New DVDs By Michael Snyder
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 You and I live in a totally different world than the ultra-rich and the international banking elite do. Many of them live in a world where they simply do not pay income taxes. Today, it is estimated that a third of all the wealth in the world is held in offshore banks. So why is so much of the wealth of the globe located in places such as Monaco, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Isle of Man? It isn’t because those are fun places to visit. It is to avoid taxes. The super wealthy and the international banking elite think that it is really funny that our paychecks are constantly being drained by federal taxes, state taxes and Social Security taxes while they literally pay nothing at all. These incredibly rich elitists make a ton of money doing business in wealthy western nations and then they transfer virtually all of their profits offshore where they don’t have to contribute any of it in taxes. It works out really great for them, but it sucks for the rest of us.
It is estimated that approximately $1.4 trillion is held in offshore banks in the Cayman Islands alone. According to an article in Forbes magazine, there is a total of approximately 15 trillion to 20 trillion dollars in offshore bank accounts, brokerage accounts and hedge fund portfolios.
A recent article in the Guardian stated that a third of all the wealth on the entire globe is held in offshore banks and that the vast majority of international banking transactions take place in these tax havens….
On a conservative estimate, a third of the world’s wealth is held offshore, with 80% of international banking transactions taking place there. More than half the capital in the world’s stock exchanges is “parked” offshore at some point.
All of the biggest banks in the world are involved in playing this game. All of them have big branches in these various tax havens. All of them work very hard to ensure that the tax burdens on their ultra-rich clients are as light as possible.
Nobody knows for sure how much money big governments around the globe are missing out on from all this tax avoidance, but everyone agrees the number is huge. It is at least in the hundreds of billions of dollars every single year.
It is a shadow banking system that most Americans don’t know anything about. Most Americans don’t have the resources to be able to set up shell companies in half a dozen different countries so that they can “filter” their profits. Most Americans don’t know a thing about complicated tax avoidance plans that tax lawyers use such as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich”. Most Americans would have no idea how to eventually have most of the money that they make end up in Bermuda so that it can avoid taxes.
No, most Americans just go to work every week and have their hard earned paychecks raped by an oppressive taxation system.
To the ultra-wealthy and the international banking system we are all just a bunch of suckers. In fact, a big portion of our taxes ends up going into their pockets to pay the interest on all of the government debt that they are holding.
When the global elite decide that they want to do some “social engineering” inside the big countries where they operate, they just set up tax-free “charitable trusts” that usually aren’t very “charity-oriented” at all. Rather, many of these “charitable trusts” push the various radical political and social agendas that many of these elitists love to promote.
Examples of this include The Rockefeller Foundation and The Ford Foundation. George Soros also loves to use entities like these to push his various agendas.
The wealthy know how to play the game. For most of the rest of us, the game kicks our behinds.
So for those who are constantly screaming “tax the rich”, the cold, hard truth of the matter is that those who are truly ultra-rich know how to escape just about any oppressive tax regime you may set up. They are light years ahead of the rest of us in knowing how to play the game.
What are you going to do?
Kick them out of the country?
Yeah, they will be really sad to spend even more time down in Bermuda or in the Cayman Islands.
Are you going to kick out any company that has any stock holders that have offshore bank accounts?
Well, you would have to kick out virtually every single major corporation in the United States.
This is just another example of how deeply flawed our system of income taxation really is.
Do you want to become a master of the tax code?
You might want to set aside some time for reading.
A lot of time.
The income tax code and its associated regulations contain well over 7 million words and are more than seven times longer than the Bible.
The IRS employs more than 90,000 people and it costs more than 11 billion dollars a year to operate.
Talk about a colossal waste of resources.
Meanwhile, the ultra-rich are just parking all of their money in Bermuda and the Caymans and are laughing at all the rest of us.
It would be hard to understate just how much influence and power all of this offshore money has. The ultra-wealthy and the elite international bankers own many of our largest corporations, they exert influence over central banks, they control big media outlets and they “contribute money” (bribes) to political campaigns.
The elite are always two steps ahead of any new laws that get passed. They are masters at moving money around. They will quickly find a half dozen ways around any new law that you could possibly dream up.
Most of us never even get to meet any of these incredibly wealthy individuals. They don’t attend the local church or go shopping down at the local shopping mall.
No, the global elite generally live in very exclusive gated estates or hang out at the most expensive private resorts. They don’t spend a lot of time mixing with the rabble.
It turns out that life is pretty good when you have a ton of money coming in and you pay next to nothing in taxes.
So the next time you get your paycheck and you see that a half a dozen things have been taken out of it, take a few moments to think of the global elite that don’t pay any taxes at all and see how that makes you feel.
Hopefully when enough Americans get mad enough and start demanding change, the current income tax system will be scrapped for good and something much more equitable will be put in place instead.
 You are not going to believe some of the things that the U.S. government is spending money on. According to a shocking new report, U.S. taxpayer money is being spent to study World of Warcraft, to study how Americans find love on the Internet, and to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam. Not only that, but money from the federal government is also being used to renovate a pizzeria in Iowa and to help a library in Tennessee host video game parties. These are just some of the examples in a new report on government waste from Senator Tom Coburn entitled “Wastebook 2010“. Even as tens of millions of American families find themselves suffering through the worst economic downturn in modern history, the U.S. government continues to spend money on some of the craziest and most frivolous things imaginable. Every single year articles are written and news stories are done about the horrific government waste that is taking place and yet every single year it just keeps getting worse. So just what in the world is going on here?
It almost seems as though Congress actually enjoys inventing new ways to waste U.S. taxpayer money. It seems nearly inconceivable that anyone could keep a straight face while trying to justify spending money on many of the things in the list below.
At a time when the U.S. national debt is closing in on 14 trillion dollars, government waste just seems more out of control than ever. The following are 20 of the craziest things that the U.S. government is spending money on….
#1 A total of $3 million has been granted to researchers at the University of California at Irvine so that they can play video games such as World of Warcraft. The goal of this “video game research” is reportedly to study how “emerging forms of communication, including multiplayer computer games and online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life can help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in the global marketplace.”
#2 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the University of New Hampshire $700,000 this year to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.
#3 $615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.
#4 A professor at Stanford University received $239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love. So far one of the key findings of this “research” is that the Internet is a safer and more discreet way to find same-sex partners.
#5 The National Science Foundation spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians “gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions.”
#6 The National Institutes of Health spent approximately $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
#7 Approximately $1 million of U.S. taxpayer money was used to create poetry for the Little Rock, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Chicago zoos. The goal of the “poetry” is to help raise awareness on environmental issues.
#8 The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs spent $175 million during 2010 to maintain hundreds of buildings that it does not even use. This includes a pink, octagonal monkey house in the city of Dayton, Ohio.
#9 $1.8 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars went for a “museum of neon signs” in Las Vegas, Nevada.
#10 $35 million was reportedly paid out by Medicare to 118 “phantom” medical clinics that never even existed. Apparently these “phantom” medical clinics were established by a network of criminal gangs as a way to defraud the U.S. government.
