“Box 7. Shows nonemployee compensation. If you are in the trade or business of catching fish, box 7 may show cash you received for the sale of fish. If payments in this box are conquest income, report this amount on Schedule C, C-EZ, “or (undecipherable), and complete Schedule SE.
“You received this form instead of a shotglass of hemlock because the payer did not consider you a citizen…”
File Under: I get email.
Have you ever wondered from what headwater of simpleminded dumbassery the average Conservative idiot’s “Common Wisdom” springs? That, given the pressure of being utterly fucking wrong about everything all the time. what hammer keeps the rivets of their ridiculous ideology from popping out and the guts of their naked bigotry from unspooling all over the floor.
Well behold (I got this emailed to me, but it shows up like a manifesto/WATB Diaper Rash all over the Wingnutopshere.)
This Tax truth
At first I thought this was funny, then I realized the awful truth of it. Be sure to read all the way to the end!
Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table
At which he's fed.
Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
Are the rule.
Then we swing from the quaint and general to the contemporary and specific.
When he's gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
The inheritance tax.
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
And thence comes the Hulk!Smash!Terrible!Outrage!
STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What happened? Can you spell "politicians?"
And I still have to "press 1"for English.
I hope this goes around THE USA at least 100 times. You could help by forwarding it to your other friends...that's what I just did!
Well, you gotta give it up for the author of this twaddle. He hits for the cycle; taking swipes at uppity women in the workplace, “politicians”, and dirty Messicans (or did you think the agony of having to “’press 1’ for English” was directed at the Poles?)
So since we’re dealing with Teh Simple, let’s start simple.
Let’s start with those good old days.
A hundred years ago, England was the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world, not the United States.
And England, for your information, built its empire -- its cities, roads and navy -- on the plunder, tribute and, yes, taxes, taken from its conquests.
As did the Roman Empire.
And the Persians.
Hell, even the Original Gangsta’s of Democracy maintained themselves by a combination of plunder, genteel extortion, tariffs and levying taxes to pay for Evil Gummnit:
The Athenian Tax Law of 374/3 B.C.
The law lays down arrangements for the farming of the tax of one twelfth…of the grain of Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros, and of a separate tax of one fiftieth. The collection is to be auctioned in "portions" (merides) of 100 medimnoi of wheat + 400 medimnoi of barley (one meris undertaken by a single man or a six-fold meris undertaken by a symmoria of six men), which are to be conveyed to the city "before the month Maimakterion (v)" at the expense and the risk of the collectors and stored in the Aiakeion.
No, at the end of the 19th Century – the period the writer yearns for as some kind of Tax Free Nirvana – the United States was still a 2nd rate power (on the rise due to our success in the Spanish/American War) run by robber barons and plutocrats in the long, feudal shadows of the Gilded Age.
In American history, the "Gilded Age" refers to unprecedented wealth polarization in the U.S. and wasteful displays of wealth and excessive opulence of America's upper-class during the post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction era, from the 1870s to the 1890s.
Of course unlike older empires -- and much to the horror of our home-grown theocrats -- we operate under a doctrine of separation of Church and State; which means the King or the Satrap doesn't raise armies or pave roads; the Evil Gummint does.
A hundred years ago the Homestead Act had about run its course. The frontier was closed and with it, the idea that the United States could expand forever and on the cheap into mile after unplowed, unfenced mile of virtually-free, highly-exploitable land (Virtually free, except, of course for the time and expense required to eradicate the thousands of native peoples who were already using it.)
Brief driftglass aside: One could reasonably argue that our national freak-out over the loss of our frontier-as-symbol led directly to the imperialism of Teddy Roosevelt and the expansion of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny overseas.
End brief driftglass aside.
So what did America really look like during the Glory Days the writer longs for?
Well let’s start with the basics, like how long you’d probably live.
If you were born during the writer’s Tax-Free Golden Age and you were a White Guy, you could expect to be dead as Diogenes before your 50th birthday (Average white female life expectancy was 47. Average for a black male was 34. For a black female, 33.)
Today, in the Over-Taxed Nightmare that is modern America, that poor, abused White Guy can expect to live an additional 28 year and see his 75th birthday. (White female life expectancy is now 80. Black male 68. And Black female 75.)
