Sally Muffinsheep was a babe. Now 48, by the time she was 16, it was evident she was going to have a comfortable life. Men would always fall all over her to help her. Born into an upper middle-class family, she always had financial support when she needed it. She was an art history major and did some part time modeling while working for a fashion magazine in New York. There she met Pierre Little-Johnson, a Brit, and a sommelier/sales rep for an East Village wine distributor.
After a few years in New York, they moved to her hometown of Richmond, Virginia. Eventually, Pierre told Sally he was gay and wished to live with his lover, Billy Riordan. Sally got a job at Hugs and Sunshine, a non-profit, giving away other people’s money to promote peace and harmony and to of course eradicate whatever the current crisis du jour might be. There was no tangible or measurable way to determine if the money Hugs and Sunshine gave away did any good, but it didn’t matter. It gave Sally and her co-workers a noble and virtuous purpose. It felt good to throw other people’s money at problems that didn’t exist. Sally’s father ran a successful insurance business. Although he was there to help her, Sally looked down on him because of his conservative political beliefs. Whenever she asked him for money, he asked her for what purpose and often gave her advice about more prudent spending habits. She felt he was patronizing, after all, she was a grown woman with a BA degree.
As you might expect, Sally was a progressive, an art history major from a toney liberal arts college. She had been jilted by a man and had a feel-good job at a non-profit. She still relied heavily on men to help her, most significantly her father and older brother, but she fancied herself to be a fierce independent woman. During Covid she idolized Tony Fauci and followed all his instructions, including multiple jabs of the vaccine and its boosters. Her Facebook page had her profile picture with the “I got my vaccine today. We can do this!” logo.
One day, at her early morning barre class she struck up a conversation with Julia. Since Julia was very pretty and fashionable, Sally assumed that she was “one of us.” But Julia was conservative. The topic soon turned to men, and Rob Smith’s name came up. They both agreed that he was a wiseass and a scoundrel, certainly someone to stay away from, but Julia mentioned that Sally should read his very illuminating articles on Real Clear Markets. Wanting to be friends with Julia because she was one of the cool chicks, Sally wished to please her in the hopes that she might be invited out on the next all girls night.
After reading just one article, Sally was struck blind by a huge white light, just like the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. When her eyesight returned, she tracked Rob down and begged him to teach her more. She even offered to become his sex slave.
Being a charitable and honorable man. Rob turned down the offers of carnal serfdom but stated that he would teach her about the serfdom she was already under and likely didn’t know it. He started with the US tax system, and how it robs the private sector of capital needed to grow the economy and lift living standards. He explained:
“Sally, you are taxed on the income you earn. When you invest the income you have after taxes, you are taxed on the income your investment earns. When you sell the investment that you already paid all these taxes on, you are taxed again on the profit you make. When you die, you are subject to being taxed at a 40% rate for whatever is left of your assets that you have been paying taxes on your whole life.
You are taxed on the income you spend. Every time you buy a loaf of bread to feed your family, you are taxed. In fact, you are taxed on all food you buy. Often you are taxed double for eating at a restaurant. It’s cold outside and you are freezing, you buy a jacket to keep warm, you are taxed on its purchase. In fact, it is so cold, you go to the liquor store to buy a fifth of Old Rotgut to keep warm. You’ll end up paying federal excise taxes, state excise taxes and state sales tax. To calm your nerves, you need to buy a pack of Lucky Strikes, likely over 50% of the costs are taxes and fees to government entities. After your nerves are calmed, you hop in your car to drive home. For the privilege of having a car, you pay 4.57% of the car’s value every year in personal property tax, even though you paid a “sales and use” tax and titling fees when you bought the car. Damn, your gas gauge is on empty! You pull into the filling station and fill your car up. Approximately 20% of your purchase went to federal and state excises taxes, even though your station’s distributor was already taxed 9% on the gas it purchased.
You drive through your leafy subdivision and pull into your driveway on the house you and Pierre bought 22 years ago (the one that her father pays all the bills). For the privilege of you owning a home, your Dad pays 1.2% of its value every year to your municipality. When y’all bought the house, this payment was manageable at $3,000/year. You may have reasoned that $250/month was a fair deal for city services, but the city has now assessed your house for much more. Dad is now paying $900/month for city services which are of much poorer quality than they were when the house was bought.
You go the fridge, grab a couple of ice cubes, throw them in a glass, pour in a couple ounces of Old Rotgut and mix it with water from the sink. You pay taxes on that water and ice. Don’t believe me, look at your utility bill. When you turn the thermostat to 72, well guess what, there’s a tax paid on the gas distribution that fuels your furnace. Oh yeah, 22% of your cell phone bill is, you guessed it, taxes.
You may think your dad is well off. He owns his own business. Well, it is a C-corp. He pays taxes at the corporate level, and then if he makes a distribution to a shareholder, that money is taxed again. For every employee he has, he has to pay half of his Social Security tax, Medicare tax and his federal and state unemployment taxes. Before Obamacare, his employee health insurance was approximately $80/person/month, it has now skyrocketed to over $900. This too is a “tax.” When your dad goes to sell his business, he will be forced to pay a huge capital gains tax. Rob then explained the Rule of 72 to Sally and told her how Social Security was robbing her of a huge inheritance. “If the money your Dad paid to social security was put into an investment account, there would be millions in that account, but instead he gets a mere pittance of a stipend that ends when he dies.”
Rob explained how if many of these taxes aren’t paid both she and her father could be jailed. So when Rob asked her, “so Sally are you a serf and do you have a master,” she was visibly distressed.
Rob told her to come back next week, and he would explain the incredible waste and inefficiencies in government and how the country would be better off if this money was utilized in the private sector.
Before the next meeting, Sally dropped dead. Afterall, she had been jabbed 6 times.