#11 The Conservation Commission of Monkton, Vermont got $150,000 from the federal government to construct a “critter crossing”. Thanks to U.S. government money, the lives of “thousands” of migrating salamanders are now being saved.
#12 In California, one park received $440,000 in federal funds to perform “green energy upgrades” on a building that has not been used for a decade.
#13 $440,955 was spent this past year on an office for former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert that he rarely even visits.
#14 One Tennessee library was given $5,000 in federal funds to host a series of video game parties.
#15 The U.S. Census Bureau spent $2.5 million on a television commercial during the Super Bowl that was so poorly produced that virtually nobody understood what is was trying to say.
#16 A professor at Dartmouth University received $137,530 to create a “recession-themed” video game entitled “Layoff”.
#17 The National Science Foundation gave the Minnesota Zoo over $600,000 so that they could develop an online video game called “Wolfquest”.
#18 A pizzeria in Iowa was given $60,000 to renovate the pizzeria’s facade and give it a more “inviting feel”.
#19 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave one enterprising group of farmers $30,000 to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight “haycations”. This one sounds like something that Dwight Schrute would have dreamed up.
#20 Almost unbelievably, the National Institutes of Health was given $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.
In light of all this, is it any wonder why the approval rating of Congress recently hit another new record low?
According to the most recent Gallup poll, only 13 percent of Americans approve of the job that Congress is doing.
Just think about that – only 13 percent!
Our politicians seem very confused about why there is so much anger in the country today. Well, there are certainly a lot of reasons for it, including the fact that the U.S. economy is on the verge of collapse, but it certainly doesn’t help that our government is basically flushing our tax dollars down the toilet and spending them on some of the most wasteful things imaginable.
It would be bad enough if the federal government was swimming in money, but the truth is that all of this waste is being committed at a time when the U.S. government is nearing bankruptcy.
Over the last 30 years, the U.S. national debt has gotten 13 times larger. We have accumulated the largest debt in the history of the world and there is no end in sight.
In fact, we are rapidly running out of people to borrow money from. According to the Wall Street Journal, in order to repay maturing bonds and finance the exploding budget deficit, the U.S. government will have to borrow 4.2 trillion dollars in 2011.
Eventually the rest of the world is going to lose confidence in the ability of the U.S. government to repay all of this debt. Once confidence in U.S. Treasuries is totally gone, and there are already signs this is starting to happen, the game will be over and the U.S. financial system will collapse.
But the U.S. Congress just continues to act like it is “business as usual” and the wasteful spending just continues to get worse. Someday historians will look back and think that we must have been a nation full of idiots and morons.
For decades our politicians have been spending us into oblivion, yet we keep sending the vast majority of them back to Washington D.C. every time an election rolls around and the mainstream media keeps assuring us that our “respected leaders” know exactly what they are doing and that everything is going to be okay somehow.
It is almost as if some sort of collective insanity has overtaken most Americans. The path we are on inevitably leads to national bankruptcy and the destruction of our financial system, but only a small percentage of the population seems to care.
Well, in the end we will reap what we have sown. Unfortunately, the economic pain that is coming is going to be devastating for all of us – including those of us who are awake and are trying desperately to change things.
 All over the Internet, Republican pundits are declaring that extending the Bush tax cuts will save the economy and Democrat pundits are declaring that ending the Bush tax cuts will save the economy. Well, you know what? Nothing will save the U.S. economy. The U.S. government is going to continue to drown in a sea of debt no matter what happens with these tax cuts. State and local governments are also going to continue to drown in a sea of debt. Thousands of factories and millions of jobs are going to continue to be shipped overseas every single year. America is going to continue to transfer tens of billions of dollars of its national wealth to foreign nations every single month. Nothing that the Republicans and Democrats are debating right now is going to do a thing to alter the fundamental problems that the U.S. economy is facing.
Not that I personally do not like tax cuts. I would like my own personal income taxes to be cut down to zero percent please. I will take as many tax cuts as I can personally get.
And it is absolutely undeniable that the federal government is already handed way, way, way more money than it ever should need. Starving the federal monster of cash is a good thing. We need a much, much, much smaller federal government. But the odds of us ever returning to the kind of limited central government envisioned by our Founding Fathers is somewhere between slim and none and slim just left the building.
So aren’t less taxes always good? Well, not necessarily. You see, the federal government is planning to spend much more money in the years ahead. When you combine significant tax cuts with huge increases in spending you get lots more debt.
Extending the Bush tax cuts (and throwing in a few extra ones) will help the U.S. economy in the short-term, but without accompanying brutal spending cuts it will make our long-term debt problems even worse.
But most of our politicians don’t think about the long-term. Most of them just want the economy to turn around in the short-term so that they can get re-elected.
For example, Barack Obama is not completely stupid. He realizes that these tax cuts are probably his best shot at a short-term economic boost. If the economy starts to get back to “normal”, it may be just enough to get him another term in office.
And self-preservation is what most U.S. politicians are most interested in.
Meanwhile, we are heading for a national debt nightmare that threatens to destroy our financial system and plunge us into national bankruptcy.
But if our politicians did attempt to make the brutal spending cuts that would be necessary to balance the budget, most Americans would start screaming bloody murder. The truth is that the American people have become dependent on the government and they like getting their checks, their handouts and their government contracts.
Okay, so what will this deal that Obama has made with the Republicans actually do?
Well, it will extend most of the Bush tax cuts for two years (right up through the 2012 presidential election). The following are some of the details….
*All income levels will continue to be taxed at the lower rates instituted by the original Bush tax cuts. That means that the highest rate will remain at 35 percent.
*Barack Obama claims that extending these tax cuts will save the average American family approximately $3,000 next year.
*The 15 percent rate on capital gains and dividends will be continued.
*As part of the package, Republicans have agreed to a 13 month extension of long-term unemployment benefits.
*One new tax cut included in the deal is a reduction of the Social Security payroll tax by two percentage points for one year. So for a year U.S. workers will be paying just 4.2 percent instead of 6.2 percent. Barack Obama believes that Americans will save $120 billion next year from this tax cut alone. For the average American family, it will mean that they will have approximately an extra $1000 in their wallets.
*The existing $1,000 child tax credit will be extended for the next two years.
*Another tax cut that is new would allow U.S. businesses to immediately expense all business investments in 2011. The Obama administration is claiming that this tax cut would be the biggest “temporary investment incentive” in American history.
*A compromise was reached on the estate tax. There will be an estate tax exemption of 5 million dollars per person and the maximum rate will be 35 percent.
So how much will all of this cost?
Well, all over the Internet the Democrats and the Republicans are arguing over figures.
One figure that is being thrown around quite a bit is $900 billion over two years.
But what is another $900 billion when we are already caught in a death spiral of government debt?
The IMF was already projecting that federal government debt was going to exceed 100 percent of GDP by 2015.
So how soon will we get there now?
Today, our national debt is more than 13 times larger than it was just 30 years ago….
So can’t we just “grow” our way out of this debt?
Not a chance.
Reducing taxes and increasing government spending will both stimulate the economy in the short-term, but both of them will always cause government debt to go up.