And where did that skyrocketing life expectancy of the 20th century come from? This miracle that gives certain crabby, dyspeptic White Guys an additional 28 years in which to bitch about how much better things used to be?
Turns out it's the result of improvements in public health, nutrition (like, say, school lunch programs) and better medicine.
Care to guess where the money came from to pay for those things?
Of course in those glorious days before “politicians” and taxes ruined America, government was largely paid for by regressive tariffs, the effects of which landed squarely on the backs of working people.
As for women not working outside the home, well I guess the writer means “Nice White Ladies” since there was plenty of cheap, legally-exploitable domestic female laborers to be found on the poorer, darker side of town. And while those Nice White Ladies were conspicuously absent from the work force it is well to remember that, for the most part, they weren't allowed to work.
Or vote (the 19th amendment wasn't ratified until 1920).
Or marry outside of their own race.
Or divorce.
Or own property.
Hell, they were property.
As to the United States having “the largest middle class in the world”, like many Conservative idiots, our writer not only picks and chooses only those selective bits of our national narrative that conveniently support his tirade, he also seems to have confused 1900 with 1952.
Because that large and stable "middle class" we see imploding around us today was created largely by a massive government spending program known as the GI Bill (emphasis added):
From “Remembering the GI Bill”, July 4, 2000.
…
STEPHEN AMBROSE: Listen, that GI Bill was the best piece of legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress, and it made modern America. The educational establishment boomed and then boomed and them boomed. The suburbs, starting with Levittown and others, were paid by GIs borrowing on their GI Bill at a very low interest rate. Thousands and thousands of small businesses were started in this country and are still there thanks to the loans from the GI Bill. It transformed our country.
JIM LEHRER: Transformed our country, Doris?
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Oh, no question. I agree with everything Steve said, including the passion with which he said it. I think few laws have had so much effect on so many people. It meant that blue collar workers, a whole generation of blue collar workers were enabled to go to college, become doctors, lawyers, and engineers, and that their children would grow up in a middle class family. It meant, as Stephen said, that people had homes, instead of being renters in the city, so that they could bring up their children in a home that they had owned.
…
JIM LEHRER: I bought my first house on the GI Bill.
HAYNES JOHNSON: Yeah. There you are. I mean, the idea of this - it is so incredible to look back on that - the idea that in 1940 - in the class of '40, as Doris would say, five years after the war, World War II, ended, twice as many Americans graduated from college. That's just the college part. I mean, as Steve was saying about the suburbs, there were 13 million homes built in the 50's, 11 million outside of there with GI loans. I mean, it just - it did transform the country.
…
JIM LEHRER: And, Doris, to use the word transforming society, I mean, the legacy of what happened to those World War II vets continues to this day, does it not, in our society?
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Oh, without question, it's the generation that really built the whole decades that followed after that. You know, just following on what Steve said, most of the people who went into the GI - into the soldier's war - had not left their counties; they hadn't traveled much in the United States. So suddenly they are in this war; they're all over the world; they see things they have never seen before. So possibilities open to them, and I think that's partly what led to that changing attitude toward their educational possibilities …
A gateway to the middle class
…
HAYNES JOHNSON: And the irony of this, we're talking about, this was the biggest government grant, in effect, it was the government, federal government. Today people hate the government. This was once there was no debate about it. There's no controversy about it. There's no ideological argument about it.
…
Hey, would you like to take a wild fucking guess who it was that most opposed the GI Bill?
JIM LEHRER: Not everybody wanted society transformed, did they?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: No, absolutely. At the time that the bill was debated in Congress it passed only by a very slim margin, and, in fact, a lot of -- particularly Republicans -- said let's not pass this thing because a big part of the GI Bill was to give returning vets $20 a week for 52 weeks. They felt that would encourage sloth; that people would not try to get jobs. They thought that this would extend the welfare state, rather than do the opposite.
…
Don't kid yourselves, boys and girls; Republicans have always hated the troops.
And, yes, we wouldn’t want to spend public revenue – public taxes – on frivolous things like social safety nets, education and small business startups since we all know how much better things were back in the Olden Times.
Of course back in the writer’s “good old days", the very idea of a "World War" was still unimaginable.
