Lance Wallace writes in Tips and Notes:
The Congressional Budget Office has released an analysis of the effects of a carbon tax.
At $20 a ton. they estimate about $1.2 trillion in revenues over a 10-year period. A money quote for me is:
“Without accounting for how the revenues from a carbon
tax would be used, such a tax would have a negative effect
on the economy. The higher prices it caused would
diminish the purchasing power of people’s earnings,
effectively reducing their real (inflation-adjusted) wages.
Lower real wages would have the net effect of reducing
the amount that people worked, thus decreasing the overall
supply of labor. Investment would also decline, further
reducing the economy’s total output.”
The CBO goes on to soften this by saying that certain ways of spending the revenue (e.g., reducing deficits or marginal tax rates) might result in a net benefit. But just returning the revenues to the low-income homes most affected by the rise in cost of electricity (16%; range 7% (California) to 27% (Illinois, West VA, etc.)) would not decrease the total cost of the carbon tax.
Report here http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44223_Carbon_0.pdf
Nothing at all to do with climate change, and everything to do with redistribution of dwindling wealth. In other words, in your face, suckah!
does it say how many jobs will be killed?
What puzzles me is that Europe is a laboratory for this nonsense. We can see what they are doing. They succeeded in Carbon taxing, putting up Windmills and PV Solar… and now, to help offset that mixtake, up go COAL plants. If this is not an “about face” that we can learn from… I digress.
Generate, or confiscate?
Budgeting for broke! Doesn’t any of these people understand? Dead country walking!
Beautiful vicious circle.
Yes, it will create 1.2 trillion, at least for a while. Then companies will pass on the extra costs to the consumers, then the consumers will have less money to spend, then the companies will make less money, they will start shrinking, then economy takes another hit, etc.
More taxes just mean more spending. Look at Europe. In my country we have the highest tax income ever. Our deficit and national debt is strangely also as high as never before… And keeps growing… Hmmm… How odd is that!
Hang on, isn’t revenue from carbon taxes supposed to be used to mitigate the fearsome effects of the naughty poison gas CO2? I thought the idea was to subsidise inefficient windmills and pay for the planting of extra chrysanthemums to clean the air for us or something?
They’re just gonna see the bottom line, lick their chops, buy up more guns and ammo for the Feds, waste enormous sums of it on election campaigns etc. They’re just gonna use it to perpetuate themselves and their lies. Send them all to their precious melting Arctic in canoes, swimming togs and sandcastle buckets. Give a damn when they freeze to death!
Gillard * Australia *
– Obama can see the effect on the political career of the Australian Primeminster & the Labour party after her wild predictions that a CO2 Tax would give the country a budget surplus, but reality hit when the CO2 credit price stayed low and so within a few months they have a massive budget deficit.
If Wall Street were taxed on speculative investment ie: derivatives, CDO’s etc. more would be accrued in a single year.
In Europe we suffer from all the redgreen experiments and taxes. Please take note of the failures. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are values at risk.
Don’t let it happen as we did. This will fundamentally change your country, for the worst.
“Lower real wages would have the net effect of reducing
the amount that people worked, thus decreasing the overall
supply of labor. Investment would also decline, further
reducing the economy’s total output.”
that’s the plan right there. Guess how emissions reduce, you hobble the economy. More people on guberment benefits, more people vote for said guberment. A self-perpetuating voting scam. This was Gordon Brown and Labour’s plan in the UK and it almost worked.
As a Brit, where this has already happened, stop it now. Here, we cannot go one day without paying some sort of climate-change tax on something or other. It’s like a disease.
Why stop at 20$/ton? Think big and big things happen, besides maybe they can boost my SS a bit with all of those carbon dollars.
“Without accounting for how the revenues from a carbon
tax would be used, such a tax would have a negative effect
on the economy. The higher prices it caused would
diminish the purchasing power of people’s earnings,
effectively reducing their real (inflation-adjusted) wages.
Lower real wages would have the net effect of reducing
the amount that people worked, thus decreasing the overall
supply of labor. Investment would also decline, further
reducing the economy’s total output.”
This is, pretty much, exactly the opposite to what Gillard said about the carbon tax she said she would not introduce at the last General Election (Sept 14th is when she will discover what Aussie voters think about that). Now at AU$23 tonne/CO2, the price on inputs to business/industry went up on 1st July 2012. Ford AU Ltd recently announced 1200 job losses citing costs, labour AND energy, were the main factors in their decision. The EU zone is the carbon tax/ETS experiment that all countries should be observing closely.
look at Australia we have $26 per ton and all the manufacturing Companys that produce green house gases are either closing or moving off shore we cannot wait till September when we kick out the Gillard labour Gov’t in your direction watch this very closely because you can do the same as we will be doing at the the next election
Looks to me like a carbon tax in the US is a good idea then, because I can’t see anything else that might raise enough money to deal with the US national debt. You guys have borrowed a truly ridiculous amount of money mostly from the savings of poor people in China – people who are not exactly flush with cash to begin with. What – did you think you would never have to pay it back?
In Australia the carbon tax, or as the Mendacious Bovine would like it referred to “Carbon Price”, has been a disaster. It has reduced the standard of living, driven up power prices, cost jobs and the only real CO2 reductions that have occurred are due to manufacturing businesses closing. Much of the country now appears to be “on hold” waiting for the next election.
If there is any benefit to a carbon tax, it is that it is not just political poison, it is political dioxin. Julia Gillard effectively took a funnel and chugged a 44 gallon drum of it. The upcoming September 14 election date is now widely referred to as “Whacking day”. Gillard is not just going to be voted out, she is going to be ejected. Some are questioning if the Labor party itself can survive.
Winston Churchill once said,a country that tries to get out of debt by raising taxes is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Anthony,
I agree with your quote, but in my own opinion the rule is easier than that. Money are just the credit of wellness produced by the individuals, no way they are the wellness themselves.
Making money without supply any wellness to the society leads to a dilution of the welfare. That is, to its impoverishment.
Producing wellness means solving problems, not inventing problems and solving them.
This is the very way economists are eroding our society.
They invented the way to make money with money via the stock exchange, arguing that the value of a company is no longer a function of its products, but just of its stock exchange attractiveness.
They found the way to make revenues for themselves, in no ways they create wellness for the society neither for the companies involved in the stock exchange transactions.
I’m not a leftist, but I believe that until men will not return to understand that “work” means produce tools and services to make life more comfortable, we never exit from the current economical crisis.
If the governments which apply taxation as a way to produce $$$ were right, I suggest them to liberalize thefts & robberies, that suffice to produce money incomes to the citizens.
