The Vampire Effect

Guest Post by Eric Peters

One of the subtler – and most vicious – ways the government renders us more dependent on it is by rendering us less able to help ourselves and one another.

I just got the second of my twice-yearly bills from the government demanding about $1,000 in rent – it is styled “property tax” – on what is absurdly styled “my” house, in order to be allowed to continue living in it (hence rent, notwithstanding I am technically the “owner” of my house, having paid the former owner in full for it many years ago).

It’s a lot of money for me – and for most people.

It’s also just about the same amount of money a family member needs to cover rent they can’t pay this month.

I would like to help – and would, were it not for the fact that I haven’t got the means to pay both my “rent” and the family member’s rent. So the family member will have to figure something out. Because if I don’t pay the government the “rent” it says I owe, I will be evicted from “my” house just as surely – and probably sooner and faster – than my family member will be evicted from her apartment for failing to pay hers.

But it’s subtler – and more vicious than just that.

I have lived in my house – the current house – for 16 years. My total annual “rent” is about $2,000. Punch that into a calculator times 16 and you get $32,000 dollars. That amount of money would be more than enough money to turn a little outbuilding I have into a nice little cottage my family member could live in – and pay rent to no one (thereby decreasing her dependence).

But that money is gone, too.

Plus the 15 percent off the top of every dollar I earn as a “self-employed” person, which goes to retirement checks for people I have never met who need them because they, in their turn, had vast sums stolen from them over the course of their working lives to fund the retirement of the oldsters before them – and so on.

The common denominator being we’re all made dependent on the government.

Most of us could not only take care of ourselves absent the government, we would be able to take care of those who cannot care for themselves. This capacity to be charitable – and act on our best impulses – is also stolen from us and we are reduced to the status of jealously protecting what we’re allowed to keep.

Instead of goodwill toward men, wariness and resentment toward men – who we come to correctly view as potential claimants without limit on our industry and frugality. If we are careful with money but someone else isn’t, the person who isn’t can use the government to put his hands in our pockets.

We are also deprived of another important thing – the ability to help others find their way back to responsibility and accountability. The government care about neither thing because it wants dependency in perpetuity because that gives the government power – and control.

But when we have a family member or friend or neighbor in distress, our desire is for their distress to be temporary. The very last thing we want is for them to become dependent in perpetuity on us – because it’s servile, of course but also because we haven’t got unlimited means. Our help must by definition be temporary and this, in turn, gives incentive to both the giver and the recipient to figure out and fix the problem so that it goes away.

We help with this month’s rent – but spend the rest of the month helping that person get their finances in order, or a job or whatever is necessary to assure that they are able to pay next month’s rent.

The government has no interest in that because it tends to foster independence – and there’s no power or control in that.

And so, it mulcts us all such that the responsible and industrious can just barely take care of themselves, with the ultimate goal being to keep everyone in a state of anxiety about their security, in order to nudge them ever closer to being dependent on the very thing which is the source of their insecurity.

Government is a vampire. It sucks the life from the living – and creates fresh corpses wherever it goes.

And there is only one effect treatment for vampirism.

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e.d. ott
e.d. ott

Starve the beast or put a stake through its heart.
Most people choose to starve the beast by moving or downsizing once the kids move out. It’s a good plan if you live in a state with high tax rates. I plan to pawn the house off and most likely rent for a year, maybe two at the most and then relocate out of the Garbage State. NYC residents are moving out of Brooklyn, Harlem, and Queens into my area and as far as I’m concerned, they can have it. We’ll go somewhere else where the regulations are more lax and there are fewer people.

Mygirl...maybe

Timely article for moi. I just finished cutting a check to Uncle Sugar and the bulk of the check went to SS at 15% since I’m also self employed. It pissed me off big time to have to cough up that money because I’m funding a Ponzi that will eventually run out and the younguns will get bupkiss after paying in.

People think that because Texas has no income tax that it’s cheap to live here, and, I want to disabuse them of that notion. Property taxes are the killer in this state and they keep going up. School taxes are tied into property taxes and schooling illegal kids is starting to take its toll on resources (gotta be bilingual with special books and teachers and teachers aides adding to the costs) Tuition for state universities is going up, those schools also get property tax money.

Texas also has sales taxes and those add up too. The massive influx of people coming into the state has caused taxes to go up, property values go up and tax rates go up. The schools have huge gyms and football fields in Texas because football is next to Jesus in popularity. When I was teaching at one of the state universities there was some salary reviews and the highest paid ‘teacher/instructor on campus was the football coach with a salary approaching one and a half million dollars.
Your taxes at work….

List of Top FBS Head Coach Salary for NCAA Football in 2019

MMinLamesa
MMinLamesa

Our property taxes on our little shithole in Lamesa(TX) for a home we paid $70,000 are higher then for the home I owned in Golden CO which I sold for $320,000. CO has a law mandating the total property tax funding will be split 55/45, business/residential, which has served to keep property taxes down a bit. I understand that the fucking REgressives running the state are looking to amp property taxes up as well as overturning TABOR(for the children).

I also remember years ago seeing a 10% sales tax somewhere and thinking, that’s crazy. Now? It’s the fucking norm. Funding 30 million+ illegals is getting pretty GD expensive.