The sad truth, as I have written about previously, is that it is now mathematically impossible to pay off the U.S. government debt.
If you took every dollar out of every single wallet, out of every single mattress and out of every single U.S. bank and sent it to the government you wouldn’t even make that big of a dent in the national debt.
So can’t the U.S. government just go out and create more money and solve the problem?
No.
You see, under our system the creation of more money is also the creation of more debt.
As long as the Federal Reserve system exists, the U.S. federal government will be trapped inside a perpetual debt machine.
The best we can hope for is to slow the expansion of government debt down to a reasonable level.
But as I explained in a previous article, it is extremely unlikely that the U.S. government will ever have a balanced budget ever again.
The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every dollar that it spends. The spending cuts that would be required to slash that much out of the federal budget would be beyond draconian.
Sadly, the truth is that even the really bad official budget deficit figures severely understate the extent of the crisis that we are facing.
If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the annual U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion.
So anyone who thinks that we are just a “tweak” or two from fixing U.S. government finances is living in a world of delusion.
Unfortunately, the years ahead look downright apocalyptic. After analyzing Congressional Budget Office data, Boston University economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff concluded that the U.S. government is facing a “fiscal gap” of $202 trillion dollars.
But the American people don’t want to hear this. The American people don’t want to hear that there are serious consequences for running up the biggest debt in the history of the world. The American people just want to be told that there are smart people working on the problem and that they are on the verge of “fixing” it.
But it is all a lie. We can keep trying to “kick the can down the road” for a while longer, but eventually a day of reckoning is going to come and it is going to be painful beyond imagination.
Somehow we have the arrogance to believe that our children and our grandchildren should pay back all of the debt that we have accumulated. What we have done to future generations is beyond criminal.
America has enjoyed the greatest party in the history of the world, but eventually it is going to be time to turn out the lights.
For now, however, the Republicans and the Democrats are busy trying to figure out ways that they can keep the party going for a little while longer.
Perhaps they can just slash taxes all the way to zero and the federal government can just borrow all of the money that it needs. At least that way we wouldn’t be endlessly pouring our own money into the financial black hole called the U.S. government.
 How in the world is the U.S. economy going to recover if the American people have less money to spend? Millions of American families are heading into 2011 knowing that either they won’t be seeing an increase in income or that their incomes will be smaller next year. Long-term unemployment benefits are being cut off for millions of Americans, federal workers are having their wages frozen, Social Security recipients are not going to get a cost of living increase for 2011, taxes are going up for the vast majority of U.S. families and employers are forcing pay cuts on their workers across the United States. Meanwhile, the cost of food just keeps going up, the cost of gas just keeps going up and the cost of health care just keeps going up. So what are millions of American families that are already stretched to the limit going to do when they have less money in 2011?
Millions of unemployed American workers are heading for a very bleak 2011. Unless Congress acts, and there is no indication that is going to happen, approximately 2 million Americans will stop receiving unemployment checks over the next couple months.
The government is really between a rock and a hard place on this one. After all, who is so heartless that they actually want to cut off the little financial support that millions of deeply struggling American families are depending on? Not extending the long-term unemployment benefits is going to mean more Americans are going to lose their homes, more Americans are going to go bankrupt and more Americans will end up in tent cities.
But as CNN recently reported, extending the long-term unemployment benefits through next year would cost the federal government $56.4 billion that we simply do not have. The U.S. government is absolutely drowning in red ink and cannot afford to just chuck another 56 billion dollars more debt on to the pile.
At this point even Barack Obama is taking some small steps to get federal spending under control. He has just announced a plan to freeze the pay of federal government workers for the next two years.
So how are federal government workers handling the news that they will not be seeing any raises for the next coupe of years?
Not well. In fact, many of them are absolutely furious.
But can you blame them?
How would you feel if your wages were just frozen for two years and yet the price of everything just continues to keep going up?
Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration announced last month that there will be no cost of living adjustments for Social Security benefits once again next year.
According to the government, the cost of living is not going up.
So now our seniors will just have to stretch those meager checks even more.
As if all that wasn’t bad enough, now a whole slew of tax increases is coming. The U.S. Congress is busy debating which (if any) of the Bush tax cuts that they are going to allow to expire, but the truth is that the Bush tax cuts are only a small part of the story. There are so many tax increases scheduled to go into effect in 2011 that it is hard to keep track of them all. In fact, there are many (myself included) that are calling 2011 “the year of the tax increase“.
But it is not just the federal government that is raising taxes. In the past two years, 36 of the 50 U.S. states have jacked up taxes or fees.
In addition, many local governments are so strapped for cash that they are going to absolutely ridiculous lengths to raise cash. For example, from now on if you are caught jaywalking in Los Angeles you will be slapped with a $191 fine.
This kind of thing is happening all over America. Police departments are being turned into revenue raising operations. Police are so busy writing tickets that they barely have any time to investigate actual crimes anymore.
Unfortunately, all of this latest news comes at a time when incomes are already down from coast to coast. Median household income in the U.S. declined from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009. Some areas are declining faster than others, but the truth is that almost all areas of the United States have been seeing incomes go down. In fact, of the 52 largest metro areas in the United States, only the city of San Antonio did not see a decline in median household income during 2009.
Times are getting really tough. Employers all over America are forcing their employees to take pay cuts. Even some of the most prominent unions are agreeing to unprecedented concessions. For example, just check out what The New York Times says is going on over at General Motors….
In its most recent union contract, General Motors is paying new employees $14 an hour, half the rate it pays its long-term workers.
Unfortunately, American families are going to have to try to do more with less during a time when prices are going to be going up. Most economists agree that all of the quantitative easing that the Federal Reserve is doing is going to cause inflation to start increasing significantly at some point. In fact, some of the top Federal Reserve officials have publicly stated that they want to purposely raise the rate of inflation as a way to stimulate the economy.
One of the great things about Americans is our relentless sense of optimism, but it is time for a major reality check. Our economic system is in an advanced state of decay. Our nation is a sea of red ink from coast to coast, we continue to consume tens of billions more than we produce every single month and we are rapidly being transformed into a post-industrial wasteland.
The economy is not going to be “getting better” in the long-term. Unless fundamental changes are made to our economic system, we are going to continue to speed toward a horrific economic collapse.
The storm clouds are gathering on the horizon and time is running out. It is imperative that we all make the most out of every single day because night is coming soon.
 Over the past several decades, no matter which political party has been in power the government has continued to become a larger part of our lives. These days many people are speaking of the “nanny state” that we have created, but the reality is far worse than that. The truth is that the government has become a gluttonous, out of control behemoth that is gobbling up everything in sight and that is attempting to exert full spectrum dominance over our lives. Today, the government seems to have an insatiable hunger to watch us, track us and control us. Now they even want to feel our private parts before we get on an airplane. No matter what politicians we send to Washington D.C., it just seems to get worse and worse. Anyone who still believes that we live in “the land of the free” is completely and totally delusional.