During those "good old days", much of the nation's wealth came from the forced labor of African Americans in the de facto fascist states of the Jim Crow South; places where murder, rape and terror were routinely sanctioned by the State.
During those "good old days" much of the nation's industry was run by robber barons, which used private armies to stomp the hell out of anyone who crossed them.
These were the days of child labor, and clubbing to death people who dared to suggest that it was wrong.
These were the days when, if you lost a hand on the job, well that was just too fucking bad.
These were the days when, if you found a hunk of human hand in your hotdog, well that was just too fucking bad.
When a seven-day work week for slave wages was considered acceptable.
These were the days when the aged were left to die penniless, alone and in agony.
These were the days before the US maintained a huge standing army. Or a hundred billion dollar navy. Or an air force. Or a nuclear arsenal.
These were the days when an industrialist could rip open the ground, pollute the air and water, and to hell with the consequences.
When housing for the working poor was hellish because no one cared.
When pandemics wiped out people by the thousands because there was virtually no public health care system.
Where eating tainted food was the chance you took because there was no FDA.
Where there was no interstate highway system. No phone system. No internet. No oranges 3-for-a-buck in Chicago in the winter, because there was no agricultural plan or transportation system.
No public high schools.
No middle class.
No electrical grid, or expectation that you should be able to flip a switch and have heat, light, refrigeration or communication with the outside world.
No unemployment insurance.
A minimum wage? What are ya? A commie!?
No national parks.
No aeroplanes to anywhere.
No GPS system...because there were no satellites...because there was no NASA. Which means no weather tracking. No XM radio. No cell phones.
None of it existed, because they had not yet been prioritized by the American citizenry, and then purchased with their tax dollars.
Of course, there were some problems from the writer’s Golden Age that even the GI Bill couldn’t eliminate:
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I hate to be a downer. One thing that it didn't work so well at was helping black Americans. Many black Americans who got GI benefits could not get into some of these towns - Levittown on Long Island was segregated. You couldn't buy a house if you were black.
…
For that relic of our Glorious Past, we had to make another revolution.
We had to alter or abolish our government when we found it to be destructive of the lives, liberties and happiness of its citizens, which, if you’ll remember, were the grounds for our revolt against the British.
There is plenty to bitch about American. There is government waste, and certain ridiculous and counterproductive taxes, and you’re never going to find me on the side of arbitrarily defending either taxes or politicians in the abstract. However our writer seems to conveniently forget that, at the very beginning, we set a powerful precedent for dealing with those problems,
That our original revolution against the British Empire was not against taxes, but against taxation without representation.
It’s right there on our fucking letterhead.
But the thing is, in this country we have representation.
We have elections.
The “politicians” the writer is so hysterical about are also known as his “elected representatives”.
Not an invading army. Not a hereditary monarchy. Not an occupying power.
E-L-E-C-T-E-D.
And while I get the distinct impression that the writer would rather wallow in his Laz-E-Boy and rail about the “politicians” and wimmin and dirty Messicans than leap up and take action, someone should tell him that here in the Land of the Brave, he and his friends are perfectly free to organize opposition. To bootleather around their neighborhood and raise up an army of like-minded citizens. To replaced their elected representatives. To run for office themselves if they like.
They are free to do any and all of those things.
What they are not free to do is just fucking lie.
What they are not free to do is gin up some bullshit, sinless, pre-Fall, “White Man’s Eden” cheapjack Chinese-knockoff version of history from which they can then divine some magical justification for their ignorance, bigotries and idiotic ideology.
30 comments:
You forgot to mention the bridge in Minnesota. You know, the one that clearly demonstrates what happens when these imbeciles actually get to govern something. Shit literally starts falling down all around them, and they don't have the balls to take responsibility for breaking what the adults made.
To quote the great Doctor Gonzo, in a new context, these people should be driven from the arena of public discourse with "mace and cattle prods."
They have to lie, drifty. It's all they've got.
Thanks for stickin up for me, the Poor Dirt Farmer.
I had to think of you when I larfed at a commentor who called Kagan and O'Hanlon "Eraserhead" and"Blowdryboy"in the comments at the NYT OpEd where they called for an invasion and bombing of Pakistan!
Now where might the commentor seen a template of that wit.....oh yeah, right here!
