Whose money is it?

With Helen Clark's promise of new election bribes in an attempt to gazump the imminent 'pre-announcement' of the Nats' plan for tax cuts -- and given the almost pathological inability of some bloggers, politicians, commentators and assorted idiots to tell the difference between a handout and being stolen from a little less -- I figured it might be a good time to reflect on whose money it is that is being taxed and given away.

"It's Your Money!" by Fulton Huxtable was published in The Free Radical in 1999, but has become more prescient by the day as the sheeple of this country wake up to whose money it is that this Government is spending, and the Opposition is promising to spend. Whose money is it? Yours of course:

Consider the logical implications of the idea that your money is yours. Money is a repository of the time in your life it takes you to earn it. If your money is yours, then it means the time in your life it takes to earn it is yours. If your life's time is yours, then your life is yours, yours by right and not a single minute of it should be taken from you without your permission.

If your money is yours, then you, not others, have the right to it. If your money is yours, you, not the state, have the right to control its use and disposal. If your money is yours, then you have the right to spend it as you please and no one — not the state or your neighbours — has the right to forcibly direct how your money is spent....

If statists lose their claim to your money, then they will lose their battle to bring you under their control.
If you want to win the battle against statists who seek to deprive you of your rights and freedom, then fight to spread the idea that your money is yours. We need a rising chorus of voices chanting: "It's my money." If we begin to hear this, it will be the best news for freedom that we have seen in decades.

Too true -- and we are hearing it around the traps, aren't we. I just hope that John Key and Don Brash can hear it. I hope, but I expect very little from either. Three packets of chewing gum? Four or five? (Vote here, if you like, and see how much of their own money others think they'll get back from Key.) And as you're listening to Key's "pre-announcement" of how much he plans to spend if you vote for him, might I suggest you have in mind PJ O'Rourke's explanation of where that money comes from that governments promise to spend:

.... all tax revenue is the result of holding a gun to somebody's head. Not paying taxes is against the law. If you don't pay your taxes you'll be fined. If you don't pay the fine you'll be jailed. If you try to escape from jail, you'll be shot. Thus, I - in my role as citizen and voter - am going to shoot you - in your role as taxpayer and ripe suck - if you don't pay your share of the national tab. Therefore, every time the govt spends money on anything, you have to ask yourself, ‘Would I kill my kindly, gray-haired mother for this?’

Would you?