Planning for Freedom

Abstract: Freedom is an ability to do what one wants without constraint. Security is that assurance each citizen has to exercise freedom. Government is an institution that imposes constraints on what each member of a population is permitted or compelled to do. Individual freedom is therefore somewhat at odds with any government because absolute freedom has no constraints. Any government imposes constraints, else it is not a government. Governments impose constraints mainly in two ways: by laws it enacts and by taxation it imposes.

Taxation is the process of funding any government activity by compelling payment to the government under operation of law. The amount of government taxation, however, is in itself a constraint of freedom, since it deprives citizens of free choice to with their money, since a portion of it is taken from them. If the ratio of taxation to individual resources is high, economic freedom is low because an increasing ratio of what an individual does is not self decided, but decided by government instead.

Toqueville
"Among the public men of democracies, there are hardly any but men of great disinterestedness or extreme mediocrity who seek to oppose the centralization of government; the former are scarce, the latter powerless.”.

Government not only imposes constraints upon freedom by what laws it enacts and what taxation it imposes, it also indirectly constrains freedom by what behavior it permits or privileges, either through the laws it enacts, or act ions that it fails to do. Monopolies, of any kind, are a threat to freedom and, if they are permitted, also result in a loss of freedom. Failure of government to protect individual citizens from forced conversion of their resources without free election is also a quantifiable dilution of individual freedom. If, for example, privileged monopolies (such as utilities, copyright or patent expansion) consume a growing ratio of a citizen's resources, freedom is reduced. Thus, the ratio of the sum of taxation, losses due to crime, and compelled monopoly expenditures as compared to that which an individual citizen decides in free choice gives an objective ratio of what amount of freedom that a population has.

The United States is sadly lacking in freedom.
Control of monopolies is essential. Government is a monopoly. Big businesses are also monopolies. Under Republican administration, laws are manipulated to create privileged monopolies; under Democratic administration, taxes are enlarged and non-responsive government agencies erode the free election of citizens and the monopoly of government is enlarged. Both are right and both are wrong.

We need to take control of our country and our government, not behave as subjects to a nameless herd of bureaucrats that champion every cause but our own. We are the stockholders. We need to decide what is right for all of us, not be tempted by a “fool's excise tax” whereby a very few of us can win at the expense of many.

How can this be done?
Change of laws alone will not do it, for they may be diluted with still more corrupt laws and even those may be selectively enforced. We need to agree on principle to make what is wrong illegal and what is right legal. We need to agree that we, ourselves, will enforce it. These are the principles that I believe each and every person can agree must be done to ensure that each and every one of us will perpetually have the right and also an equal chance to secure liberty and freedom for themselves and for their families.

First, we must preserve the right for us to set, individually, our own values. It is not for me to tell you what to believe, nor is it for me to tell you what process you must use to find something true or false. That is up to you. Distrust credentials, because they have been so adulterated as to be useless. Who should do what? How should it be determined? Who should lead and who should follow? Who should be trusted? Who should be believed?

These are questions of policy, which is determined by the process of politics.

Freedom needs to be pursued, to be measured, to be reported; else, it will be lost.
Thus, even some of those “far left” ideas of French presidential candidate Segone Royal are not far out. What is wrong with a 35 hour work week? What is wrong with an 80 hour work week?

If we leave “putting something away for rainy days” up to compete with short term purchases, the odds are against it ever being done. A more immediate if not demanding need or want will always get chosen ahead of it.

But that is the attractiveness of the 1USATax. It collects money as easy and as simply as possible. It consigns one fifth of any such money collected to individual entitlements, thus it doesn't compete with immediate purchases, it relies on them. Not only does it do do this for wage earners, but business owners, transients and all others that vie within our economy.

How is this possible with just an average 5% tax built into everything we buy?
Aren't sales taxes higher than that now? The answer is that the tax, even at five percent, is levied on all elements of the economy, not just consumer sales, thus it can be much lower than sales taxes are now.