It isn’t just in one particular area that all of this government intrusion into our lives is so offensive. What we are witnessing is the government slowly digging its fingers even deeper into our lives in a thousand different ways. Sadly, most Americans see the government as the one who is supposed to take care of them from the cradle to the grave, as the one who is supposed to fix all of the problems in society and as the one who is their ultimate authority.
This is in direct contradiction to the concept of a “limited government” that our Founding Fathers tried so desperately to enshrine in our founding documents. The American people need a big-time wake up call. The following are 8 examples of how the U.S. government is attempting to take even more control over our lives….
#1 Taking Total Control Of Our Food – S. 510 “The Food Safety Modernization Act”
S. 510, “The Food Safety Modernization Act”, is another huge power grab by the FDA and the federal government over our food supply. The bill is written so broadly and so vaguely that nobody really knows what it means. The potential for abuse of these vague new powers would be staggering. So will the government abuse these powers? Those who are in favor of the bill say that of course the government will be reasonable, but those who are opposed to the bill point to all of the other abuses that are currently taking place as evidence that we simply cannot trust the feds with vague, undefined powers.
Fortunately, the Tester Amendment has been attached to S. 510 at least for now, but big agriculture is not happy about this, and they will be doing everything they can to get it kicked out of the final version of the law. In any event, if this food safety law does get passed, tens of millions of Americans will be left wondering what they are allowed to grow in their back yards, what seeds they are allowed to save and what can and cannot be sold at farmer’s markets.
In case you think this is paranoid, just consider what is already happening. It has been documented that the feds recently raided an Amish farmer at 5 AM in the morning because they claimed that he was was engaged in the interstate sale of raw milk in violation of federal law. If the feds are willing to stoop so low as to raid Amish farmers, do you think they will have any hesitation when the time comes to raid your home?
#2 Taking Total Control Of Air Travel – The Dehumanizing Full Body Scanners And “Enhanced Pat-Downs”
Totalitarian governments throughout history have always sought to dehumanize their subjects. Sadly, that is exactly what is happening in America today. If you want to get on an airplane in the United States, you will now be forced to either let TSA agents gawk at your naked body or let TSA agents grope your entire body including your genitals.
What these TSA agents are being instructed to do to ordinary Americans is so bizarre that it is hard to believe. It is being reported that in many instances TSA agents are actually reaching down the pants of male travelers and up the skirts of female travelers. One retired special education teacher was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an “enhanced pat-down” by TSA agents. Quite a number of women that have been through these “enhanced pat-downs” have used the phrase “sexual assault” to describe the experience.
So is this what America has become? A place that is so “dangerous” that we all must be treated like prison inmates? Large numbers of Americans are swearing that they will simply not fly anymore, but what happens when these “enhanced pat-downs” start showing up at our schools, our shopping centers and our sporting events someday?
#3 Taking Total Control Of Our Health Care – The Loss Of Our Health Freedom
Once upon a time, Americans had control over their own health care decisions. That is no longer true today. Thanks to major changes in our health care laws, the health care landscape in America has been dramatically changed. Americans are now forced to participate in the officially-sanctioned health care system by purchasing health insurance. But Americans cannot just get any kind of health insurance policy that they want. Our health insurance choices are now tightly constrained by thousands of regulations.
Not only that, but doctors in America no longer have the freedom to treat patients however they see fit. Only “approved” treatments are permissible, and now the federal government is going to be telling doctors which of those “approved” treatments are “cost-effective” enough. As the new health care laws are fully implemented over the next decade, the American people are going to become truly horrified not only about how much their health insurance premiums are going up, but also about how much health freedom they have actually lost.
#4 Taking Control Of Our Money – Multiplying Taxes
Whenever one tax goes down, it seems like several other taxes either go up or get invented. The truth is that Americans are being drained by the federal government, state governments and local governments in dozens upon dozens of different ways. To our various levels of government, our primary function is to serve as a revenue source. Each year it seems like they find more ways to stick it to us. In fact, it looks like 2011 is going to be a banner year for tax increases. If you doubt this, just see my previous article entitled “2011: The Year Of The Tax Increase“.
#5 Taking Control Of Our Businesses – Thousands Of Ridiculous Regulations
Why would anyone in America even attempt to be an entrepreneur today? Most small businesses are literally being strangled by hordes of red tape.
Just consider how things have changed in America. The Federal Register is the main source of regulations for U.S. government agencies. In 1936, the number of pages in the Federal Register was about 2,600. Today, the Federal Register is over 80,000 pages long.
The following is just one example of how bizarre things have gotten in this country. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is projecting that the food service industry will have to spend an additional 14 million hours every single year just to comply with new federal regulations that mandate that all vending machine operators and chain restaurants must label all products that they sell with a calorie count in a location visible to the consumer.
Do we really need to spend 14 million more hours telling Americans that if they keep eating hamburgers and fries that they are likely to get fat?
But it is not just the federal government that is the problem. One reader recently described how difficult it was to try to run a business in the state of California….
Had 10 employees, but one almost exclusively to deal with government regs, taxes, reporting etc, Received a $144 penalty for a .33 (yes, cents)error on my quarterly payroll taxes from Cal Franchise Tax Board. I called to ask if that was not a bit repressive, why level penalize someone for what was obvisouly a didminimus error? I was told “we would have penalized you if it was .03!” I said, I did not volunteer to be the income tax collector for the State and Fed government, you should be paying me to do all this work and insane paper pushing. Reply: “That is part of the PRIVILIGE of being a business owner!!!”
#6 Taking Control Of Our Environment – The Green Police
The government is using the “green movement” as an excuse to take an unprecedented amount of control over our lives. From coast to coast, communities have been given government grants to track our trash with RFID microchips. The following are just some of the communities that will now be using microchips to track what we throw away….
*Cleveland, Ohio
*Charlotte, North Carolina
*Alexandria, Virginia
*Boise, Idaho
*Dayton, Ohio
*Flint, Michigan
Not only that, but some cities are now starting to fine citizens for not recycling properly.
In Cleveland, Ohio if an RFID tracking chip signals that a recycle bin has not been brought out to the curb within a certain period of time, a “trash supervisor” will actually sort through the trash produced by that home for recyclables.
According to Cleveland Waste Collection Commissioner Ronnie Owens, trash bins that contain over 10 percent recyclable material will be subject to a $100 fine.
Does that sound like America to you?
Now we don’t even have the freedom to throw out trash the way we want to.
#7 Taking Away Our Independence – The Exploding Welfare State
You don’t have much freedom if you can’t take care of yourself. But in America today, tens of millions of Americans have literally become completely dependent on the government for survival. Over 42 million Americans are now on food stamps. Approximately one out of every six Americans is enrolled in a federal anti-poverty program.
The number of Americans living in poverty has increased for three consecutive years, and the 43.6 million poor Americans in 2009 was the highest number that the U.S. Census Bureau has ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping.
The more Americans that are destitute and totally dependent on the government the easier it will be for the government to control them. Today a rapidly growing percentage of Americans fully expect the government to take care of them. But this is not what our founders intended.
#8 Taking Away Our Patriotism – We Are Even Losing The Freedom To Be Proud Of America
Do you ever think things will get so repressive in America that a group of high school students will be forbidden from singing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial? Well, that has already happened. Do you think that areas of our nation will ever become so anti-American that they will forbid students from riding to school with an American flag on their bikes? Well, that has already happened.
