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The Paycheck Party
The Paycheck Party isn't a real political party, because we all know there are only two real political parties in the United States, and nothing will ever change that except dire catastrophe or a long evolution through time.
The platform of the political parties doesn't really matter, when the discourse is largely emotional and unrealistic. It pleases most politicians to declare things that mean very little in order to hide the fact that they are waterboys for the corporate elite who pay their way in the world.
The Paycheck Party is an idea that needs to emerge in the minds of the average citizen. The purpose of the Paycheck Party is not to field candidates and be elected, but to change the way citizens think about their own self-interest when they go to the polls.
Politicians who wish to benefit their true constituencies instead of the donors who own them could do worse than to adopt the ideas of the Paycheck Party and declare their allegiance to the simple set of priorities that determine the philosophy behind the Paycheck Party: What's in it for me? What is the bottom line here?
It's all in the name.
The basic premise behind the Paycheck Party is as simple as the name: It's all about the paycheck. It's not about social problems like guns and drugs and abortion. These things are outside of the simple scope of the Paycheck Party.
The fact of the matter is that in today's world most citizens earn paychecks rather than write them. Using the government to mediate between businesses and paycheck recipients is what the Paycheck Party wants to do.
Businesses are clever at twisting the truth about your paycheck in various ways in order to convince you that it's the government's fault that you don't make as much money as you should. But if you look at things a little differently, and look to where the money is coming from, you can start to see things the Paycheck Party way, and stop seeing things in a light that makes your boss the poor suffering hero and the government the great big bad guy. Your boss will always see things this way, of course. But you don't have to, because it's not necessarily true.
Visualize your taxes.
Every time your boss hands you a paycheck, he performs a simple little public relations trick that the government cooperates with fully. He shows you how much money he would have given you, if it weren't for those pesky witholding taxes.
But it's all funny money. You never get the money yourself. He sends it off to Washington, and you never see a dime of it, unless you get a little of it back at the end of the year.
Is there any real difference between this money, which you never see or touch or spend, and an employee tax that you never see or touch or spend either? There is, and that's how they fool us. They tell us it would have been ours if the government hadn't taken it away from them before they could give it to us.
You couldn't fool a child with this trick if the word taxes weren't involved.
Visualize your paycheck.
Imagine how much easier it would be if the employer gave up this little game and just said: You're going to get $10, and I'll pay whatever taxes are due on that amount, and when you get your check it is for $10, no trick, no surprises.
It would be as simple as simply renaming the income tax the paycheck tax, taking it off the check (who cares how much it costs your boss to employ you? That's HIS problem, not yours!) and paying you the amount you asked for to the penny.
Most people resist this idea to the point of fanaticism. I've heard every possible futile argument against it, and they all say the same thing: But that's MY money. Which is exactly what your boss would love for you to beleive.
But look again, and I've just abolished the income tax, restored the constitution to it's original state (income taxes are not constitutional, right?), and kept the free market economy in the exact same shape it's always been, just by changing the way we think.
What's wrong with this scenario? It would pit the businesses who hire and fire our candidates with their campaign financing against the candidates themselves whenever they want to raise or lower taxes. These two parties could work out the tax problems between themselves far more efficiently if they didn't have to worry about the taxpayer's role in the debate. My guess is that taxes would go down so fast we'll all wonder why they didn't do it years ago. And it would all be none of our business. Not a single voter would care how much taxes the goverment taxed their bosses to pay them. They'd get their $10, no matter what.
(e-mail: tony@tonypatti.com) Home
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