“The pharaoh collected a large amount of taxes that he used for large government projects such as building pyramids and temples. These taxes also supported the wages of skilled workers, scribes, artisans, and military personnel, as well as financing large projects done by peasants during times of flood.”
History Link
Sound familiar?
The ancient Egyptians were quite fond of a bit of slavery too.
You know slavery, it’s where you work and work and work for someone else but you don’t get to enjoy the fruits of your labour.
Well, if Pharaohs Kevin Rudd and Ken Henry have their way with the upcoming tax stitch-up, chances are you’ll be pushed even further into servitude.
Already, the average Australian worker (that’s right, the average) has more than 20% of his or her salary confiscated by the government before it even hits their bank account.
That’s just the beginning. Think about it this way though. If you work a five-day week, every Monday, the work you do is to pay off the Federal government’s income tax demand.
Come Tuesday and you have to work half the day to pay off your superannuation guarantee. That’s money which is guaranteed to be taken from you, but without any guarantee you’ll get it back.
The rest of Tuesday and into Wednesday is taken up with paying off the GST and other levies and surcharges you find yourself paying for every day.
By the time you get to the close of business on Wednesday you should have paid off a raft of other taxes, such as rates, vehicle registration, medicare levy, medicare surcharge (or private healthcare), payroll tax, and don’t forget all the company taxes you ultimately pay for through higher prices for products and services.
So, as you roll into work on Thursday morning, it looks as though you’re about to earn some cash for yourself…
Not so fast bucko. If you’ve got a mortgage, chances are that’s another 20-30% of your income going straight to banks, just to keep a roof over your head. Now, all that by my calculations brings us up to – about right now on a Friday morning.
That means you’ve got the rest of the day to work for yourself. But as if it couldn’t get much worse there’s one more hurdle for you – inflation.
By the time you finish work this week and get paid next week (if you’re lucky) or next month, the dollars that you worked 40 hours for will actually be worth less to you than the dollars you worked for last month. Your average salary of $62,000 at the start of the year, adjusted for inflation will only be worth about $60,000 by the end of the year.
You need a 3% pay rise just to get back to breakeven. Talk about running just to stand still.
So, at about the time of the two o’clock smoko this afternoon, the money you earn for the rest of the day is yours to earn and spend as you please.
But don’t worry, if that doesn’t sound like much, because you’ve always got the credit card to fall back on. Out of interest, the total purchases on credit cards in July by Australians was $19.1 billion.
Look, play around with those numbers as much as you like. Chances are I’m not far off the mark.
And what does the mainstream press have to say about any of this? Nothing of course. The best they can come up with is rubbish like, “Rudd helped you hang onto your job.”
No! No he didn’t. It was your money. You helped yourself hold on to your job.
That was the money you worked for which was confiscated by the government and then divvied out to its favourite chums, are handed back as a bribe.
Rudd didn’t help anyone. Remember, if you were lucky enough to get the $900 bribe, it actually cost you around $4,200 from your taxes to fund the Fairy Ruddfather’s spending.
Only, you haven’t really paid for it yet, but you will. Because the government has just borrowed the money and will demand that you pay it back. Even though you’ve gotten nothing for it, and didn’t even ask to go into debt.
But in reality, the Fairy Ruddfather is just one of the Pharaohs. His co-conspirator is the real danger man.
That’s Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry. Without exaggeration, this man is one of the biggest threats to the individual rights and freedoms of all Australians.
The man is a menace.
Maybe you think that’s a bit harsh. After all, he is a public servant. And people aren’t supposed to criticize public servants. Doubtless he would tell everyone he could be earning much more in the private sector but he’s forsaken that to “do his bit” for society.
Let me explain what I mean when I label this man as the biggest threat to individual rights and freedom…
Reading the story in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review (AFR), your editor was stunned by two things. The reporting of the story, and the content.
To quote from the article:
“Dr Henry has invited about 20 representatives of key business and tax groups to attend a meeting in Sydney on October 15 to give feedback on reform directions to him and panel colleagues Heather Ridout and Greg Smith.”
The article goes on to quote from the letter of invitation:
“This consultation session provides an opportunity for you to provide feedback on the refore directions that the review panel is considering. The views of stakeholders are important to the review panel in ensuring that the possible reforms take business circumstances into account and are sustainable.”
He’s also planning on meeting with other accounting lobby groups.
Anything ridiculous strike you about consulting accountants about tax proposals? It’s like asking a butcher if we should all become vegetarians. Tax groups are hardly likely to recommend abolishing taxes, or even making the tax code simpler.
