Subject: Memo to the IRS: Keep Up the Good Work Sun Jan 06, 2008 3:43 am
Memo to the IRS: Keep Up the Good Work By Logan Feys
TO: IRS Customer Service Representatives FROM: IRS Customer #876412909 DATE: November 23, 2002 CC: IRS Taxpayer Advocates RE: Keep Up the Good Work
I would like to thank you all for all that you take from me.
Not all IRS Customers share my esteem for our progressive income tax. Some of my fellow citizens are mired in the past -- back when government denied us the right to be forced to pay hefty taxes on our incomes. There are still some Americans who say they have a natural right to keep the fruits of their labor. You may think I’m exaggerating. I’m not! I have met people who actually believe that what they earn is rightfully theirs, not yours. Their quaint notions of individual liberty are preventing the IRS from doing even more for society. I envision an IRS that takes Customer Service to new heights by offering the highest rates of taxation in the world.
Do you realize how important your job is? Income taxes combat what is surely the #1 problem facing humankind today: the rich. Why are there so many rich individuals? Why are there so many ordinary people who think they can become rich? Because the government hasn’t yet made being wealthy a crime. But the IRS does have the power to make getting rich impossible. All it has to do is tax the rich at a higher rate -- say, 100%. Some may regard this as an extreme measure, but it’s perfectly logical. It follows from the principle that the more private wealth government destroys, the better off society will be. This, of course, is the principle advocated by society’s fountainheads of achievement: labor union organizers, philosophy professors, and politicians.
Since these experts agree that the rich harm society, society’s top priority should be the eradication of wealth. I’ll admit that I haven’t heard this argument stated explicitly by our fountainheads of achievement. But I’m sure they’d agree with me in principle. After all, the condition of being “rich” is relative. If it’s wrong to be a millionaire in a society where the average salary is $35,000, then it’s wrong to have $35,000 in a society where most people have nothing. In a truly just society, no one would be permitted to rise any higher than anyone else.
I hope you continue to seize more and more and more and more and more money from those who have earned it. We are, to our great dismay, occasionally diverted form the path of continually rising tax rates via an unfair tax cut. However, history has shown that government spending goes up at a fairly constant rate. Hence, tax reductions are always temporary. We will reach the destination of full social justice -- the complete liberation of society from wealth. It’s only a matter of time.
We will render the pursuit of personal wealth futile. Entrepreneurs will no longer try to exploit people by selling them things that they want to buy. No one will have any incentive to produce anything, and no one will have any resources with which to buy anything. All economic decisions will be in the hands of the same politicians who now so wisely spend the money you undistribute from me and my countrymen.
In the battle for a just society, you are the heroic soldiers on the front lines. You understand that there’s more to this war than just collecting payments from IRS Customers. That’s why you have made compliance with the tax code just as costly as the tax itself. Think of all the hours Americans spend pouring over books and records and tax forms just to figure out what their obligations to the government are. The way I see it, time spent is money lost. The more, the better.
The enormity and complexity of the tax code has so dumfounded IRS Customers that many, out of sheer frustration, turn to tax attorneys, tax accountants, and tax consultants. These private-sector IRS workers soak up billions of dollars and produce absolutely nothing. All they do is navigate through the legal labyrinth that you have erected for them. It’s like a game, isn’t it? You guys, with the help of your friends in Congress, deliberately write the rules of the game to be extraordinarily dense, convoluted, and anti-common-sensical. Doing so ensures that our country’s tax professionals are kept busy. In fact, the tax-compliance industry is rapidly growing. It’s important to keep it growing. When intelligence and creativity are diverted away from productive jobs and into make-work jobs, wealth is quietly destroyed. Preventing goods and services from being created is just as effective as wiping out those that already exist. The only difference is that most citizens won’t see that there is no difference.
In addition to being an ideal way to choke off economic vitality, the income tax performs many other worthwhile functions. The income tax makes citizens realize that all of their actions ultimately have political consequences. An IRS Customer cannot receive a gift, or buy a new computer, or even be lowered into his grave without running into reporting requirements. People are beginning to understand that they are fundamentally government property. Any Customer who underreports his income may have his home seized and/or be thrown in prison along with rapists and murderers.
Whoever said that it is better to be feared than loved had it exactly right. A fearful population surely won’t rise up and rebel. How many anxious taxpayers do you suppose you have driven to suicide? Maybe not that many. Just a few? No big deal, right? What about all the countless others who go on existing but feel lifeless? It’s hard to retain your self-esteem when you’re treated like a criminal no matter what you do. It’s hard to retain your self-esteem when every year you’re forced to go through the humiliating process of filing confessions to the government detailing exactly how much money you earned and how you earned it, what assets you own, how many children you have, and anything else IRS Customer Service Representatives ask for. Yes, it’s hard to retain your self-esteem when your life isn’t really yours.
The income tax conditions people to be better, more obedient citizens. I should know. Your noble efforts in stamping out my creativity, stifling my ambition, and killing my sense of individuality are enabling me to better serve society. I will refrain from creating any values that might be used to make me or anyone else wealthy. I will be poor, because wealth is bad for society. I will be a conformist cog in the government’s grand social-engineering machine, because there will be nothing else to be.
Yes, thanks to the government’s limitless ability to tax, the future looks bright. So bright that by the next century, nothing will exist to remind anyone that there ever was such a thing as wealth. In the new society you’re helping to build, all economic activities will be political, and all political activities will be economic. Everything that is voluntary will be compulsory, and everything that is compulsory will be voluntary. Customers will be slaves, and slaves will be customers. The distinctions upon which freedom and prosperity rest will be blurred until they are rendered meaningless.
Any government that is successful in reshaping society begins by reshaping minds, one by one. If IRS Customers can be conditioned to accept the idea that reality is…whatever the IRS tells them it is…then they’ll do anything IRS Taxpayer Advocates tell them to do. They’ll do anything any government agent tells them to do. They’ll be eager to conform to the wishes and whims of anyone who seems to have authority. For those who have been deprived of self-esteem and the possibility of acquiring it, conformity provides purpose.
Socially correct history books of the future will record that before the government taxed away all remnants of individualism, Americans were selfish. They were socially irresponsible. They were rich. The point of history will be to show citizens how far their society has progressed. History may have to be significantly altered so as to prevent a studious citizen from becoming effected by certain ironies that are present in our current history. The way things stand now, Americans declared their independence from an overreaching government. They were willing to shed their blood to rid themselves of a small tax placed on a few goods. Their principles were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Now look how far we've come. Keep up the good work.
Subject: Re: Memo to the IRS: Keep Up the Good Work Sun Jan 06, 2008 4:36 am
_________________ Anarcho-Capitalist, AnCaps Forum, Ancapolis,OZschwitz Contraband “The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner "Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann
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Subject: Re: Memo to the IRS: Keep Up the Good Work
Subject: Memo to the IRS: Keep Up the Good Work 
Sun Jan 06, 2008 3:43 am