If the ancestral governors didn’t invent the penalties for those crimes, they could be considered the most profitable ways to make money.
Have a nice day.
Massimo
And the harder he tries the more likely he is to break the bucket.
The economic folly of this claim is staggering.
Of course a carbon tax will not produce anything at all.
It will hinder production.
It would increase government tax revenues in dollar amounts without increasing the underlying economy that gives those dollars the value they have. The money is taken out of investment and transferred to consumption, to the overall detriment of the economy. I do commend to everyone Jo Nova’s post: http://joannenova.com.au/2011/09/the-submission-i-would-have-made-if-they-had-a-sense-of-humour/
The nation can never be compensated.
The CBO’s predictions for the economy haven’t been right in 20 years. Remember when they said the federal economy would be in surplus until, what, 2025? [Good thing it wasn’t, nor will be, or the depression would have been permanent.]
And a loss to the real economy of how much? One.two trillion over 10 years? $120 billion/year? And this does what, other than impoverishing people?
“AleaJactaEst says:
May 31, 2013 at 12:08 am”
On SBS news tonight Americans claiming unemployment benefit rose by 10,000 this month. So Obama’s fight against climate change via the reduction of emissions of CO2 from human activities appears to be working.
Well here you go; this is what the entire CAGW scam has been about all along.Did either he U.S. or European Union spend their last 1.2 Trillion dollars wisely? Does anyone really think it’s a good idea to give them another 1.2 Trillion to squander?
Well I suppose it’ll keep a few thousand souls employed, but totally non-productive.
I’d consider supporting carbon taxes if they were replacing other taxes rather than adding to them. Governments would then be demonstrating good faith in taxpayers and in climate science by *not* turning using green policies to grab more of our money.
Governments spending tax revenue on picking green winners by subsidising whoever lobbies them the most isn’t needed – the effect of applying a consumption tax that people can reduce the cost of by finding greater efficiencies would be enough to nudge the population in this supposedly correct direction.
What was that thing they talked about in the Cold War stand-off?
MAD – mutually assured destruction? What we have now are these games of race-to-the-bottom, musical chairs … already there are whole countries that seem unlikely to survive.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44223_Carbon_0.pdf
Congressional report says:
“Fossil fuels currently account for roughly 90 percent of all energy used in the United States, so taxing them would impose costs on the economy … ….… (low income) generally spend a larger percentage of their income on emission-intensive goods. Similarly, workers and investors in emission-intensive industries, who would see the largest decrease in demand for their products, would be likely to bear relatively large burdens as the economy adjusted to the tax. Finally, areas of the country where electricity is produced from coal—the most emission-intensive fossil fuel per unit of energy generated—would tend to experience larger increases in electricity prices than other areas would. … ….Given the inherent uncertainty of predicting the effects of climate change, and the possibility that it could trigger catastrophic effects, lawmakers might view a carbon tax as a reflection of society’s willingness to pay to reduce the risk of potentially very expensive damage in the future. “
How does a carbon tax that destroys jobs in the US in any way stop climate ‘change’ which is not a problem any way? China is starting up two new coal plants per week. India is starting up one new coal plant per week. Chinese total yearly emissions of CO2 are now 30% higher than US total yearly CO2 emissions. The entire developing world is developing. The developing world will not accept carbon capping rules unless the Western countries pay to enable the developing countries to convert their countries to nuclear power (soft energy does not significantly reduce CO2 emissions when simple unbiased analysis is used, nuclear is the only viable alternative). The Western countries do not have sufficient funds to pay to abruptly change to nuclear power for their own country little on to pay for nuclear power plants in developing and third world countries.
Comment:
It appears there is a paradigm shift occurring among the warmists. This film which is co-sponsored by CNN (the 24/7 climate alarmism channel) includes facts to support the assertion that nuclear energy is the only possible solution if there is a climate crisis. Further support for a paradigm shift is a November, 2012 published book by a mainstream warmist Oxford professor that states over and over again that soft energy (solar, wind, and biofuel) has not significantly reduce CO2 emissions in Western countries if the carbon content of imported goods is included and has not reduced world CO2 emissions. He notes the assertion that soft energy is not the solution is gaining traction among warmist academics. If anyone has a chance to see this film could they please write a review and summary of its arguments?
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/environmentalists-go-pro-nuclear-in-pandoras-promise-trailer-20130430
Your headline says: “…US carbon tax will generate $1.2 trillion…” No it won’t, tax doesn’t generate anything, it just takes it from someone else. Politicians use such terminology because they can’t discriminate between creating and stealing.
Correct. Taxes REMOVE income from the private sector. Deprives it. Robs it, if you will. And the job of citizens isn’t to make the government into a successful business. The US federal government should always be in deficit. That assures that the private sector (business, households, and state/local governments) are in surplus. [Well, this isn’t actually sector analysis where the state/local would be part of the government, but it’s still the truth.] The US monetary system is a CLOSED SYSTEM. Because the US federal government creates its own currency, it should never be in surplus, otherwise, the private sector will be in deficit as it was under Clinton where everyone was blinded by the “surplus” and borrowing from the banks because the private sector’s wages weren’t sufficient to meet expenses.
Taxing “carbon” is a horrible idea, regardless of how the revenues might be used. Raising energy prices is like throwing a lead weight to an economy, killing businesses or forcing them overseas. People lose jobs, and spending declines, causing further job loss. Essentially, it causes recession. Those who are considering this diabolical plan are nothing but traitorous scaliwags who should be tarred and feathered. At the very least, they need to be thrown out of office next election.
Carbon tax merely shifts the private sector which supports itself and the government to the public sector which to date has proved spectacularly UNselfsupporting.
To wit: the NYC 2013 budget has $70B in spending supported by $50B in tax revenue, despite the usual taxes and a city income tax, yet the Staten Island Ferry is free. The balance is made up with state and federal aid, debt, and bogus accounting.
T
they estimate about $1.2 trillion in revenues over a 10-year period…..
…I estimate we’ll all be broke way before then
The people who can’t pay their electric bills are already lined up at charities. The charities don’t have enough to help either. Adding a carbon tax won’t help. It will just add to the decline.
1.2 trillion more ripped out of the economy and given to government who will spend it all on retirements.
This will rip another million jobs out of the economy which has already lost 12 million jobs since democrats took both houses in 2007.
I’ll bet diamonds aren’t included in the “carbon” tax. The Hollywood elite has fought hard for this green, “carbon” taxing political ideology. They need reward.
These green(red) idiots don’t know sh!t from shinola,
I mean carbon from carbon dioxide.
