“The State has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.”
H.L. Mencken
It’s ALL about the INCOME TAX.
The highwayman robs you of what he can see.
The taxman robs you similarly.
The whole purpose of the income tax is to render visible EVER ACT, EVERY PIECE OF PROPERTY you own, with the goal of holding your ENTIRE LIFE hostage to political theft and political redistribution.
The INCOME TAX makes it possible for men (and worse, WOMEN) to discuss who may be ALLOWED to KEEP their property and WHO will be FORCED to yield their property to someone else, someone deemed “MORE DESERVING.”
The power to tax is the power to destroy. When the thief has consent to inventory every tiny bit of what you own, the thief lowers (potentially to zero) the value of ownership of EVERYTHING.
Who will grow food, who will manufacture ANYTHING if all it does is attract the parasites to come and take it from you?
Dig deep enough and you’ll always find that social collapse has as its main root taxation (AKA legalized theft.)