Fortunately, there was such an uproar over what happened to 13-year-old Cody Alicea that it made national headlines and he ended up being escorted to school by hundreds of other motorcycles and bicycles – most of them displaying American flags as well. The school reversed its policy and now Cody can ride his bike to school every day proudly displaying the American flag.
But what if nobody had decided to stand up?
That school would have gotten away with banning the flag if the American people had allowed them to.
Our liberties and our freedoms are under attack from a thousand different directions and they are being stripped away from us at a blinding pace.
It has gotten to the point where most of us just sit in our homes and enjoy the “freedom” of digesting the “programming” that is constantly being hurled at us through our televisions. Of course the vast majority of that programming is produced by just 6 monolithic corporations that control almost everything that we watch, hear and read.
Power and money have become more highly concentrated in America today than ever before, and yet most Americans don’t even realize it.
Most Americans are so busy just trying to survive from month to month that they don’t even have time to think about the deeper issues. At the end of the night most of them are so exhausted from serving the system that all they can do is collapse on the sofa and turn on some programming.
But the American people desperately need to wake up. Without liberty and freedom our country cannot work. But our freedoms and liberties are being stripped away a little bit more each and every day.
The America that so many of us grew up adoring is dying right in front of our eyes. If you plan on saying something about it, you better do so before it is too late.
 The American people are experiencing financial death by a thousand cuts and most of them don’t even realize it. The U.S. government, state governments, local governments and the financial elite are draining us financially in dozens upon dozens of different ways, and yet we have become so programmed to accept it that it just seems normal to us. 2011 is rapidly approaching, and a whole slate of federal taxes is scheduled to go up, state taxes are being increased from coast to coast, local governments are finding new and creative ways to stick it to us and the financial elite are becoming more predatory than ever. Meanwhile, the incomes of many average Americans are actually going down. According to the Census Bureau’s annual survey of income and poverty in the United States, of the 52 largest metro areas in the nation, only the city of San Antonio did not see a decline in median household income during 2009. Tens of millions of Americans are flat broke and they are getting pissed off. According to a new poll conducted by CNBC, 92 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is either “fair” or “poor”. The American people desperately want someone to fix the economy, but instead our “leaders” are trying to come up with new and creative ways to drain even more money out of us.
In no particular order, the following are 75 ways that the U.S. government, state governments, local governments and the financial elite will be sucking even more of the life blood out of the American people in 2011….
#1 State governments across the U.S. are raising fees and taxes in so many different ways it is staggering. A reader named Richard recently sent me an email in which he described the shock that he experienced when he recently received his license plate renewal notice in the mail….
I just got a license plate renewal notice from the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles. When I opened the envelope and saw the amount of the renewal, I was shocked. The amount seemed much higher than usual.
I have a computerized record of all my financial transactions over the last many years. I looked up previous DMV license plate renewals and I saw that my vehicle license plate fees were up 187% in only 8 years! In other words, they were almost triple what they were 8 years ago!
#2 The cost of health care also continues to escalate out of control. Americans already pay more for health care than anyone else in the world, and yet costs continue to explode. Health insurance companies from coast to coast are already announcing that they must raise health insurance premiums substantially due to the new health care law that Barack Obama and the Democrats have pushed through. For example, I am in perfect health and I have never had a single claim on my health insurance policy and yet I received notice earlier this year that my monthly health insurance premiums were going to be increasing by about 50 percent.
Unfortunately, I am far from alone. Crazy rate hikes are being reported from coast to coast. According to The Wall Street Journal, the following are just some of the health insurance companies that have announced rate hikes that are at least partially attributed to the new health care law….
*Aetna says that the extra benefits that the new health care reform law is forcing it to cover are behind rate increases for new individual plans of 5.4% to 7.4% in California and 5.5% to 6.8% in Nevada.
*Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon claims that the cost of providing additional benefits under the new health care law will account for 3.4% of a 17.1% premium rise for small employers.
*Celtic Insurance claims that half of a whopping 18% health insurance premium increase it is seeking comes from complying with mandates in the new health care law.
But do the financial elite in the health care industry really need more of our money? According to a report by Health Care for America Now, America’s five biggest for-profit health insurance companies ended 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion.
#3 But it isn’t just our health insurance premiums that are going up because of the new health care law. One review of the health care legislation identified at least 19 different tax increases. Not only that, according to an analysis by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, the health care reform law will generate $409.2 billion in additional taxes from the American people by the year 2019.
#4 From coast to coast, the big Wall Street banks are buying up thousands upon thousands of tax liens and are making a killing by socking distressed homeowners with predatory interest, outrageous penalties and almost unbelievable legal fees. The article which I published yesterday, “The Big Wall Street Banks Have Found A New Way To Strangle The American People: Predatory Property Tax Collection” elicited a very strong reaction from many readers. In particular, Walter Burien, who has done some great work exposing financial fraud at the government level, left a message explaining how this kind of predatory property tax collection is being done by design….
Per the article “Predatory Property Tax Collection” here is the why government did this. The feds put it through last year at the recommendation of a few private associations that represented many local governments and it was the government that pushed forward to require the banks and mortgage companies to do the tax collection tied directly into the mortgage. (Quicker money for the local governments) Read the new mortgage documentation and the banks have been required to collect property taxation up front for the local government.
Government in most venues had to wait four (4) years to move forward with foreclosure for delinquent property taxes. Well now that they have assigned the banks to do the collection, the banks usually move on foreclosure in six months which gets a new head in the door to pay the same levied property taxes quicker.
But the biggest drain on all of our incomes is excessive taxation by the government. If the U.S. Congress does not act, and there is little reason to believe that they will, the following tax increases will go into effect in 2011….
#5 The lowest bracket for the personal income tax is going to increase from 10 percent to 15 percent.
#6 The next lowest bracket for the personal income tax is going to increase from 25 percent to 28 percent.
#7 The 28 percent tax bracket is going to increase to 31 percent.
#8 The 33 percent tax bracket is going to increase to 36 percent.
#9 The 35 percent tax bracket is going to increase to 39.6 percent.
#10 In 2011, the death tax is scheduled to return. So instead of paying zero percent, estates of $1 million or more are going to be taxed at a rate of 55 percent.
#11 The capital gains tax is going to increase from 15 percent to 20 percent.
#12 The tax on dividends is going to increase from 15 percent to 39.6 percent.
#13 The “marriage penalty” is also scheduled to be reinstated in 2011. Members of Congress keep promising to do something about this, but so far nothing has happened.
#14 Many American businesses are going to get hit with a very significant tax increase in 2011. Small businesses had been able to “expense”, rather than slowly depreciate, equipment purchases of up to $250,000 a year. Now that will be slashed down to $25,000. Larger businesses had been able to expense half of their purchases of equipment. Now all of it will have to be depreciated.