Many project engineers realize that projections of costs are always low-balled by 50% or more versus real-world costs as calculated at the end of the project lifetime, and projections of benefits are always inflated by 100% or more. The Cost/Benefit ratio ends up 4x as high as pitched by Marketing.
In the case of a Carbon Tax, the Net Benefit is 0, so the C/B ratio is essentially infinite.
Here in Australia where Gillard’s “proice ohn carbohn” is applied to the top 250 “polluters”, it was to be the top 500 but somehow that list got severely “adjusted”. Two of these “top polluters” are Snowy Hydro and Hydro Tasmania, many are local councils and hospitals.
Ian H says:
May 31, 2013 at 12:40 am
” You guys have borrowed a truly ridiculous amount of money mostly from the savings of poor people in China – people who are not exactly flush with cash to begin with. What – did you think you would never have to pay it back?”
WRONG. China holds only 8.1% of the U. S. debt. Almost 66% of the debt is owed to ourselves.
History becomes legend, legend becomes myth. Stop spreading myths.
Ian H says:
…
What – did you think you would never have to pay it back?
———————
While Tom in Florida is correct, let me wander slightly off topic and say Yes Ian, there is a substantial block of the U.S. population (possibly more than half) that thinks precisely that. They are mistaken; the U.S. will ultimately pay, one way or the other. Destroying our economy with carbon taxes is hardly the way to deal with our debt however.
More Keynesian madness. Take a dollar from Walmart, who earns a whopping 3.5% profit on it, and give it to Solyndra who has a 100% loss on it. Change the costs of energy in a way that forces people to use higher cost sources. Refuse to permit improvements like new pipelines. Wonder why no jobs and moribund economic outlook. All in a day’s work for Washington (and Brussels too).
Revenue bills must originate in the US House of Representatives which is currently controlled by Republicans. Many Democrats won’t support it either. Such bill will never get out of Committee. It’s DOA.
policycritic says:
May 31, 2013 at 3:36 am
The US federal government should always be in deficit. That assures that the private sector (business, households, and state/local governments) are in surplus.
===================
over time this will drive the purchasing power of the US dollar to zero.
The only science that is settled is that we are being screwed by the group think left.
Folks, the real story here is that if the government can convince people to pay a “carbon tax” for a non-problem like “global warming”, this will open the floodgates for taxing everything and anything not deemed “acceptable” by the government. Get ready for an “obesity tax on food”, a “guns/ammo tax”, a “GPS-based mileage tax on your car/boat/motorcycle”…
More proof that this scam is about the revenue and the control and has nothing to do with science. But it also proves that our politicians are idiots. Can you generate $1.2 trillion in new tax revenues without creating a $1.2 trillion hit in the economy? Would the resulting drop in the economy also create a drop in revenue. Would this then feedback into an additional drop in the economy followed by a additional drop in revenue followed by an additional drop in the economy ad infinitum? Can you simply tax people an additional $1.2 trillion without negative consequences? Our peoblem in this country is our politicians are idiots and they are dishonest. AND our voters are uninvolved and unaware. We will continue to get the same results unless we wake up and throw the bums out.
Remember folks to look at the dollars and time period. $1.2 trillion over 10 years, that’s $120 billion per year. Now since our annual deficit is currently over $1 trillion per year, there is no way this additional tax will be applied to anything but additional spending. In order to pay down the national debt we would have to have budget surpluses each year of $1 trillion for about 20 straight years. Headline: It ain’t gonna happen.
The only salvation will be the asteroid Apophis hitting the Earth in 2029 and letting the survivors start over, whether it be humans or some other species (my money is on some other species).
Scarface says:
May 31, 2013 at 12:04 am
“In Europe we suffer from all the redgreen experiments and taxes. Please take note of the failures. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are values at risk. Don’t let it happen as we did. This will fundamentally change your country, for the worst.”
That it has even been contemplated in the USA is highly dangerous, a peek into a future that becomes possible after initial resistance is broken down. Hansen has called his socialist philosophy “Centrist” in his calling for a new party.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/30/climate-craziness-of-the-week-james-hansen-calls-for-new-political-party-to-combat-climate-change/
This is the kind of propaganda we see, for example, when the term “Democratic” is made part of the countries name: Democratic Republic of the Congo or the evil Deutsche Demokratische Republik or used in the name of a political party: the oxymoron “Social Democrats” (in Europe), the “New Democratic Party” (in Canada) and to a growing degree the “The Democrats”. These protesteth-too-much names are intended to be a sugar-coating. Imagine what Hansen’s party would be doing against the will of the vast majority.
Follow the money. This CBO estimate provides the potential energy underlying the debate posturing. It is irresistible. Single party rule in 2014 could get it done.
@Tadchem “Many project engineers realize that projections of costs are always low-balled by 50% or more versus real-world costs as calculated at the end of the project lifetime, and projections of benefits are always inflated by 100% or more.”
Maybe in the public sector. At least in my industry, crap like that is a firing offense.
This is precisely the kind of idea many in Congress would like to see adopted.
They can raise $1.2 Trillion in new taxes, cause $3-$5 Trillion in damage to the economy, while getting addicted and dependent upon the new $1.2 Trillion and producing no benefit at all.
What’s not to like?
The klecptocrats will continue to steal until punished.
Why voluntarily change from a system that has served 3 generations of parasites so well?
Ever emboldened by our forbearance, the lying and stealing keeps ramping up.
Now we are out of productive people willing to be robbed.
We have the example and evidence thanks to Europe.
Nice of them to destroy their economies and societies for our edification.
Tax on tax on tax spiral into no govt income and no private property.
The proof is in, the political bureaucracy will not restrain their greed.
100% plus, tax sounds good to ideologues for whom maths is hard.
It is the irony of allowing the voluntarily nonproductive, any say at all in the creation of wealth by the productive.
As smart as the ticks on a bull, legislating that bulls shall eat meat.
Herman Cane was far too generous with his , 999 plan.
All governments are in breach of contract.
Promises made.Money taken. Can not keep promises.
Starve the beasts, useless self serving parasite is my polite version.
Pay only 10% locally, local govt becomes relevant again.
Local body pay only 10% to State, who pays only 10% to Fed.
After all here in Canada we have the proof, 60 years of nanny state. The state is fine, the citizens are broke and welcome to wait in queue for illusionary healthcare, police protection,competent governance and equal justice.
Standard govt line, “Its not our fault, that we can not provide, we have no money.”
Sorry for rant.
Sick of the can’t do’s,no clue’s, insisting they have the wisdom to overrule those who can and do.