It’s in their interest for it to be as complicated as possible.
But more than that, where’s our invitation? Where’s your invitation? I mean it’s you that contributes every dollar to tax revenue whether it’s direct or indirect.
Of course, you’ll be told “this is much too complicated to trouble you with. You just get along and concentrate on working, that’s a good citizen!”
It got us thinking. Have you ever watched someone talk to someone who’s disabled in a wheelchair? In many cases they’ll either talk to them slowly like a six year-old, as though loss of leg usage has someone affected their brain power, or they’ll completely ignore them and talk to the carer instead.
Well, reading that story in the AFR yesterday it seems like the pollies view the humble taxpayer as nothing more than a cripple in a wheelchair…
Just go to the Treasury website and take a look at the submissions. There’s thousands of them.
Special interest groups as far as the eye can see. Each backed by research and PhDs and tax experts by the dozen.
Granted, there are also many submissions from individuals. Self funded retirees scared out of their wits at the prospect of Pharaoh Rudd and Henry swiping their life savings outrights or by stealth.
Here’s a sample:
“I am writing to you about my growing concerns with the direction being taken by ‘Australian’s Future Tax System Review’ and the possible harmful impact on my retirement savings.”
Carol Anderson
“I am greatly concerned at reports that the Henry Tax Review is considering recommendations to remove or change the dividend imputation scheme.”
Jan Attwood
“I am shocked to hear that government is considering the abolition of dividend franking credits. At this time when elderly self-funded retirees such as ourselves, are having difficulties meeting costs with reduced dividends and low interest rates; to also lose franking credits, would drive many of us to having to rely on the pension, and to give up private health insurance.”
Jocelyn Banks
“I am concerned that the proposed possible changes will negatively affect dividend income I was planning to live on.”
Elizabeth Every
Those are just four individual submissions. Like most of those from individuals they barely make it onto a second page. And like most of them we can guarantee anything they have to say will be ignored.
Thankfully the Tax Review panel received submissions like the 55 pages from the likes of the Australian Bankers Association.
Or the Australian Social Inclusion Board which laments, “Varied treatment of income, as well as exemptions, deductions and concessions available in the existing system provide opportunities for people to pay less than their share of tax.”
That would involve the government deciding what the “share of tax” would be we assume. Or maybe the Australian Social Inclusion Board could quantify what the “share” should be.
Then there’s the fund managers of course, AXA have chimed in with the unsurprising declaration that, “AXA believes that in order to achieve Australia’s desired objectives in relation to self funded retirement, an increase in the Superannuation Guarantee is required.”
And we shouldn’t forget the trade unions who will do all they can to ensure you don’t get to keep your hard earned wages:
“This Review is ideally placed to consider a series of taxation measures to ensure that the top income earners in our community, who benefited from neo liberalism over the last three decades (while their share of total income doubled) are those in the forefront of new progressive taxation policies.”
You’ve got to give the unions some credit. They may as well have quoted Wolfie Smith, “come the glorious revolution they’ll be the first against the wall!”
For ‘progressive taxation’ read, “give us what you’ve earned.”
It’s nothing more than theft of your property (income). Can we really believe that Pharaoh Henry will turn his back on the ‘progressive’ taxationists and declare taxation to be immoral?
Of course not. Pharaoh Henry has carte blanche re-form (that’s right re-form, not reform) the tax system. It will be a re-forming that ensures individual tax burdens are increased while special interest groups and lobby groups are thrown a few bones to keep them quiet.
Individuals will find a greater tax burden either directly or indirectly, and a destruction of their retirement savings.
Increased public spending and borrowing by the government in your name with the demand that you pay for is nothing short of coercive rule by a bunch of megalomaniacal bunch of bureaucrats.
We’ll wait to see what Pharaoh Henry has to say when his report is published, but we can guarantee you’re not going to like it.
Other Stuff on the Markets
The S&P/ASX200 jumped 1.39% yesterday, while overnight on Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 7.79 points. In Europe the FTSE100 gained 0.78% and the CAC40 added 0.56%.
The price of gold in Australian dollars is trading at $1,165.87, while in US Dollars it is trading at $1,014.89. And the price of silver in Aussie dollars is $19.95 and in US Dollars it is $17.36.
The Aussie dollar remained steady versus the US dollar and Japanese Yen, trading at USD$0.8712, and JPY79.40.
Crude oil closed overnight at USD$72.25.