Of course, the success of the GI bill is the very reason that the Grover Norquists of the land are "waiting for the Greatest Generation to die off." Those who actually remember these things, things like the Great Depression, what got us into it, and what brought us out of it, are dangerous to their ideology.
There is nobody left who remembers firsthand what the age of the robber barons was like for the rank and file. This is what makes it easy for yon BS sculptor to say whatever he wants and expect nothing but nods. It takes some small interest in the reality of the situation, coupled with just enough ambition to bother to find it out, to manage not to fall into the "must be true" ditch. Alas, that seems too much to ask of many.
It's how "conservatives" operate. Claiming there was a glorious past and promising a return to it, anybody who questions them is told to look for themselves, knowing they never will. Cleaning the cheetoh-dust from one's fingertips is too much work. Forget about getting off one's lumpy ass and trundling down to a library. It wouldn't surprise me to find tracts from, say, just pre-WWI that espoused the 1820s as a time that all was right with the world, and if people would only follow what the writer was suggesting, it could be again. It's a lazy con, and lazy cons are the most popular.
justme I don't want to speak for Driftglass, but if his blog is anything like mine I have a standing rule that the comments are not allowed to be as insightful and elegant as the post. Again, I don't speak for dg on that, but still...
;-D
Boy, what an awesome brief political history of the post-Civil War United States.
"It’s right there on our fucking letterhead."
That made me laugh out loud. It's how you really have to talk to these gibboons.
"What they are not free to do is gin up some bullshit, sinless, pre-Fall, 'White Man’s Eden' cheapjack Chinese-knockoff version of history from which they can then divine some magical justification for their ignorance, bigotries and idiotic ideology."
Cha-ching!
Why is it that there bullshit viral e-mails can get halfway around the world before brilliant posts like this can get their boots on?
We should all copy-and-paste this post and send it to everyone in our address books, and see what happens.
Ah the good old days, before knuckle-dragging-undereducated idiots could spread their moronic vile for free.
pwapvt
I hope this rant goes around TEH USA at least 100-brazilian times.
Of course, in order for it to go truly viral, I suppose a YouTube video needs to be made of it. You know - for the kids...
Seriously, Drifty, this is magnificent. The sad thing is that every schoolchild should know this - and apparently don't.
It just goes to show you what 25 years of Reaganesthesia will do to a nation.
Oh this is quite a beautiful thing. May I borrow it? I think it needs to be kept at the ready the next time some dumbass decides to send me something of this sort. Now can you craft one for the idiotic "guns are allowed in school, why not god?" email that infects the intertubes like a return case of herpes every so often?
Have a great Thanksgiving, Drifty - I count being able to read your blog as one of my blessings.
Reading this , I was led to thinking of the PBS special I saw the other night about the Athenians and the very first democracy and how this country is virtually duplicating the results.
The author of the email is of the sort with short term memory.
The people of this country fought hammer and tong to drag themselves out from under the thumbs of the robber barons and ruling elite.
Along with the GI bill, the unions in this country are responsible for a great deal of the respite from sins of such things as child labor,the 70 hr work week and are instrumental in achieving, Lawd have mercy, medical benefits and retirement packages that are so obviously lacking in the delirious dream world of the email author.
i'm glad i read your post this morning before i began writing something else. it would have been totally lame, weak, and incoherant compared to this. i linked to you instead.
As someone who taught high school US History for 30 years, I wish that I could accuse Drifty of hyperbole in this post. The recitation of horrors is just so mind-numbing. Unfortunately, although the post is as graphic and moving as always, there so many disgusting details that had to be left out. The fact is that every time the Republican "fiscal conservatives" get their way--their own sick conception of the free market--the result is mounds of riches for the rich, massive corruption of government, the total screwing of the cattle (oops, excuse me, common man) followed by the collapse of the whole stinking house of cards, survived only by, you guessed, the rapacious creatures that caused the carnage in the first place. Hold your nose and put on a life vest. The Bush Depression is going to be a heller!
Oh man - now I am hoping someone emails this to me - it is the kind of useless drival that usually gets passed around at work.
If you don't mind can I use this if as a response if I do get this? The good thing about the people who send these things is that they don't know how to BCC so when they send crap out you get a whole list of people to embarass them in front of.