So taking 1,2 trillion from real economy and putting it in politicians hands is a good thing.
Sylvan Smyth May 30, 2013 at 11:36 pm
Generate, or confiscate?
Both. You generate; we confiscate.
Liberals like to lambaste and laugh at Laffer.
But he was right.
(Sorry, could not resist a bit of alliteration. )
Generate $1.2 trillion? Taxes don’t generate money, they take money from the private sector.
By contrast, if a business generates $1.2 trillion dollars, they created it. (Big assumption here — assuming they generated $1.2 trillion by selling something, not be lobbying the government for subsidies or requiring people to by it.) The private sector generates wealth, taxes take wealth.
i will echo most of the other comments above. Where exactly do they figure the $1.2 Trillion will come from? The money tree outside or the printing press in the basement? No, it will be sucked out of the economy. Why are these people allowed to come up with this stuff?
“Generate”. No, move.
“Shock News – Public sector finds new source of expansion capital”
As several commenter’s have pointed out … You are thinking of using Europe as a template?
What’s next? Adopting the North Korean constitution as your own?
Here is how the fun and games of a Carbon Tax devolves…
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/banks-and-trading-houses-bought-two-thirds-of-carbon-permits/
And, as with Kyoto, here is the graph of CO2 demonstrating, quite clearly, just how much difference handing your hard earned cash to these parasites makes to “The AtmosFear”
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_full
Case Closed.
1.2 trillion per 10 years will cost some jobs. Those jobs will trickle down to others losing jobs. 120 billion at an average of $43K per year per worker, that equates to 2.8 million jobs, if one calculates the new theft strictly be paid for by job loss. Of course, the 43K per year average only includes those who work, therefore it has increased over that last years as the low income part timers get laid off completely and full time is reduced to part time. Now throw NObama Care into the equation…glad I retired…And….Good luck to the youth who put the crooks into power. 🙂
I do like the asteroid approach. It is decisively going to clean house.
Apparently these people have never heard of Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy.
We the People can stop the EPA, the IRS the DOE and the rest of the alphabet agencies . . it is up to us folks make this go viral – email to all you know . . http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/article-v—group-overview-and-proposal.html
policycritic says:
May 31, 2013 at 3:36 am
Jim Turner says:
May 31, 2013 at 3:20 am
Your headline says: “…US carbon tax will generate $1.2 trillion…” No it won’t, tax doesn’t generate anything, it just takes it from someone else. Politicians use such terminology because they can’t discriminate between creating and stealing.
Correct. Taxes REMOVE income from the private sector. Deprives it. Robs it, if you will. And the job of citizens isn’t to make the government into a successful business. The US federal government should always be in deficit. That assures that the private sector (business, households, and state/local governments) are in surplus. [Well, this isn’t actually sector analysis where the state/local would be part of the government, but it’s still the truth.] The US monetary system is a CLOSED SYSTEM. Because the US federal government creates its own currency, it should never be in surplus, otherwise, the private sector will be in deficit as it was under Clinton where everyone was blinded by the “surplus” and borrowing from the banks because the private sector’s wages weren’t sufficient to meet expenses.
Not the US government, but the private banking cartel which set up and owns the Federal Reserve, your IRS taxes go to pay the interest on money your government could issue, but has chosen instead to allow control of it by the banking cartel, who set it up to create money out of nothing, organised primarily by the Rothschild’s of London (the City of London is a different country, it is not part of the UK).
“Who actually owns the Federal Reserve Central Banks? The ownership of the 12 Central banks, a very well kept secret, has been revealed:
“Rothschild Bank of London Warburg Bank of Hamburg Rothschild Bank of Berlin Lehman Brothers of New York Lazard Brothers of Paris Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy Goldman, Sachs of New York Warburg Bank of Amsterdam Chase Manhattan Bank of New York (Reference 14, P. 13, Reference 12, P. 152)
“These bankers are connected to London Banking Houses which ultimately control the FED. When England lost the Revolutionary War with America (our forefathers were fighting their own government), they planned to control us by controlling our banking system, the printing of our money, and our debt (Reference 4, 22).
“The individuals listed below owned banks which in turn owned shares in the FED. The banks listed below have significant control over the New York FED District, which controls the other 11 FED Districts. These banks also are partly foreign owned and control the New York FED District Bank. (Reference 22) ”
continued on:
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/fed_reserve.htm
Here’s part of how the fraud works by the crime syndicate which is the banking cartel together with the governments it controls part and party:
“Here is the trick. Take, for example, a year like this year in which the government runs a $400 billion dollar deficit. The Treasury Department has to sell $400 billion in US Treasury bills, bonds and notes (government IOUs) to buyers at a rate of interest sufficient to attract their money (and beat the interest competition of other banks’ CDs and other governments’ bills, bonds and notes). To avoid a credit squeeze, the Federal Reserve System Open Market Committee in Washington directs the NY Federal Reserve Bank to purchase roughly 10% of that total (or $40 billion in our example) in existing US bills, bonds, and notes from the current holders. To pay for them it creates the $40 billion out of nothing, merely with keystrokes on a computer. Through more keystrokes, this new $40 billion is deposited into the banks of the various bill, bond, and note sellers, thereby increasing the reserves of those banks by $40 billion.
“Pursuant to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 those banks must keep only 10% of those new deposits on “reserve.” (Because these banks do not have to keep 100% on reserve, this banking system is called a “fractional reserve” system.). So of the $40 billion deposited, the banks must keep 10% on reserve ($4 billion) and may loan out $36 billion (90%), for business loans, mortgages, credit card loans, to purchase government bonds – for whatever borrowers want. Those loans (and payments) are in turn deposited in banks (very few folks put their money in mattresses). So of the $36 billion loaned out and then re-deposited, the banks receiving the new deposits can then loan out 90% or $32.4 billion, retaining 10% or $3.6 billion as reserves.
“Banks repeat this redeposit-reloan process, reduced 10% each time, until the 10% reserves retained have reduced the funds available for loan to zero. This cunning process allows the banks to create out of nothing nine times the original $40 billion in new deposits received from the Federal Reserve (the “Fed”), or $360 billion dollars. This total is concealed from the public by the only partial expansion of the loan total at each repetitive step.”
continued on:
http://antimisandry.com/business-career/united-states-federal-reserve-private-banking-cartel-explained-26521.html
If we could all put our money in bank accounts and times it by ten and so have created 90% extra out of thin air and lend that out at interest we’d all be rich. It might even go to our heads and we’d think we could control the world and everyone in it..
More on the subject: http://www.converge.org.nz/pirm/fr_paul.htm
None of our governments have debts..