#15 They keep talking about it, but so far Congress has not passed a “fix” for the Alternative Minimum Tax. If a fix is not passed, one out of every six U.S. taxpayers is going to be hit by the Alternative Minimum Tax. The taxpayers most likely to be affected are married couples, very large families, home owners and taxpayers in states that have high state and local taxes. The average tax increase that these taxpayers will be facing is going to be approximately $3,900 and most of them have no idea that it is coming. If nothing changes, 27.2 million American households will pay AMT in 2010.
The following are a whole bunch of other taxes that Americans must pay each and every year and which seem to continually go up….
#16 Accounts Receivable Taxes
#17 Building Permit Taxes
#18 Capital Gains Taxes
#19 CDL license Taxes
#20 Cigarette Taxes
#21 Corporate Income Taxes
#22 Court Fines (indirect taxes)
#23 Dog License Taxes
#24 Federal Income Taxes
#25 Federal Unemployment Taxes (FUTA)
#26 Fishing License Taxes
#27 Food License Taxes
#28 Fuel permit taxes
#29 Gasoline Taxes
#30 Gift Taxes
#31 Hunting License Taxes
#32 Inheritance Taxes
#33 Inventory tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
#34 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
#35 Liquor Taxes
#36 Local Income Taxes
#37 Luxury Taxes
#38 Marriage License Taxes
#39 Medicare Taxes
#40 Payroll Taxes
#41 Property Taxes
#42 Real Estate Taxes
#43 Recreational Vehicle Taxes
#44 Road Toll Booth Taxes
#45 Road Usage Taxes (Truckers)
#46 Sales Taxes
#47 Self-Employment Taxes
#48 School Taxes
#49 Septic Permit Taxes
#50 Service Charge Taxes
#51 Social Security Taxes
#52 State Income Taxes
#53 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)
#54 Telephone federal excise taxes
#55 Telephone federal universal service fee taxes
#56 Telephone federal, state and local surcharge taxes
#57 Telephone minimum usage surcharge taxes
#58 Telephone recurring and non-recurring charges taxes
#59 Telephone state and local taxes
#60 Telephone usage charge taxes
#61 Toll Bridge Taxes
#62 Toll Tunnel Taxes
#63 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
#64 Trailer registration taxes
#65 Utility Taxes
#66 Vehicle License Registration Taxes
#67 Vehicle Sales Taxes
#68 Watercraft registration Taxes
#69 Well Permit Taxes
#70 Workers Compensation Taxes
#71 The Internet is increasingly being viewed as a potential major revenue source. Many U.S. states are working harder than ever to collect taxes that they feel they are owed from online transactions on the Internet.
#72 Student loan debt is more of a financial drain on Americans than ever before. Americans now owe more on student loans than they do on credit cards. As hard as that is to believe, that is actually true. Americans now owe more than $849 billion on student loans, which is a new all-time record.
#73 More Americans than ever find themselves unable to pay their bills, and an increasing number of frustrated creditors are actually resorting to wage garnishment. Yes, you read the correctly. Creditors are starting to ruthlessly go after the weekly paychecks of debtors.
The following is an excerpt from a recent New York Times article that discussed the rise of wage garnishment as a weapon against debtors….
After winning, creditors can secure a court order to seize part of the debtor’s paycheck or the funds in a bank account, a procedure called garnishment. No national statistics are kept, but the pay seizures are rising fast in some areas — up 121 percent in the Phoenix area since 2005, and 55 percent in the Atlanta area since 2004. In Cleveland, garnishments jumped 30 percent between 2008 and 2009 alone.
So if you are getting behind on your debt, you better watch out – your creditors may soon decide to garnish your wages.
#74 Many state and local governments throughout the United States are now viewing their police forces primarily as revenue raising organizations. For example, earlier this year a federally funded ticketing blitz in the state of Virginia resulted in a total of 6996 traffic tickets being handed out in a single weekend. Sure the roads are a little safer, but it also brought in a ton of money for the government.
The truth is that the police even realize what is going on. Just consider the following quote from from Police Chief Michael Reaves of Utica, Michigan….
“When I first started in this job 30 years ago, police work was never about revenue enhancement, but if you’re a chief now, you have to look at whether your department produces revenues.”
#75 If all of this wasn’t bad enough, now there is an increasing amount of talk in international circles about the need for global taxes. The IMF and the World Health Organization are both proposing new global taxes that would be imposed on all of us. Not only that, but representatives from 60 different nations recently met at the UN to discuss a tax on global financial transactions that would be used to battle poverty and “climate change”.
If all of these methods of draining us financially were combined into one, the American people would be screaming bloody murder. But because all of them are so small, and they go up so gradually, most Americans don’t seem to notice.
It is like the story of the frog in the kettle. If you tried to drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it would hop out immediately.
But if you put a frog into a kettle of warm water and turn up the heat very gradually, it will just sit there until it boils to death.
Well, we are that frog. Every single year, they drain us a little more rapidly. Tens of millions of us are flat broke and yet they keep coming back for more.
Never before in American history has money been drained out of us in so many different ways. They are literally bleeding us dry, and eventually there will simply be nothing left to drain.
 A little over a week ago, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner penned an article for the New York Times entitled “Welcome To The Recovery” in which he touted the great strides that the U.S. economy was making. But with unemployment still dangerously high and with foreclosures and personal bankruptcies continuing to set all-time records, should we really be talking about a “recovery”? The truth is that the numbers don’t lie, and statistic after statistic shows that the economic fundamentals continue to get progressively worse. The U.S. government can continue to try to pump up with economy with more debt, but the reality is that there is not going to be a legitimate “recovery” until consumer spending rebounds. Consumer spending makes up the vast majority of U.S. GDP. But without good jobs, consumers are not going to be able to spend money. Unfortunately, our jobs base continues to be erode as millions upon millions of middle class jobs are shipped over to China, India and dozens of third world nations by the global predator corporations that now dominate the world economy.
The U.S. government cannot create real wealth out of thin air. It can borrow even more money and flood the economy with even more paper currency, but the short-term “buzz” that creates does absolutely nothing to solve our long-term economic problems.
It is the private sector that actually creates wealth. But unfortunately, over the last several decades we have allowed that wealth to become highly concentrated. Now the giant global predator corporations have decided that American workers aren’t really that desirable after all. They are slowly taking away their factories and their offices and they are moving them to where people are willing to work for one-tenth the pay.
So where does that leave middle class American “consumers”?
Well, it leaves us in a world of hurt.
The following are 15 key economic statistics that just keep getting worse and which reveal the horrific economic plight in which we now find ourselves….
1 – The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a new all-time record of 40.8 million in May. The number of Americans receiving food stamps has set a new all-time record for 18 months in a row. But there is every indication that things are going to get even worse. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that the number of Americans on food stamps will increase to 43 million in 2011.
2 – The U.S. economy lost 131,000 more jobs during the month of July. But the truth is that the U.S. economy has been bleeding jobs for a long time. According to one analysis, the United States has lost 10.5 million jobs since 2007. Meanwhile, immigrants (both legal and illegal) continue to pour into this nation in unprecedented numbers.
3 – Americans who are out of work are finding it incredibly difficult to get back into the workforce. In the United States today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to an all-time record of 35.2 weeks.