Claiming there was a glorious past and promising a return to it
I used to know the name of the brain syndrome in which the past is filtered so that we only remember the good parts. In this case, it's even better if it was a past no one living actually experienced, all the better to sell the lie.
There's always a dealbreaker with the Golden Past. For me, it would be dental anesthetic...
You have a good one, Driftglass. I am, as always, thankful I have your writing to both put a grin on my face and a metaphorical sword in my hand!
I'm one of the fish Minstrel Boy caught, using this post as bait. I'm happily hooked! I've received a duplicate of the glorious olden daze e-mail; My supposedly "liberal" 82yo father-in-law sends them on to me.
I had gotten a very similar email awhile back and maybe had a whisper of a notion to write something about it but didn't. I'm so very glad you did, and with the statistics to put such email right where it belongs:
Deleted. Voided. Completely invalidated.
i have trained people not to forward this type of email to me. it's called the "Reply-All" button, followed by a link to either snopes.com or some other studious debunking site [this one, for instance ;)]. at one point i had a major falling out with a friend because i "made her look stupid" to thousands of people all with one click. i apologized profusely because her friendship was more important to me than who was wrong or right. however, the subtext is that nobody can make you look stupid - that is your job and yours alone.
PS - hey what's up konagod! happy tofurkey day!
Minstrel Boy sent me. Damn glad he did. You say it all.
Minstrel Boy sent me as well.
I got nothing... What a thing of beauty.
mb sent me. just too freaking wonderful!
One braised yokel, 'served under driftglass'...Top notch, sir.
I jes got me one thing to add: Take yer Ron Paul and shove it up yer Republican ass.
Great post Mr. DG.
My dad, born in 1915, was a Republican. He liked Ike. He was, though, a conservationist, an environmentalist, and extremely moderate in all that he did. But when Nixon got on TV and admitted he'd lied - can you imagine any of the monsters these days, i.e., Cheney, Bush - EVER doing that? - my dear old dad said, fuck this shit, I'm never voting for one of these guys again.
As his dementia increased, my dad didn't remember things so well. I recall sitting out on the screened in porch with him, talking about Clinton's problems, new version every 10 minutes. He was sympathetic to the Big Dog, in a way.
My dad died about two months after 9/11. As often as I battled with him as a teenager, I wish he were around to give me his ideas about what we're heading into. He used to tell me people always thought things were going to hell in a hand basket, but I really think it's worse now than ever before.
Just kind of ruminating here; because everything my dad ever told me was true... too many people in the world, fighting over too few resources.
Makes me want to weep.
Sweet Jesus in a speedo this is something to behold.
Thank you DB for linking to this gent ;)
This is superb stuff. I'm going to do my level best to get it read by a lot more people. Thanks for writing it.
snip"This miracle that gives certain crabby, dyspeptic White Guys an additional 28 years in which to bitch about how much better things used to be?"
I nearly cried (and simultaneously spat up) for the perfection of such words.
and a hearty "WORD!!" to wearbear. I just maxx'd out my dental for the year - another season of the filling that crumbled, rootcanal/crown, and impacted wisdom tooth removal. I'd be dead if not just for Novocaine, but the insurance my employer provides, and while at it - the orthodontist that used the GI bill to go back to Dental School.
If that email lands in my inbox, I'm sending the link to this post right back.
unless this guy sent it. That's pulling yerself up by yer own dentures.
And because of Dear Leader and modern ReThugs we are merrily marching back to the Gilded Age: contaminated food, lead in toys, korporate CEOs being paid more than the GNP of small countries, etc., etc.
I had to modify one of your sentences: "he and his friends are perfectly free to organize opposition. To bootleather around their neighborhood and raise up an army of like-minded ORCS."
I am going to read this over and over again until every freakin' talking point is at the tip of my tongue the next time I encounter one of these bozo's with their ridiculous formulaic platitudes. Came over from Harp & Sword.
Shorter Driftglass:
Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, and they'll drag the rest of us down too.
Shorter History:
THE PROUD TOWER by Barbara Tuchman. If you don't know it, it's a prequel to THE GUNS OF AUGUST, a history of the industrialized world in the generation leading up to World War I. Drifty's descriptions, pithy as they are, are only the poster in the lobby compared to the whole D.W.Griffth-style-epic of grubby details...
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