The debt created was a fraud, so there is nothing to pay back. The banks have to reinburse us.
I came across The Use of Money
By Major C. H. DOUGLAS
in the last couple of weeks, but haven’t had a chance to read more about his proposed solution: http://www.alor.org/Library/TheUseofMoney.htm#1a
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/fed_reserve.htm
dbstealey
Congressional Budget Office says US carbon tax will generate $1.2 trillion
Apparently these people have never heard of Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy.
Yes they have. The modern version would include a fine for the shopkeeper for having endangered the public by placing a window in a position where the window, if broken, could potentially endanger passing townsfolk having not providing a warning to that effect in 27 different languages.
The boy would be in juvenile detention with team of crack Psychiatrists eyeing papers at the next conferenced based upon his strange need to break windows.
The assembled crowd would be fined for assembling in a public place without a licence.
All this assuming we can get the 5000 Sociologists attending the “Broken Window – what does it say about child rights in the 21st Century” Conference” (Hawaii – where else) to eventually agree upon definitions of the words … ‘community’, ‘public’, ‘crowd’, ‘child’, ‘victim’, ‘broken’ and, of course, ‘window’ without another meeting next year on Bali.
Lo, the broken window is now ‘generating’ $1.2 Trillion’ for the community. The window, to this day, remains broken. The kid is still in juvenile detention. Fines have been paid by the crowd. Theoreticians are still ’employed’ and enjoying the conference on Bali.
The crowd will now struggle to pay their ‘bills’ next year. But… “They had to count them all … now we know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall”.
The higher prices it caused would
diminish the purchasing power of people’s earnings,
effectively reducing their real (inflation-adjusted) wages.
Lower real wages would have the net effect of reducing
the amount that people worked, thus decreasing the overall
supply of labor. Investment would also decline, further
reducing the economy’s total output.”
I believe this is what they want to do (among a number of things) because it’ll result in us using less natural resources meaning the rest of the developing world would have a larger (and hence cheaper) supply of natural resources to develop with.
I read on here from time to time that dana1981 is a leftist. I thought it was referring to his position on AGW. Well it turns out IMO he’s a leftist all the way round. He believes tax increases are incentives. I ask him (before being banned) if the government increases the payroll tax does that give him the incentive to work harder? He said thats different, he has to work. I guess that means folks have a choice rather they use carbon based energy. Technically the answer to both (to work & to use carbon based energy) is NO! See what kind of life style you have if you choose no.
He was only considering the increase in electricity costs per household from a carbon tax. If electricity cost go up, they effect every thing not just households.
… And at that exact point in the sentence the politicians, especially those IQ challenged members of the US Senate, stopped reading.
They will come back at this over and over and over again like the child in the back seat saying: Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
Hide your wallets. And vote them all out.
A tax is supposed to FOR some reason. Gasoline tax to maintain roads. BUt, taxing carbon just to raise revenue is evil. Spending is out of control and the cure is not to find more revenue but to CUT SPENDING. A carbon tax would be taxing something that is good for the environment and releasing CO2 is a benefit to the world. It would be a travesty to tax carbon just because you can and need money. Why not have a breath tax? Give everybody a chest sensor and then they have to pay per breath. It’s no different as we have to breath and we have to use carbon energy to live.
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/history-of-taxation-in-the-united-states.html
Not at all. It has always been so, as these two charts will show you:
Sectoral Financial Balances as a % of GDP, 1952q1 to 2010q4. The green is the foreign sector, but noted here as the capital account. All three sectors cannot be in surplus at the same time. If two sectors are in surplus, however, then one must be in deficit. This isn’t me making this up, these are accounting rules, something most economists never study BTW.
http://i41.tinypic.com/30l1awm.png
Public vs. Private Balance. The automatic stabilizers (unemployment insurance, etc.) that kicked in during the financial crisis are visible in 2008. They are direct mirrors of each other to the penny, otherwise someone in the government has to stay late to find the accounting mistake.
http://i39.tinypic.com/ac8isp.png
Taxes don’t “generate” money, they take money from people that generated it.
How much will the carbon tax generate if all our factories and jobs move to China, or India, etc?
It’s like raising the taxes on smoking. Do you want to bring in more tax revenues or do you want to make people smoke less? Raise the rate high enough and you get less tax money and less smoking. Not to mention a black-market for cigarettes along with the organized crime syndicates that go with it.
But unlike the taxes on cigarettes, we have no public health issue to drive the need for a carbon tax. We certainly have no shortage of carbon fuels and there is zero evidence of any health hazards from carbon emissions themselves.
The statist will tell you that the carbon tax really won’t cost the average American anything, that only the rich will pay it but the poor and middle class will get the benefits of all the great new wonderful social programs the tax will pay for. In other words, it’s a neo-Marxist redistribution scheme hidden behind the vacuous “it’s for the children.”
You have a number of things wrong. Eustace Mullins, Gary Kah, and Thomas Schauf (the 1992 info you linked to) have misled the American people on this. It’s sort of understandable because the Federal Reserve in its infinite arrogance preferred to remain opaque—especially since August 15, 1971 when we became completely sovereign monetarily. Had Americans discovered what that meant for its prosperity, we would have a far better world today. If you think Americans (and the world) are being bamboozled by global warming scientists, it is nothing compared to how they have been bamboozled by descriptions of how federal accounting works since 1971.
About who owns the Federal Reserve (Shauf’s information is 100 years old and describes a universe that existed before we went off the gold standard in 1934):
The Fed is divided into 12 regional banks. There is no national bank, only regional ones. Each bank is owned by the banks in its region, which buy shares in the regional Fed bank. No matter the size or number of branches of the bank, each bank in each regional bank has one vote.
It wouldn’t make any difference whether the Rothschilds were the largest shareholders in the Federal Reserve or not (the only one making this claim is Gary Kah and he doesn’t substantiate it). The ownership rights of Federal Reserve Bank stock are completely different than the common stock of typical corporations. Usually, the number of votes a shareholder has is proportional to the number of shares he owns. However, ownership of Federal Reserve Bank stock entitles the shareholder to one vote when voting for its regional Federal Reserve Bank officials regardless of how many total shares the member bank may own. The vast majority of member banks (about 1,000) are US federal and state banks.