Isn't this a “hidden” tax?
No it isn't, because everyone will know it rate and that it is included in the price of things they buy; they don't need to be motivated to look for it either, because they will receive a monthly reminder of what it is; we don't have to calculate it over and over if we know it is a constant.

Won't it be compounded if retailers, wholesalers and jobbers are not exempt?
Yes. But that is the beauty of its simplicity. We know what it is, we know the distribution ratios are fixed, we know the tax is always held reasonable, and we know it is always included in the selling price. Thus, from producer to consumer, the five percent tax is compounded for every sale based on the value of what it is, by those who can best judge its value, a willing buyer and a willing seller for a particular time and a particular place.

Wouldn't it be a “tax on tax” or a “pyramid” scheme?
No it isn't, because it is a true “pay as you go” for each element of the economy and each element of the distribution process. It is fair: All competitors and all distributors of the same product or service pay the same tax rate, which is usually five percent, but never more than ten percent and never more for one then another.

Is it taxation without representation?
Definitely not, because we elect our Congress directly and our tax money goes to only those locally that we elect to watch over how it is spent. We all agree to give to charity, though we might not agree on which charity, we are free to each choose for ourselves. We can change our minds, too.

Won't prices just rise to build in the tax?
Yes and no. Yes, because some products (stock and commodity markets, interest and finance charges, etc.,) are not now taxed; others, however, will go down (like wage taxes and social security payments are eliminated). But since the total ratio of what government takes from the economy is reduced, the tax load on all prices is likewise reduced and we should see our prices fall.

How can this possibly provide enough money for government to operate?
Government is not at its optimum ratio, because it has been sized by greed. Greed always takes as much as it can take. So our tax load is set only by how much we can afford, which is delegating to others far too much of what we should do for ourselves. This greed thus set taxes too high and spends money on things not wanted nor needed. This deprives those things that it should be spent on, particularly those things that make our lives better and our economy therefore stronger. Each of us are better equipped and better motivated to manage our discretionary resources better, but we can't if we never get the opportunity.

Thus when we reduce the ratio of what we spend for government versus what we spend for everything else, believe it or not, the government ends up with more money for it to operate. That is because the size of the pie is what we build, not simply fighting with one another for a bigger piece of a shrinking pie.

Won't this load up on the poor?
No, because the current tax structure heavily loads the lower worker class and we will lighten this burden. This scheme not only reduces such tax load by one third, but also provides mechanisms to keep essential products and services low (reduced tax load on necessaries).

How can it retire our huge public debt, now estimated at 9 trillion dollars?
Not easily, but remember that our United States is worth a lot more than what it owes. A transition plan of the 1USATax will retire public debt by converting it to private debt of their own. By structure, it prevents fool hardy debt from being used. What about environmental concerns? The fine granularity of the 1USATax provides means to administer more accurately environmental concerns. It eliminates “externalities” as taxes. It encourages quality over quantity. It encourages conservation over consumption. It prefers peace to war. It sets a worldwide example of generosity, checked by prudence.

Will this solve everything? No.
We still need to come up with a good method to check monopolies, yet encourage entrepreneurship. Our government has shown it can be bribed to look the other way and that laws alone will not be the solution. We have too much defense spending, but we all are nervous about not spending enough. We have high crime and more people in prison than any other country. We have a problem with drugs and opportunistically driven smut poisoning the souls of our youth. We have a growing police state that is eroding our freedoms. We have a method of living that drives too much and chokes our creativity. We are paving over our environment. We have huge monopolies positioning themselves to make our very lives commodities to serve no purpose. We watch as industry after industry, job after job, is eroded and discarded. Our long range meetings have shrunk to weeks. The capital that has been stolen with crooked laws and skewed collateral is in the hands of those that are well practiced in stealing.

They cannot be trusted.

Will it solve this thing? Yes.
Those things that seem intractable do have solutions. The future is bright with promise. We can at last reign in the political gluttony to something that can be managed intelligently whereby each of us can choose our own destiny.