Apparently, all of those weirdos we refer to as tax resisters aren't all goofy. In fact, time might prove that a significant portion of them may be deep thinkers. Taxation has always had negative effects on the overall productivity of any society beyond the immediate effects on the individual's own pocketbook. I don't think it is hard to understand that in the overrall scheme of things, that it takes production on the part of an individual to have the income with which to pay taxes. For example, in the best of hypothetical situations possible during these days when the congress and all of our state and local governmental bodies seem to think that the golden goose will produce those interesting and spendable feathers forever, it first takes $1.50 in production (income) to pay $.50 in taxes, leaving the laboring individual with a net take home of $1.00 for his efforts. Unfortunately, that degree of individual net profit does not exist anymore. However, that is the way things are basically set up to work, and there isn't a whole lot anyone can do about it - except for joining the posse commitatus types who radicalize the process and maintain that the whole $1.50 belongs to them, even if that decision process brings down the whole wrath and might of the IRS, FBI and BAFT to get them back in line.

The problem with the economy today is that the total national product (read that Gross National Product) is in an operative mode characterized by efforts on the part of all productive segments, and a lot of really crooked productive types, to reduce outgoing cash, either to taxation, or to what is deemed undesired expenses (labor, pensions, benefits, etc.). It is the same thing when you tell the kid who cuts your lawn to take a hike, and figure you'll save $25.00 a week if you do it yourself. The same feelings of reducing your costs and making a net "savings" applies in your case, and with General Motors laying off 25,000 auto workers. However, the true result is a diminishing of the nation's net overall production. Saving money doesn't produce a product, and never appears as that magic stuff called "income". No income is being produced, and no taxes are being paid on the bean counter's net savings. Being less productive gives GM the illusion of being better off, and that is all it is, an illusion, smoke and mirrors. Bean counting at it's finest.

An generally accepted economic rule for many individual income earners is that it takes about $1.50 - 1.60 worth of production/earning to make an after tax net of about $1.00 after all local, state, federal, and hidden taxes are deducted. The purpose of this article is not to determine exact percentages of your income going to taxation, just that a significant portion does go toward taxes. As a whole, it would appear that every producer in this country, and around the world is reacting to the "economic downturn, recession, etc.", with the same basic reallocation of resources to less productive use. They aren't spending anything on anything, or as an economist would say, "the assignment of labor and capital to less productive uses because of heavier taxation on more productive applications of our scarce resources reduces our national income".

This is basically the situation in which Mr. Bill finds himself. It is also the situation that stands in the way of any branch of government when it comes to lighting a fire under the economy. Face it fellows. The economic engine, while not stalled, is just idling at a rate which is just sufficient to keep the headlights lit. While our fearless leaders may be insulated from economic need by their hard won system of perquisites, the rest of us are often not so lucky. The future really is bleak. Short of full scale war, nothing of a really stimulating nature seems to be on the horizon.

Leadership, and that includes Mr. Bill, is, as usual, blind to the fact that excessive taxation is at the root of the whole problem. This dilemma exists all around the world. Taxes primarily preserve the political class's personal bailiwicks, and the historical precedent of politicians committing personal economic suicide to benefit their enslaved populations has yet to happen on the face of this earth. They all make noises about understanding the situation and to our shame as electors, we should realize that they really do understand the situation. The fact remains that even the more visible and outspoken noisemakers like Senator Dole, Representative Aremy, and even Ross Perot, are completely out of the loop of understanding what the average person understands - they already comfortably exist within a system of guaranteed perquisites, and in the case of Uncle Ross, he could live better than the rest of us if the interest rate went down to 0.01 percent. Instead of the constant griping, and the constant finger pointing, our politicos should be shunning the often tried and failed, and busily inventing the radical solutions that can allow all of us to paddle our ship of state out of the doldrums - them into a new era of perquisites, and us into a new era of some economic gain and the rosy, warm, fuzzy feelings of optimism about our futures. Unfortunately for us at this juncture, even if it could be magically concentrated and precisely directed, the hot air coming out of Washington wouldn't even flutter the sails on this ship.

The single most important problem with everywhere is that technology has really made a hell of a lot of people essentially worthless. Instead of a potential for "science" improving things for everyone in the future, what we are really looking at is the ominous probability that technology will really make things worse. These unfortunates, while still, in a manner of speaking only our political classes seem to understand, are capable of scrabbling in the dirt for subsistence, are never going to be incorporated into a modern technological society. No sense trying to paint a rosy picture fellows, these folks are superfluous to all of the grand schemes. We don't need them, period. What we can do with this unfortunate circumstance depends on your personal preferences. Are you personally a part of greater humanity, or are you a resource sucking pig who would sit back and watch "them" all go down the tubes? If you elect to be ranked in the latter group, then you are ultimately going to come to the realization that you are going to ignore those less fortunate and concentrate on your own comforts. Of course, you also have to realize that this puts you into the same general classification as politicians.

With your allegiances thus determined, when the little brown people come swarming over your garden wall with the spears and bows and arrows their level of technology does permits them, you might begin to appreciate the fact that you have some aggravating days ahead. Low technology and lots of foot soldiers can have a very deleterious effect on any system. The basic principal worked well for Genghis Kahn, appeared to work just as well for the Viet Cong, and it would work again if the need arose. In this final, worst case game, superpower weapons would work quite well, for a short time. The ultimate net effect of high tech solutions applied to this type of problem would be doing the other guy's generals and ever-present politicians a favor: less mouths to feed and angrier, and more determined legions to do the dirty work.

