Modern American Tax Farming
In doing research for my next home page piece, I came across an interesting practice called "tax farming." When European kings needed funds for expensive military jaunts, they borrowed money from wealthy benefactors. Those "patrons" would be repaid by taxing everyone else and collecting a shade more for themselves. This may have been common throughout history, I don't know--Rome did the same kind of thing to get its revenues--this particular incidence I read about was in the 18th century.
I thought about how much this resembles the way tax collection occurs today in the United States. Really, it is all just a nice pleasant institutionalized racket, not much different from the tax farming technique of centuries ago.
Today the federal government requires $3.6 trillion (its latest budget figure) to fund its expensive enterprises. And really, it's all war. War against terrorism, war against poverty, war against bankruptcy, war against embarrassing inconsequence. What better way to get that than to borrow from people who can afford to buy its bonds, make everyone an agent of the state through a vast network of incorporated entities, and compel them all to pay the bondholders back through the state with an income tax scheme that was originally sold as a way to get the rich to pay more?
Elaborate and imaginative ruse is chief among the arts of war, and when used efficiently with the most skillful deceit, it can be quite profitable. The problem is that the ruse always comes unraveled, but I believe only those who see through the lens of Christ's Kingdom can see it.
Right now it would appear that things are a bit dicey when China begins asking for more sound collateral for its lending, and it is certainly reason for alarm. But the fact is a debter is always a slave to his creditor. The China call is just theater. What's really going on is more consolidation of the World System. China doesn't own the world anymore than Homer Simpson does.
The power brokers to whom people are truly indebted are the agents of Cain working covertly for millennia. Today's version of tax farming in whatever form it takes is merely Cain deftly administering the affairs of the City. You'll either hear screeching and hollering about loss of freedoms, or hearty applause for the hegemony's spiffy new enforcement program against the designs of the highly visible stage actors pretending to be the nefariously exploitive.
Those in the Kingdom aren't anywhere near this. They can't be anywhere close to big and powerful because they are chiefly servants, humbly ministering reconcilation with God to those who want authentic life. If they are simply, plainly doing what God asked them to do--with His power working in them--they'd find those W-4s and 501c3s and any other documented obligation to the System as worthless as--well--as worthless as a U.S. Treasury note, at least in China's mind.
China doesn't know anything special. They're just part of the game, working to game others with as much dissembling as the next guy.
Only through that Kingdom lens can one see it for what it really is.
I thought about how much this resembles the way tax collection occurs today in the United States. Really, it is all just a nice pleasant institutionalized racket, not much different from the tax farming technique of centuries ago.
Today the federal government requires $3.6 trillion (its latest budget figure) to fund its expensive enterprises. And really, it's all war. War against terrorism, war against poverty, war against bankruptcy, war against embarrassing inconsequence. What better way to get that than to borrow from people who can afford to buy its bonds, make everyone an agent of the state through a vast network of incorporated entities, and compel them all to pay the bondholders back through the state with an income tax scheme that was originally sold as a way to get the rich to pay more?
Elaborate and imaginative ruse is chief among the arts of war, and when used efficiently with the most skillful deceit, it can be quite profitable. The problem is that the ruse always comes unraveled, but I believe only those who see through the lens of Christ's Kingdom can see it.
Right now it would appear that things are a bit dicey when China begins asking for more sound collateral for its lending, and it is certainly reason for alarm. But the fact is a debter is always a slave to his creditor. The China call is just theater. What's really going on is more consolidation of the World System. China doesn't own the world anymore than Homer Simpson does.
The power brokers to whom people are truly indebted are the agents of Cain working covertly for millennia. Today's version of tax farming in whatever form it takes is merely Cain deftly administering the affairs of the City. You'll either hear screeching and hollering about loss of freedoms, or hearty applause for the hegemony's spiffy new enforcement program against the designs of the highly visible stage actors pretending to be the nefariously exploitive.
Those in the Kingdom aren't anywhere near this. They can't be anywhere close to big and powerful because they are chiefly servants, humbly ministering reconcilation with God to those who want authentic life. If they are simply, plainly doing what God asked them to do--with His power working in them--they'd find those W-4s and 501c3s and any other documented obligation to the System as worthless as--well--as worthless as a U.S. Treasury note, at least in China's mind.
China doesn't know anything special. They're just part of the game, working to game others with as much dissembling as the next guy.
Only through that Kingdom lens can one see it for what it really is.
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