Each shareholder bank–individuals and non-bank firms are not allowed to participate–is paid a dividend equal to 6% of the price of the original shares, not of the value of its shares to date. In 2010, for example, the Federal Reserve paid 1.56% of its earnings over all 12 regional banks to its shareholders. You can read this in the 2010 Annual Report here: http://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/annual-report/2010-federal-reserve-banks.htm#8
After expenses, the remaining profits of the Federal Reserve are 100% returned to the US Treasury, and have done so since required by law in 1947. In 2010, the Fed Reserve earned $81 billion. It returned $79.xx billion to the US Treasury. Look at the Annual Report I linked to.
Independent accounting firms conduct full financial audits of the Federal Reserve banks and the Board of Governors every year. The Fed is also subject to certain types of audits from the Government Accounting Office. Congress conducts oversight twice a year, by law.
Most of the 12 regional banks list their member banks on their websites. (I say most because I haven’t checked all 12, only a few.) Here is a 54-page list of the large commercial banks and the percentage foreign-owned:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/lbr/current/default.htm
There is no national Federal Reserve bank that operates apart from the 12 regional banks that does all these nefarious things claimed by Eustace Mullins, Gary Kah, and Thomas Schauf.
You wrote:
Not so fast.
Congress wrote the law that forbids the Federal Reserve from providing direct overdrafts to the Treasury back in the days of the gold standard because it had to protect the government from printing too many dollars if there wasn’t enough gold in the vault. It was a way of putting a set of suspenders and a belt on the gold supply.
Let’s make this personal so you understand. When you are overdrawn at your bank today, when you have no money in your bank account, your bank could–if it wanted to and thought you were a good credit risk– cover you with an overdraft if your rent check was about to bounce. Congress, back when horse and buggies were still on the road, said that the Federal Reserve could not do that for the US Treasury because of gold concerns. Instead, it forced the US Treasury to issue, or sell, Treasury securites so that Treasury’s bank account wasn’t in the red. Treasury bills (mature in 1 years or less), Treasury notes (mature in 10 years or less), and Treasury bonds (mature in 30 years or less) are all real money inserted into the economy. That gold standard-era law was never changed, which it should be.
But here’s the big difference between you and the US Treasury. The Treasury creates the money in this country. You don’t, neither do I, nor any business or foreign country. So Congress forcing the US Treasury to issue (sell) Treasury securities to cover an overdraft in its bank account is just an accounting doodad. The US Treasury is the monopoly creator of its own money. No one else on the planet can make it, unless they’re counterfeiting. All this BS that the “government has to borrow money to survive” is just that: BS. There is no factory in downtown Beijing making dollars that we borrow, for example.
Lastly,
Absolutely 100% wrong. The fractional reserve system disappeared decades ago; it is an artifact of the gold standard days. Absolutely does not exist today. Loans create deposits. Let me repeat that: loans create deposits, not the other way around.
A bank makes that loan based on its perceived credit-worthiness of the client. If the bank does not have enough money to cover the loan, it gets reserves from the Fed at the going interest rate (it has about two weeks to settle up) or from other banks through interbank transactions that are too complicated to get into here.
Understanding how this system really works is what is going to cause ‘the people’ to demand that it gets changed. Hanging onto the Eustace Mullins, Gary Kah, and Thomas Schauf version of it undercuts everyone, and keeps the populace as ignorant of the truth as Hansen is trying to make us ignorant about the climate.
@Tim V –
Carbon taxes KILL PEOPLE – by some accounts, up to 36,000 people have died in Europe since 2009 from hypothermia or related causes because they couldn’t afford to heat their homes.
Carbon taxes are MASS MURDER, and people who advocate them are MASS MURDERERS.
Der Fuehrer talks of “saving the planet for our grandchildren” – but what about the grandchildren right now, here, toda, being raised by grandparents that are just barelky getting by? How many of thoise kids will go hungry HERE, NOW, TODAY, when gasoline goes to $10 a gallon, electricity to 40 cents a kilowatt-hour, and everything that moves by motor fuel goes up in proportion?
What can be uglier than politicians like der Fuehrer, Boxer, Whitehose and their platyhelminthine singalongs cynically proposing MASS MURDER as policy? The more so given that none of these super-rich advocates of what is unarguably MASS MURDER will feel those price increases? They don’t give a rat’s sphincter whether poor people suffer hardships and even starve or die of the cold, yet they have the hubris, the gall, the sheer effrontery to claim that they’re for the little guy.
in australia, there will be a day of reckoning for the absurdly high tariffs being offered to those who could afford to take advantage of the switch to solar, providing power to the grid:
31 May: BrisbaneTimes: Tony Moore: Queensland electricity prices to rise
Queensland electricity prices will increase $268 a year, or 22.6 per cent, for households on the typical tariff, the Queensland Competition Authority has confirmed.
QCA chairman Malcolm Roberts accepted the price increase would hit families and small businesses…
‘‘[Premier] Campbell Newman promised Queenslanders in writing that he’d [lower] their power bills,’’ Mr Pitt said.
‘‘It was a reckless promise and clearly a shameless pre-election stunt that Mr Newman never had any intention of honouring.’’…
Energy Minister Mark McArdle instead the blamed the carbon tax, which adds $19.83 a year – or 38 cents a week – to the $268 annual increase ($5.15 a week) to the residential electricity bill.
He repeated his concerns about the cost of providing the solar feed-in tariff, which in 2013-14 will add $32 a year (61 cents a week) to the $268 a year increase…
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-electricity-prices-to-rise-20130531-2ng00.html
29 May: NYT: Todd Woody: Solar Industry Anxious Over Defective Panels
LOS ANGELES — The solar panels covering a vast warehouse roof in the sun-soaked Inland Empire region east of Los Angeles were only two years into their expected 25-year life span when they began to fail.
Coatings that protect the panels disintegrated while other defects caused two fires that took the system offline for two years, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenues.
It was not an isolated incident. Worldwide, testing labs, developers, financiers and insurers are reporting similar problems and say the $77 billion solar industry is facing a quality crisis just as solar panels are on the verge of widespread adoption…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/business/energy-environment/solar-powers-dark-side.html?_r=0
policycritic says:
May 31, 2013 at 1:57 pm
Myrrh says:
May 31, 2013 at 11:17 am
Lastly,
“Pursuant to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 those banks must keep only 10% of those new deposits on “reserve.” (Because these banks do not have to keep 100% on reserve, this banking system is called a “fractional reserve” system.)
Absolutely 100% wrong. The fractional reserve system disappeared decades ago; it is an artifact of the gold standard days. Absolutely does not exist today. Loans create deposits. Let me repeat that: loans create deposits, not the other way around.
A bank makes that loan based on its perceived credit-worthiness of the client. If the bank does not have enough money to cover the loan, it gets reserves from the Fed at the going interest rate (it has about two weeks to settle up) or from other banks through interbank transactions that are too complicated to get into here.