For the biggest movers on the market yesterday click here…
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lol, PF, I know what you mean. He is somewhat of a drama queen. Beyond that, his value is in exposing the scam and all the hogwash we are being fed through mainstream media. If you go back through his videos, you will see that he has been providing a solid and intelligent commentary on the financial terrorism employed by Wall Street bankers to extort billions and trillions of dollars out of current and future generations of tax payers. He provides a radically different paradigm for understanding what is going down in the halls of political and financial power.
In that audio simulcast, for example, he makes a very interesting point about the inflation/deflation debate, and points out that in today’s captured and manipulated financial markets, most of our discussions could well be futile, because the game and the possible outcomes commonly discussed, i.e., inflation, deflation and stagflation, are and will in fact be rigged and determined in the shadows by what he calls ‘specflation.’ Specflation is the determining cause behind the other ‘-flations’, in the sense that it is the flow and direction of limitless speculative sh!t cheap fiat money that can and will lead to any of those other more recognised states of the economy. And if that is right, as I suspect it might well be, then to the extent that the creation and direction of massive speculative money flows is controllable and controlled by the financial oligarchy who clearly have the political class in their pockets, then in all our discussions and predictions about future trends is merely so much second guessing about what the bankster – political alliance’s next move is going to be.
To use an analogy, just as high speed, programmed trading technology can be used to move markets at will up and down, in the same way, entire economies and asset prices within them can be moved and manipulated through specflation, enabling the controlling elite to determine outcomes and front run asset and currency price movements more or less as they wish. Control is unlikely to be perfect, of course, and this is why the financial gangsters have to have the politicians at hand, so that the taxpayer can be fleeced by them whenever their plans don’t work out and their bets blow up into their faces. If you can suffer for an hour or so, it is well worth listening through that audio.
A very interesting debate on inflation vs deflation has just been posted on Jim Puplava’s Financial Sense Newshour. They are currently running an excellent series with all the prominent commentators, like Prechter, Schiff, Faber, Mish, etc., are interviewed on the subject and asked to put their best arguments forward. Relevantly to what I had just described about Keiser’s answer in terms of specflation, this week’s debate between Mish and Amerman, where both of them argue their cases exceptionally well, has very quickly boiled down to whether the financial powers to be want and can bring about this or that scenario. To an extent it is a question of whether the economy CAN be controlled by the gods, but clearly the more primary and more fundamental question is about WHAT they in fact want. And if you subscribe to, or are persuaded by, the view that the financial powers that be can in fact control the outcome (inflation or deflation), then the game becomes as I have suggested, one of second guessing WHAT in fact these financial oligarchs want to happen and for how long, and when will they decide to turn the ship around, so that you can switch in and out of assets so as to avoid being annihilated and whipsawed by chopping and changing trends that are determined by powerful interests in the framework of a largely controlled and rigged game.
If that is right, and they can change the rules of the game at any time, as it suits them, we are all at their mercy, and all the debate about where we are headed with property and other asset classes is little more than a guessing game. The rules on the basis you work out a certain expected outcome can be changed, so even if you calculated spot on, you will be hit out of left field with a different outcome.
Oh, sorry, the link to the show is here:
http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html
cb – The link wouldn’t work for me. If you want some light reading try this site http://www.quebecoislibre.org/apleithner.htm
Chris is a great guy, but don’t annoy him with emails. Just read his often abstract work.
Thanks, PF. I will check it out after I catch my dinner. Try copying the address into your browser’s window, or simply google Financial Sense Newshour with Jim Puplava, if you want to check it out. I have just finished listening to both parts of the 3rd hour, and my head is left swimming – all these arguments on both sides can really drain you of any confidence one might have in one direction or the other.
mate those big power people control the world
they get presidents killed
& obama & media is just puppetry in play
as for global warming its those same big powers couldve easily put in more efficient energy systems years ago but it gets down to the money
wat can us small players do about that? ..not a real lot
sigh, that’s how it is etch. Here is an interesting take from a Canadian economist on the subject:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385×374414
.
Just in case you have found that Economics 101 suitably depressing, here is something to cheer up the bears. It is about Canada, but, as I suggested, Canada and New Zealand are the more similar countries to us, not the US or Europe. Enjoy.
http://www.howestreet.com/articles/index.php?article_id=10831
cb – enjoyed those two links.
yeah the first video with Michel Chossudovsky explains how the sheep(le) were bred,fattened up & then FLEECED & then to be re-fleeced but ahhhhhhh……………the sheeps on its back now & dosnt look good @ all
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