs about $30, and you can eat pretty darned good for far less than $100 per month. If things are going really well, you can buy a house in many areas for around $25,000 for three bedrooms, and you can run businesses out of the house to make it pay for itself without burdensome government interference. You can buy a motorcycle, no frills, for $1,000,and you can help pay for it by charging folks for short rides (called ojek), or you can use the public transportation (most of which is privately owned) for less than a dollar a day to go pretty much anywhere in the city. You can completely gut the house and remodel it without a single permit or license, if you want.

The long-term result is that people rely on themselves for their own well-being. Taxes are low because there are no services from government, no regulations to enforce and people generally never consider looking to government for help of any kind. In fact, there is no equivalent expression in Indonesian for, "There oughta be a law." Government agents don't carry guns and most people simply ignore them. What a great system!

What's the downside? You are responsible for your own mistakes. Success or failure is entirely your own. The well-being of the family requires strong leadership from the father and he is given more-or-less free rein to operate. The family is self-regulating. If there is an abusive member, the family deals with it. Problems are addressed inside the family and the government leaches are not allowed into the circle.

The whole point here, is that once a society turns to some 'authority' to police itself and to provide 'security' for it, then the natural result is rising taxes, lower efficiency, intrusive regulation, and destruction of the social and cultural core: the family. Once the family is destroyed, civil society breaks down, gangs roam freely and the moral and ethical fabric unravels. When that happens, then corporations become predatory, greed becomes the norm and government becomes authoritarian, if not outright totalitarian. One need look no further than America at this moment to see the results. Beginning with FDR and culminating with Obama, the country has unwound itself, with the concomitant destruction of society and economy. Once public servants became 'authorities,' then people stopped thinking for themselves. Once government became the provider of 'social welfare,' society stopped caring for itself. Once society looked to 'law' for moral direction, it stopped worrying about right or wrong. To support the outcome, it was necessary to tax the individual into poverty and borrow against posterity in order to maintain the facade, while the interior living space degraded into unlivable conditions.

How can America call itself advanced when it has legislated and mandated that every individual remain a child for life? Unable to mature into adults, enforced by the threat of death, the country has devolved into chaos and poverty, not just for its current inhabitants, but for generations to come. What would be if America had chosen to build a Great Society without the help of government? What if it had chosen to strengthen families and clear the path for individual success? What if?

Indonesia is by no means perfect, but if it stays on its current path and rejects an increased role for government in the daily life of the family, it may become a greater society than even America ever dreamed. It will certainly be mentally and spiritually healthier than the rotted out soul that is America today.

There are many lessons to be learned from the 'third world.'