Gegenstandpunkt
29th January 2016, 22:28
Often a person that gets taxed does not fail to display a certain kind of pride. What comes to him as nothing less but an order under the law, he is committed to see as a result of his own free will, as ’sacrifice’ or ‘contribution’, for example taxation as a contribution to the poor, society, humankind, or whatever abstract cause he deems worthy of being advanced. He feels elevated by the fact that a substantial part of his income, his own and his families’ livelihood that is, is taken away from him by the state without asking for his consent. Such display is typical of citizen’s consciousness: Because being taxed or not is not his decision to make, and because the procedure itself is completely beyond his control, he is eager and willing to affirm the taxation. He has no choice, so he chooses submission.
This particular mind-set is a bearer of ugliness: Despite the appreciation he has of being forced to ‘contribute’ in the way of tax dollars, he is no less aware of the fact that being taxed amounts to a harsh material loss he has no choice but to endure. Having lost time and life while at work, and having lost his ‘hard earned’ money once the day has passed, he seeks acknowledgement for his pains and troubles by way of making sure that everyone else also get what they have coming. He decides to become a watchman over the distribution of material losses to everyone else, he decides to become a judge, to become the state. No sooner he will then find himself indulged in endless discussions about fairness and justice with his friends, neighbors, co-workers, complete strangers even, all of whom he will not hesitate to praise should they have ‘paid their dues to society’, or scold should they have malfeasantly evaded their duties towards the greater, communal good. ‘Look at those lazy bums for whom I pay the rent by working my ass off and paying wild sums of taxes while all they do is hanging out all day drinking, smoking, or breeding like crazy!’, he cries out. He naturally fails to see that there is no communal good under capitalistic democracies, but an abundance of different interests inevitably antagonizing each other.
In doing so he has become dismissive of his own interests. He no longer cares about needs and gains, he does not contemplate what leading a good life could mean to him in materialistic terms, but instead incessantly focuses on making everybody else at least as miserable as he is ‘working his ass off’. He spends his days absorbed in idealisms, all of which have no bearing on his living conditions: freedom, equality, society, justice, sciene, religion, the future of humankind, stability of statehood, other abstract entities. Things like providing food, shelter, being able to afford medical care, and doing away with a situation of ‘work for money’, that he deems intolerable ('working his ass off').
He does not (want to) see that ‘his’ tax dollars are not being, and cannot be(!) pooled to make the lives of others – let alone his own – better, easier, to eliminate poverty or homelessness, but on the contrary to secure a neverending stream of desperatly poor yet able and willing enough people to fill the vacant spots inside capitalist factories and businesses, which are infamous for incapacitating their victims fairly quickly, by providing to varying degrees basic services to the community (education, health care et cetera). Above all: He fails to understand that no one ever really "pays" taxes, the state comes in and collects them!
This particular mind-set is a bearer of ugliness: Despite the appreciation he has of being forced to ‘contribute’ in the way of tax dollars, he is no less aware of the fact that being taxed amounts to a harsh material loss he has no choice but to endure. Having lost time and life while at work, and having lost his ‘hard earned’ money once the day has passed, he seeks acknowledgement for his pains and troubles by way of making sure that everyone else also get what they have coming. He decides to become a watchman over the distribution of material losses to everyone else, he decides to become a judge, to become the state. No sooner he will then find himself indulged in endless discussions about fairness and justice with his friends, neighbors, co-workers, complete strangers even, all of whom he will not hesitate to praise should they have ‘paid their dues to society’, or scold should they have malfeasantly evaded their duties towards the greater, communal good. ‘Look at those lazy bums for whom I pay the rent by working my ass off and paying wild sums of taxes while all they do is hanging out all day drinking, smoking, or breeding like crazy!’, he cries out. He naturally fails to see that there is no communal good under capitalistic democracies, but an abundance of different interests inevitably antagonizing each other.
In doing so he has become dismissive of his own interests. He no longer cares about needs and gains, he does not contemplate what leading a good life could mean to him in materialistic terms, but instead incessantly focuses on making everybody else at least as miserable as he is ‘working his ass off’. He spends his days absorbed in idealisms, all of which have no bearing on his living conditions: freedom, equality, society, justice, sciene, religion, the future of humankind, stability of statehood, other abstract entities. Things like providing food, shelter, being able to afford medical care, and doing away with a situation of ‘work for money’, that he deems intolerable ('working his ass off').
He does not (want to) see that ‘his’ tax dollars are not being, and cannot be(!) pooled to make the lives of others – let alone his own – better, easier, to eliminate poverty or homelessness, but on the contrary to secure a neverending stream of desperatly poor yet able and willing enough people to fill the vacant spots inside capitalist factories and businesses, which are infamous for incapacitating their victims fairly quickly, by providing to varying degrees basic services to the community (education, health care et cetera). Above all: He fails to understand that no one ever really "pays" taxes, the state comes in and collects them!