Understanding how this system really works is what is going to cause ‘the people’ to demand that it gets changed. Hanging onto the Eustace Mullins, Gary Kah, and Thomas Schauf version of it undercuts everyone, and keeps the populace as ignorant of the truth as Hansen is trying to make us ignorant about the climate.
? Why would the banks give up the scam they created when the ‘money’ was gold, when now they have unlimited amounts they can create out of nothing?
http://www.amosweb.com/cgi-bin/awb_nav.pl?s=wpd&c=dsp&k=fractional-reserve+banking
“Fractional-reserve banking is the standard practice used by banks throughout the global economy. However, to fully understand the nature of this method, consider the two alternatives to fractional-reserve banking: full-reserve banking and no-reserve banking.”
“loans create deposits”, as in, you go to your bank to get a loan for 100,000 and they create money out of it, out of the i.o.u.?
The Federal Reserve was created as a private company, that has no changed. However they have spread that the original banking families which created it still own it and reap the profits – so they returned a few billion to the US Treasury in 2010, (why do all the links I’ve found go to that date only?, new meme?), how much was this really if the following is true?:
http://famguardian.org/Publications/YouBeJudge/chapter3.htm
“”The Federal Reserve earns interest on the government securities it owns.” (“The Hats The Federal Reserve Wears”, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)
“Here is how this “PONZI SCHEME” works: When the government needs $100 billion, action is taken as follows: (1) The U.S. Treasurer advises the Bureau of printing and engraving to print $100 billion of U.S. Bonds (2) The Treasurer advises the Federal Reserve it will need $100 billion of Federal Reserve Notes (3) The Federal Reserve advises the Bureau of printing and engraving to print $100 billion of Federal Reserve Notes and pays $20.60 per thousand denomination (4) The slight of hand trick takes place when the Federal Reserve Notes are swapped for the U.S. Bonds that pay interest. (See House of Representatives, Banking and Currency Committee hearing of September 30, 1941) It should be pointed out the Federal Reserve does not always exchange Federal Reserve Notes for U.S. Securities. They can simply create the money by a simple bookkeeping journal entry and eliminate the cost of printing and engraving.
“Congressman Burkick reconfirmed this when he said, “We want to sell $4 billion worth of U.S. Bonds, and we sell them in New York to those who haven’t got a dime, and they don’t need any money because they simply enter credit to the government on their books . . . They bundle up the bonds and take them down here to Washington D.C. and get an amount equal in currency. Then they’ve got the money! But they didn’t have the money before the government gave it to them.”
“Lewis W. Douglas, former director of U.S. Budget said, “When banks buy government bonds they create bookkeeping credit.””
And,
“In a series of letters written by Byron Dale to the Department of the Treasury provides further evidence of the crimes being perpetrated on our unsuspecting nation. Russell Munk, Assistant General Counsel, International Affairs, Department of the Treasury, responded: “If the money supply is to be increased, money must be created [as debt]. The Federal Reserve Board (or “the Fed” as it is often called) has several ways of allowing money to be created, but the actual creation of money always involves the extension of credit . . . A private commercial bank which has just received extra reserves from the Fed can make roughly six dollars in loans for every one dollar in reserves it obtains from the Fed. How does it get six dollars from one dollar? It simply makes book entries for its loan customers saying `you have a deposit of six dollars with us’ . . . You may want to know whether the bank is the one getting the benefit of the new money, since the bank owns the new money while the customer has merely borrowed the money. The bank does indeed get the benefit of the new money.””
And, do you really think the Fed Reserve only made a few hundred million in profit?
“In a letter dated March 16, 1988, Donna Pope, Director of the Mint, Department of the Treasury, wrote: “Federal Reserve Notes are printed by the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, which is also an agency of the Department of the Treasury. The notes are sold to the Federal Reserve at the cost of manufacture, not at face value.”
“In another letter from Russell Munk, Assistant General Counsel, Department of the Treasury, he writes: “It costs the Bureau of Printing and Engraving a little more than 2 cents to make a Federal Reserve Note, whether the note is for $1, $5 or $10 [$20, $50, $100] . . . I hope this information is useful to you.”
“This information proves the MONEY-CHANGERS pay about $20.60 for $100,000.00 (1,000 x $100.00 = $100,000.00). Don’t you wish you could get that kind of return, plus interest on your money? The MONEY-CHANGERS do!”
How can I get in on this? How can you? Read the mortgage scenario on that page, why isn’t the profit of money created out of your debt coming to you with a handling fee payable to the bank?
How much did the Federal Reserve pay for the $93 billion it returned to the Treasury in 2010?
Did they claim it as expenses..?
A bit more from that piece:
“In a letter dated April 9, 1990 from the Coin Coalition, they wrote: “The government only makes about $500 million a year in seigniorage on quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Remember, this is rather like `funny money’. The former chairman of the House Coinage Subcommittee correctly points out that we could pay off the national debt with a single $3 trillion coin. Just mint it and keep the $3 trillion seigniorage.””
“Unfortunately our leaders represent our enemies and continue to aid and abet in the crime of keeping us as indenture servants. If they truly represented “WE THE PEOPLE”, they would mint the coin, pay off the unlawful debt, and free us from the unseen hands of the MONEY-CHANGERS. However, there is a problem using this method, this method would leave the MONEY-CHANGERS with $5 trillion in their pockets.
“Fortunately, there are two other solutions to putting an end to this thievery. The first solution is found in Article 30 of the Federal Reserve Act. According to Article 30, Congress can buy-back the Federal Reserve and all their assets for the original paid-in capital of $144 million. Utilizing this clause would leave the stock-holders with what they invested to begin with, a $144 million.
“Speaking of the Federal Reserve System, Justice of the Peace, Martin Mahoney said, “The law leaves wrongdoers where it finds them.” Article 30 of the Federal Reserve Act does just that!
“However, the best solution to putting an end to this giant hoax would be for Congress declare the Federal Reserve unconstitutional and null and void. Such an Act of Congress would return all their ill-gotten gains back to the U.S. Treasury and the MONEY-CHANGERS would be left empty handed. This solution will be given later in the book.”
I do think you have to go back to the history of this, especially for the US members the beginning of the Federal Reserve, but the control of the money supply, whether it be gold or cockle shells or now just key strokes, it the issue here – the banking cartel has been in monopoly control since the Rothschild’s perfected the scam a few centuries ago, lending to the goverments and getting the interest payed by the tax payers.
Money that the government, i.e. the people, could print and control itself and issue as non interest loans, for example.