Should you determine that you are inalterably related to the less fortunate, you are faced with the potential for great reward in the hereafter, but things won't change much anywhere else if left to the business as usual crowd. They won't change, that is, unless we take the reigns and do something about the way things are and the way they are going. What will it take to change the dark clouds looming on respective horizons? Well, for one thing, the solutions won't come out the existing political arena, they can only come out of the individual and corporate systems and they will have to offer some immediate compensations for the effort to those who chose to help their less fortunate relatives. No one ever said that doing good for your unfortunate fellows has to be profitless, did they? That system of compensation has had many trials and many failures, so why bother with another run of the same thing? What economic philosophy could really be considered new and untried before? Give this some thought.

A majority of the world's population is floundering, because scratching in the dirt agriculture seems to just produce enough to subsist. They cannot generate enough spare product to afford the most basic things that a technologic society has to offer. What was it that changed that almost universal set of conditions in the early eighteen-hundreds and lead to "we'uns" of the great and so-called western civilization where we are today. Of course there are going to be some Ludite-types out there who fervently believe this breaking point was the worse thing that ever happened to humanity, and there are just as many that believe that this point was the beginning of civilization and the really good times. This is just the point that is being missed by the nerds we have as leaders all around the globe.

How about falling back to a two, even three tiered economy, one branch operating at the leading edges, and another essentially stepping back to the tenets of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. Of course this means duplication of important things to everyone involved! Two completely different monetary systems that are isolated from one another by a "committee of ombudsmen" for lack of an initial controlling scheme of things. Imagine, one system exchanging their education and training in high technology for technobucks, and another system exchanging their sweat and toil for basic sweat and toil bucks, or mechanobucks/sweatbucks. Technobucks sustaining high technology industries, sweatbucks sustaining a new system of improved agriculture and re-application of the unsophisticated techniques that the people of the middle nineteenth century used to begin and sustain the industrial beginnings that put us into the problem we have today. However, this time we have the benefit of long experience in assessing what will work best and applying it from the beginning.

Since religious fundamentalism seems to be such an attractive and growing industry in certain parts of the world, maybe we should follow their example and start promoting industrial fundamentalism. Iron foundries, mining, steel mills, and machine shops provided and processed the basic raw ingredients to build the early machines that brought farming out of the age of dirt scratching subsistence. These basic industries were highly labor intensive, so besides adding employment for many of those who now face a future without a future, this proposed re-invention of the wheel will allow as many spin off industries as needed to get masses of a currently wasted populace off their respective duffs and into an actually productive occupation. Even our most uneducated, and thus non-proficient and undesirable welfare recipients can easily re-learn the age old arts of lifting, pushing, pulling, and of swinging picks, shovels, and hoes in a completely non-technical world that can only reward physical labor. The often heard need to rebuild the infrastructure of this country is one potential target area for the output of goods and services of our currently unsweating masses. This re-industrialization starts up with the early assistance of international paper shuffling modern corporate banking, but soon has to stand on merits alone. The banking system gets to pick and chose their own boys to voluntarily, or non-voluntarily, go back in time to manage the new monetary system. They are not going to supply a brand new steam powered McCormick Reaper to anyone only authorized to buy and sell in techno bucks. Techno bucks are only exchangeable with sweat bucks at purposefully exorbitant rates such as 10:1, and vice versa. The monetary system thus created is not interchangeable in any reasonable manner, and techno bucks are only exchangeable in techno buck supermarkets, boutiques, and the video market places that our techno-geniuses seem determined to create.

Since the reinvention of physical labor will also be responsible for the repopulation of the rural areas, every new village populace can pool finances and have their own television set to go along with along with their telegraph station. That way, those who chose, can check up on what is going on in the outside world, and to make sure they are not getting short changed. Railroads are reinvented along with the re-establishment of the old U. S. Postal Service. Entertainment in the new branch of civilization is basically going to have to go back to the days of vaudeville, and the motion picture industry gets to try it all again. The possibilities for a doubling, even tripling, of potential job openings for politicians should guarantee their support, too. Remember, they would be needed to meddle with the system and, after a few years of a modernized steam age mechanoculture, they could easily be in a position to have some of their laboring classes produce some magnificent long-range artillery pieces that could be used to protest untoward manipulation by the high-tech branches of society. This would be a caste system to end all caste systems, but it would not be repressive. What each caste needs, it produces in it's own way, using it's own unique methods of production.

Education would also remain separate for those who show no desire to advance beyond their safe level of culture. The brighter students of the mechanoculture could have the option to jump the cultural boundaries based on performance, alone. Just as the system works one way, those children of the technoculture who cannot hack their educational system can be just as surely demoted to the sweat culture as their more industrious companions can be promoted to the technoculture.

There is even a niche for the eco-geeks in this grand scheme. There being no advantage to having fuel-inefficient power sources for really basic industries, this group can gain meaningful employment overseeing everybody's industries to make sure they don't pollute the planet all over again. Sure, you start with coal fired steam powered agriculture, but if the sweat bucks are lucrative enough, you can always spend them for a nuclear powered tractor should you afford to make the differential in exchange rates.