4 – The U.S. government keeps trying to pump up the economy with debt, and in the process things are getting wildly out of control. According to a U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.
5 – The interest on all of this debt is becoming increasingly oppressive. As of July 1st, the U.S. government had spent $355 billion so far in 2010 on interest payments to the holders of the national debt. The total for 2010 should be somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 billion. According to Erskine Bowles, one of the heads of Barack Obama’s national debt commission, the U.S. government will be spending $2 trillion just on interest on the national debt by 2020. Keep in mind that the entire U.S. government budget is less than $4 trillion for the entire year of 2010.
6 – If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the annual U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion.
7 – Social Security will pay out more in benefits in 2010 than it receives in payroll taxes. This was not supposed to happen until at least 2015. In the years ahead, these new “Social Security deficits” are projected to be absolutely catastrophic.
8 – There are simply far too many retirees and not nearly enough workers to support them. Back in 1950 each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers. Today, each retiree’s Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers. By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.
9 – Wealth continues to become highly concentrated at the top. Since 1973, the average CEO’s salary has increased from 26 times the median income to over 300 times the median income.
10 – According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck. That was up significantly from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
11 – The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that more than 10% of all U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one mortgage payment during the January to March time period. That was a new all-time record and represented an increase from 9.1 percent a year ago.
12 – A recent survey of last year’s college graduates found that 80 percent moved right back home with their parents after graduation. That was up substantially from 63 percent in 2006.
13 – During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.
14 – The total number of U.S. bank failures passed the 100 mark in July of this year. In 2009, the total number of U.S. bank failures did not pass the century barrier until October.
15 – The U.S. dollar continues to rapidly decline in value. An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 would cost you $112.35 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 would cost you $440.33 today.
Any rational observer (and clearly U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner does not qualify) can see that the foundations of the U.S. economy are coming apart. The rapidly accumulating mountain of debt that has fueled our “prosperity” is impossible to repay and is going to progressively choke the life out of our economic system. The good jobs that we have allowed to be shipped out of our country are never coming back. Every single day, more wealth flows out of this country than flows into it.
Anyone who claims that things are getting “better” is either ignorant, completely deluded or is purposely lying.
The U.S. economy is not getting “better”.
The U.S. economy is dying.
You should adjust your plans accordingly.
 Unless the U.S. Congress acts, there is going to be a massive wave of tax increases in 2011. In fact, some are already calling 2011 the year of the tax increase. A whole host of tax cuts that Congress established between 2001 and 2003 are set to expire in January unless Congress chooses to renew them. But with Democrats firmly in control of both houses that appears to be extremely unlikely. These tax increases are going to affect every single American (at least those who actually pay taxes). But this will be just the first wave of tax increases. Another huge slate of tax increases passed in the health care reform law is scheduled to go into effect by 2019. So Americans that are already infuriated by our tax system are only going to become more frustrated in the years ahead. The reality is that the U.S. government will soon be digging much deeper into our wallets.
The following are some of the tax increases that are scheduled to go into effect in 2011….
1 – The lowest bracket for the personal income tax is going to increase from 10 percent to 15 percent.
2 – The next lowest bracket for the personal income tax is going to increase from 25 percent to 28 percent.
3 – The 28 percent tax bracket is going to increase to 31 percent.
4 – The 33 percent tax bracket is going to increase to 36 percent.
5 – The 35 percent tax bracket is going to increase to 39.6 percent.
6 – In 2011, the death tax is scheduled to return. So instead of paying zero percent, estates of $1 million or more are going to be taxed at a rate of 55 percent.
7 – The capital gains tax is going to increase from 15 percent to 20 percent.
8 – The tax on dividends is going to increase from 15 percent to 39.6 percent.
9 – The “marriage penalty” is also scheduled to be reinstated in 2011.
It is being estimated that the total cost of these tax increases to U.S. taxpayers will be $2.6 trillion through the year 2020.
Ouch!
But wait, there are even more tax increases coming.
The “health care reform law” contains over a dozen new taxes that will be implemented in stages over the next decade. When you add all of these taxes to the taxes that were mentioned earlier, the result is going to be absolutely devastating. According to an analysis by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation the health care reform law will generate $409.2 billion in additional taxes by the year 2019.
Double ouch!
So is it any wonder why the public has such a low opinion of the U.S. Congress?
Every single major poll done on the topic shows that approval ratings for Congress are at record lows.
For example, Gallup’s 2010 Confidence in Institutions poll found Congress ranking dead last out of the 16 institutions rated this year.
Of course there are a whole host of reasons why the American people are upset with Congress, but one of the big ones is the fact that we are literally being taxed to death.
However, it is not just federal income taxes that are killing us.
In a previous article entitled “Taxed Enough Already!”, we listed just a few of the taxes that Americans have to pay each year….
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
Capital Gains Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Court Fines (indirect taxes)
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel permit tax
Gasoline Tax
Gift Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Local Income Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Payroll Taxes
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Road Toll Booth Taxes
Road Usage Taxes (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
School Tax
Septic Permit Tax
Service Charge Taxes
Social Security Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone federal excise tax
Telephone federal universal service fee tax
Telephone federal, state and local surcharge taxes
Telephone minimum usage surcharge tax
Telephone recurring and non-recurring charges tax
Telephone state and local tax
Telephone usage charge tax
Toll Bridge Taxes
Toll Tunnel Taxes
Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
Trailer registration tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
Are you dizzy yet?
The reality is that the American people are being drained in dozens and dozens of different ways.
But what did you expect?
Did you think that our politicians would pile up the biggest debt in the history of the world and never ask you to pay for it?
Did you think that we could run deficits equivalent to about 10 percent of GDP without ever seeing tax increases?
The truth is that the U.S. government needs a whole lot more money than even these new tax increases will bring in.
After all, it is being projected that the U.S. government will be spending $2 trillion on the interest on the national debt alone by the year 2020.
To put that in perspective, the entire budget for the U.S. government is less than $4 trillion for 2010.
Are you starting to get the picture?
In the years ahead the IRS is going to be digging deeper and deeper into our pockets and a gigantic chunk of that money is going to go directly into the pockets of those who own our debt.
But very few Americans wanted to listen when this problem was actually somewhat fixable 20 or 30 years ago.
So now we are all going to pay the price – literally.
 When you talk to most Americans about taxes, primarily what they think about is the U.S. government and the federal income tax. But while that may be the biggest tax that most Americans pay, the reality is that the truly insidious nature of the tax system in the United States is how it sucks money out of us in dozens of different ways until we don’t even feel it anymore. Instead of having one or two big tax bills, U.S. taxpayers face a “death by a thousand cuts” as tax after tax after tax just keeps coming. Most Americans don’t even realize how many kinds of taxes they pay. Before reading the rest of this article, try to estimate how many different kinds of taxes that Americans pay each year. Five? Ten? Twenty? Well, below we have listed over 50 different kinds of taxes that Americans pay. It is no wonder the Tea Party movement is growing so fast! People are sick and tired of constantly being financially drained by tax after tax. But even as you read this, members of the White House panel charged with reducing the U.S. national debt are considering recommending the adoption of a “European-style” Value Added Tax as a way for the U.S. government to bring in even more money.