Here’s a potted history of the beginnings: http://www.iamthewitness.com/books/Andrew.Carrington.Hitchcock/The.History.of.the.Money.Changers.htm
Meyer Amchel Rothschild said:
“Let me issue and control a nation’s money, and I care not who writes its laws”
(1743-1812)
http://www.libertyforlife.com/banking/federal_reserve_bank.html
And some on the IRS and the Federal Reserve, created together, the IRS is the collection arm for interest payments on the money created out of nothing. http://www.devvy.com/notax.html
Can you point to a full independent audit of this relationship? Any audit at all…?
A carbon tax will NOT generate $1.2 Trillion.
A carbon tax will not generate one brass razoo. It’s a tax; that’s money that comes out of the profit making segment of the economy (private enterprise), and goes into the non-profit making government part of the economy. You can’t tax a non-profit making enterprise; and I use the term “enterprise very loosely. It takes NO enterprise to spend other people’s money, on something, they would never spend it on.
About one third of all of the able to work people, work for the government , and they consume about half of the GDP. The other half of the GDP supports the 2/3rds of the able to work population, who actually work and pay taxes.
This is not to say we don’t need people working for the government; well they actually work for the taxpayers; but they don’t pay taxes themselves (income). Oh yes they put their hand in the public trough, and take out money, and then they just drop some right back in the trough it came out of.
ALL government workers, should be tax exempt, as to the tax of the government entity; local, State, or Federal, for which they work.
A carbon tax is a slush fund for people swilling at the public trough.
I don’t recall the US tax payers getting any preferred stock out of the Tesla IPO, in exchange for the half Bil we loaned them, to get it off the ground. I wish them all the success; I just think, those that were forcibly “invested” in this gig, deserve to get their fair share of any value increase; that’s how investments, usually work.
It’s 4:30 AM here and I need to get to bed. So I will only cover this until tomorrow (well, later today). Re: your
I don’t have the link; maybe I can find it tomorrow, but the cite info should let you search with Google, even though it’s become an advertising algorithm and you can’t find a damn thing anymore.
From: Money and the Federal Reserve System: Myth and Reality
by G. Thomas Woodward, Specialist in Macroeconomics, Economics Division, July 31, 1996, Congressional Research Service Library of Congress , CRS Report for Congress, No. 96-672 E
In the interest of brevity I offer the following editorial suggestion for the headline: strike through “generate” and insert “cost”.
All to be handed out in subsidies for companies owned by those who lobby for the tax.
Green energy costs more than fossil fuel energy. Greenies think that taxing carbon will level the playing field. But the reason green energy costs more is the enormous amount of fossil fuel energy used to make windmills and solar panels. If a carbon tax is applied, the cost of green energy should rise commensurately. Carbon taxing will only “work” for greenies if green capacity production is exempted from the tax on carbon (or the revenue is used to subsidize green energy.) Alternatively, greenies could continue to build green capacity in un-taxed China AND get subsidized with carbon tax revenues. Either way, there will be minimal carbon reduction and maximum harm to Americans. And greenies are proven to be hypocrites.
Mangus Colorado – that’s not a history, that’s a hide the history.
Tax on labour for US nationals is unconstitutional, sorry, haven’t had a chance to find an easy explanation of this, I thought I’d bookmarked one, but here is a rant on that theme with links to the appropriate information: http://www.tax-freedom.com/ta24003.htm
Your IRS cheque doesn’t get paid into the Treasury, because a) you’re not subject to tax on labour and b) because the IRS is the collection arm for the interest payable to the lending by the Federal Reserve which as I’ve shown above is creating the money out of nothing by the Government simply giving it to them.
Where he says it is “illegal” is not quite clear, it would be illegal if it were paid into the Treasury because that is unconstitutional tax, and it is “illegal”, as unlawful in that it is a scam, a fraud, created by the Government and the Federal Reserve in the creation of money which the Federal Reserve then lends back at interest to the Government and they collect the interest from you pretending it is tax (which would be unlawful anyway) and so shouldn’t be collected in the first place.
Some have successfully challenged this fraud – but it is fraught with ‘legalese’, so for example, some say you should write on your IRS form “no contract” and send it back, but others say that in itself constitutes your recognition of it as a legitimate entity and you shouldn’t write anything at all on the form, not even sending it back.
So, there’s lots of aspects of the fraud in this, in calling it a tax it is confidence trick, but for example, you are sucked into that in employment situations where this private interest, that is all the interest collected by the IRS by calling it “tax” which goes direct to the privately owned Federal Reserve, is taken direct from companies employing you who are unlawfully not allowed to trade unless they collect this interest for them.
This is, imo, not something that can be tackled effectively piecemeal, the whole system of corrupt money changing by the fraudulently acts of Goverment and the Federal Reserve have to become common knowledge, so that everyone understands what the fraud actually is. That takes education, the spread of knowledge, and this of course is what the conmen banking cartel owners of the Fed Reserve don’t want you to know..
Anyway, follow the links on that page to get a perspective on the complications here, such as: http://www.tax-freedom.com/ta24007.htm
You are in the US in the enviable position where Common Law was explained in the drafting, Common Law being our inalienable rights and your default position setting limits on Government interference.
A potted history of background to Common Law, which is the Law of the Land in Britain and its former colonies which was the basis of your founders’ thinking: http://www.britsattheirbest.com/freedom/f_british_constitution.htm
In Britain there is a movement to explain the differences between the Law (which is Common Law only), and acts of parliament which pass themselves off as The Law – again a fraud of deception by conmen. And this is really complicated by the ‘legalese’ put in place – if you’re ever asked by a policeman “do you understand?” and you reply “Yes.”, it is assumed contractual agreement putting yourself under their jurisdiction and so out of Common Law..
Some people are fighting against the various acts by arguments within the ‘legalese’ of the court system created to enforce these acts. I however think this is wrong way to fight it, it is a con, and that already makes it a fraud in Common Law.
Here’s a fun example bringing it back to Common Law, against the unlawful imposition of a “Council Tax” which was put in place when Maggie’s original “Poll Tax” went belly up: http://metro.co.uk/2011/03/07/judge-arrested-as-british-constitution-group-storms-court-643040/
This is a very real problem, the police being trained now don’t know the difference between this “private company masquerading as the Law” while the judge clearly knew he was acting for that private company and so refused to confirm his oath of office which he took under Common Law – the policemen didn’t have a clue what was going on.
Tax does not generate money it extracts it from other activities often ending them for ever as happened in the UK with the 3G licence levy which ended several businesses relying on the mobile industry for custom for a short term gain.