How are your choices reduced?

Every law and regulation reduces your choices. Some people like laws and regulations because they think these reduce undesirable choices. Prohibition is the classic example of how laws are supposed to improve society. Prohibition was to make a better world by ending the consumption of alcohol. But, of course, now we know that it never worked as intended. Instead of making a better society, criminalizing alcohol consumption just made people criminals. 

Every tax reduces you choices. Every tax raises the cost of goods and services. Every tax makes you pay for something you may not actually want. Some tax dollars pay for things you strongly disagree with or really object to. But you have no choice. Every tax dollar taken from you is no longer available for you to use on something you may actually want. That choice is no longer available to you. Every hour you work to pay taxes for things you do not want, are not satisfied with, disagree with or even agree with is an hour you have lost for yourself or your loved ones.

Smoking is a more recent example of how behavior laws and tax laws reduce choices. Like alcohol, cigarettes are not actually banned. They are taxed. Smokers are required to pay direct taxes placed on cigarettes, and indirect taxes to pay the cigarette companies’ lawsuit settlements. Cigarettes cost almost nothing to produce. They used to cost very little to buy. But smokers in NYC now have to pay more than $7 a pack. The tax and settlement money is supposed to pay for health care costs. But everyone knows the money is used for other purposes. As with most other taxes, the money just disappears in to the general fund for what we are told is the general welfare .

What do we call people who work only for someone else? We call them slaves. It has been calculated that the average American taxpayer must now work about a third of every year to pay for the government. Well then, what should we call people who work so much of their lives for someone else? At what point do taxpayers become slaves? .

How are you robbed of your choices? Those who make the laws make your choices. The more laws they make, the fewer choices you have. How many laws did you choose? If you did not choose them for yourself, who chose them for you and for whom were they chosen? At what point should you reject the choices made for you? At what point should you question authority? At what point should you question your assumptions? When is it time for a change?

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