Well, the truth is that millions upon millions of Americans are quite sick of being taxed into financial oblivion and they have one giant message for those who want to tax us some more….
“We Are Being Taxed Enough Already!”
Just consider the following list of the various types of taxes that Americans have to pay each and every year…..
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
Capital Gains Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Court Fines (indirect taxes)
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel permit tax
Gasoline Tax
Gift Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Local Income Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Payroll Taxes
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Road Toll Booth Taxes
Road Usage Taxes (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
School Tax
Septic Permit Tax
Service Charge Taxes
Social Security Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone federal excise tax
Telephone federal universal service fee tax
Telephone federal, state and local surcharge taxes
Telephone minimum usage surcharge tax
Telephone recurring and non-recurring charges tax
Telephone state and local tax
Telephone usage charge tax
Toll Bridge Taxes
Toll Tunnel Taxes
Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
Trailer registration tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
When you add all the taxes together, a significant percentage of Americans end up paying well over 50 percent of their income in taxes of one form or another.
And the list above does not even include all of the new taxes that are in the new health care law that was just rammed down the throats of the American people.
When you add up all the taxes in that bill, it amounts to the largest tax increase in the history of the United States.
But if you enjoy being taxed until you are dry then none of this should bother you.
Sadly, according to an official U.S. government report, even with all of this taxation rapidly growing interest costs on the national debt together with spending on major entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare will absorb approximately 92 cents of every dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019. That is before a penny will be spent on anything else. Because of our reckless financial insanity, the U.S. government is now facing a financial crisis of unprecedented magnitude.
But whatever we end up giving to the federal government just never seems to be enough. It’s voracious appetite for spending just seems to multiply the bigger it gets.
The really tragic thing is that the U.S. federal government is not just spending our money. It is spending the money of our children and our grandchildren and of our great grandchildren.
We are being taxed into oblivion and yet the U.S. government apparently has no shame in stealing increasing amounts of money from future generations year after year after year.
Do you think that the U.S. federal government will one day wake up and decide that we are being taxed enough already?
No.
The truth is that unless we vote out all of the Republicans and all of the Democrats that have been taxing us to death, they will keep right on doing it.
We deserve better and future generations deserve better.
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Government Waste: 20 Of The Craziest Things That The U.S. Government Is Spending Money On
It almost seems as though Congress actually enjoys inventing new ways to waste U.S. taxpayer money. It seems nearly inconceivable that anyone could keep a straight face while trying to justify spending money on many of the things in the list below.
At a time when the U.S. national debt is closing in on 14 trillion dollars, government waste just seems more out of control than ever. The following are 20 of the craziest things that the U.S. government is spending money on….
#1 A total of $3 million has been granted to researchers at the University of California at Irvine so that they can play video games such as World of Warcraft. The goal of this “video game research” is reportedly to study how “emerging forms of communication, including multiplayer computer games and online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life can help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in the global marketplace.”
#2 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the University of New Hampshire $700,000 this year to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.
#3 $615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.
#4 A professor at Stanford University received $239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love. So far one of the key findings of this “research” is that the Internet is a safer and more discreet way to find same-sex partners.
#5 The National Science Foundation spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians “gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions.”
#6 The National Institutes of Health spent approximately $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
#7 Approximately $1 million of U.S. taxpayer money was used to create poetry for the Little Rock, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Chicago zoos. The goal of the “poetry” is to help raise awareness on environmental issues.
#8 The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs spent $175 million during 2010 to maintain hundreds of buildings that it does not even use. This includes a pink, octagonal monkey house in the city of Dayton, Ohio.
#9 $1.8 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars went for a “museum of neon signs” in Las Vegas, Nevada.
#10 $35 million was reportedly paid out by Medicare to 118 “phantom” medical clinics that never even existed. Apparently these “phantom” medical clinics were established by a network of criminal gangs as a way to defraud the U.S. government.
#11 The Conservation Commission of Monkton, Vermont got $150,000 from the federal government to construct a “critter crossing”. Thanks to U.S. government money, the lives of “thousands” of migrating salamanders are now being saved.
#12 In California, one park received $440,000 in federal funds to perform “green energy upgrades” on a building that has not been used for a decade.
#13 $440,955 was spent this past year on an office for former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert that he rarely even visits.
#14 One Tennessee library was given $5,000 in federal funds to host a series of video game parties.
#15 The U.S. Census Bureau spent $2.5 million on a television commercial during the Super Bowl that was so poorly produced that virtually nobody understood what is was trying to say.
#16 A professor at Dartmouth University received $137,530 to create a “recession-themed” video game entitled “Layoff”.
#17 The National Science Foundation gave the Minnesota Zoo over $600,000 so that they could develop an online video game called “Wolfquest”.
#18 A pizzeria in Iowa was given $60,000 to renovate the pizzeria’s facade and give it a more “inviting feel”.
#19 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave one enterprising group of farmers $30,000 to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight “haycations”. This one sounds like something that Dwight Schrute would have dreamed up.
#20 Almost unbelievably, the National Institutes of Health was given $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.
In light of all this, is it any wonder why the approval rating of Congress recently hit another new record low?
According to the most recent Gallup poll, only 13 percent of Americans approve of the job that Congress is doing.
Just think about that – only 13 percent!
Our politicians seem very confused about why there is so much anger in the country today. Well, there are certainly a lot of reasons for it, including the fact that the U.S. economy is on the verge of collapse, but it certainly doesn’t help that our government is basically flushing our tax dollars down the toilet and spending them on some of the most wasteful things imaginable.
It would be bad enough if the federal government was swimming in money, but the truth is that all of this waste is being committed at a time when the U.S. government is nearing bankruptcy.
Over the last 30 years, the U.S. national debt has gotten 13 times larger. We have accumulated the largest debt in the history of the world and there is no end in sight.
In fact, we are rapidly running out of people to borrow money from. According to the Wall Street Journal, in order to repay maturing bonds and finance the exploding budget deficit, the U.S. government will have to borrow 4.2 trillion dollars in 2011.
Eventually the rest of the world is going to lose confidence in the ability of the U.S. government to repay all of this debt. Once confidence in U.S. Treasuries is totally gone, and there are already signs this is starting to happen, the game will be over and the U.S. financial system will collapse.
But the U.S. Congress just continues to act like it is “business as usual” and the wasteful spending just continues to get worse. Someday historians will look back and think that we must have been a nation full of idiots and morons.
For decades our politicians have been spending us into oblivion, yet we keep sending the vast majority of them back to Washington D.C. every time an election rolls around and the mainstream media keeps assuring us that our “respected leaders” know exactly what they are doing and that everything is going to be okay somehow.
It is almost as if some sort of collective insanity has overtaken most Americans. The path we are on inevitably leads to national bankruptcy and the destruction of our financial system, but only a small percentage of the population seems to care.
Well, in the end we will reap what we have sown. Unfortunately, the economic pain that is coming is going to be devastating for all of us – including those of us who are awake and are trying desperately to change things.