Personally I wonder WTF people were thinking when this idea was first run up the flagpole?

Ghost

A nice bloody steak? (intentional misuse)

I’d not seen mulcts used in a sentence before… perhaps it could compete for word of the month.

Chuck
Chuck

Mulct is to Eric Peters as insouciant is to PCR. I didn’t read the byline before reading the article. Once I saw mulct in the essay, I knew it was a Peters article.

Ghost

Ah… oh am not as familiar with Peter’s prose.

Perhaps he and PCR should trade tag words.

the experienced
the experienced

Yeah, we don’t really “own” any property in this country.
When one doesn’t pay property tax three years in a row in Missouri, the county auctions off your deed to the highest bidder. Then there is one more year of probation before the new buyer is permitted to take possession.
God intended that property remains in the family forever and HIS tax is only 10% of the increase. A 20% total tax is called slavery in the Bible.

TN Patriot
TN Patriot

It is not a new concept, but is a basic tenet of government.

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”
– Cicero – 55 BC

Steve
Steve

I find the most enjoyable part of being separated from my money by the govt is knowing it’s used to pay rent, food and healthcare for people who tell me daily they hate me and would prefer to see me dead. I’m just warm and fuzzy all over.

Ginger
Ginger

I far more appreciate my property tax money going to build huge gyms so people of color can play basketball at night out of the elements.
Later they can go shoot at each other, maybe hitting the intended target but most likly killing a child sleeping.

KaD
KaD

The property tax is the tax I hate most, and I don’t see how it’s legal. A debt that can never be paid off is by definition indentured servitude, a violation of the 13th Amendment you would think.

Apple
Apple

Thats why we are moving. Onerous property and school taxes. 50% higher in last five years. Over 50 grand to .gov in just five years. Time to leave the nicest place i have ever lived. I hate the fact i have been driven from my home by taxes. I will never live anywhere as nice again. And it makes me ill. We have 5 to 7 years of work left in us then we are headed to alabama where taxes are low.

I dont understand how they think its ok to drive you from a home you have lived in over 23 years. When we moved in our mortgage payment including taxes was 890 dollars. Its more than that just in tax now. We are penalized for maintaining and improving our life. How is that right?

Grog
Grog

Morality and Law are not synonymous.

Apple
Apple

Entirely too much truth in that statement

turlock
turlock

IT is even worse than you state. At all levels, we punish virtue and reward bad behavior.

johnyaya
johnyaya

My ideal society would follow a simple principle: reward virtue and punish stupidity. Consistently, throughout life, at every level.

It is not a coincidence that the entire program of the political left does the exact opposite, without exception. They are the party of stupidity, sloth and bad decisions.

yahsure
yahsure

I was thinking about my crazy auto insurance. It goes up slowly and I have no tickets or accidents. You’re expected to insure just about everything. (by law, enforced by heavy fines) But the car doesn’t go to court or get sued. It’s one of my bills that will continue until I decide not to own vehicles or i die. I really tire of mandatory anything.

Anymouse
Anymouse

The expect, no, they want you to change policies every 3 years, that’s why they keep jacking up your rates. They have to make money, regardless. If you switch carriers, few things happen:
1. the current insurer gets to remove you from their risk pool, (instant profit)
2. the new insurer gets to add a “good payer” to their credit pool.
3. you get a new policy that is $300 less than what your were paying.
4. repeat step 1 in 3 years.

it is the cycle of busy bodies, creating paperwork for corporate overloards.

Plus, it decreases resentment against the current insurer, which reduces the potential for fraud (and this is the primary incentive, they just don’t trust us little people)

EC
EC

They play hot potato with your ass, the longer you are insured with them, the more likely you are to have a claim.

James the Wanderer

I used to pay Nationwide to allow me to operate my car on the roads I paid for with other taxes. Their customer service went south when my daughter had a fenderbender – I was due for renewal and decided to go elsewhere, but hadn’t yet done so. After they canceled my insurance without telling me I had a parking lot gouge on a valuable vehicle. I found out when I tried to get it fixed that I was no longer their customer – OK, I went elsewhere. Then they told me I owed them the premiums on the policy they cancelled – I told them if I had to pay premiums, they had to fix my car! After I got the state insurance commissioner involved, they found it necessary to keep that deal – I paid for the policy, they paid for the repairs, I cancelled immediately after! They paid more for the repairs than I did for the policy – stupid twits, they should have shut up and let me go the first time.

Solutions Are Obvious
Solutions Are Obvious

I left the US. Haven’t had vehicle insurance or a ticket in 15 years. Consider your options- all of them.

Martin
Martin

Out here, 25 miles from Baltimore, the suburbs pay a hefty tax on our own property, $2000-$4000 property tax per house. The schools get it all they say, and use it to pay full-time wages for half-time jobs. 6hours a day x 180 days= about 1100 hours per year. Full time work is 2000 hours a year. For all practical purposes the school system is a second un-elected Count government quite a bit more powerful than the one we get to vote for.

Solutions Are Obvious
Solutions Are Obvious

“Government’s great contribution to human wisdom…is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.” – H. L. Mencken

Anonymous
Anonymous

who is john galt

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