Thou Shalt Fill Out An Exemption Form

Churches don't pay taxes, and there's allegedly a good reason.

So the argument behind this is that if churches paid taxes, then they would be forced into making political statements and supporting the individuals that would offer to lower their taxes. Which means that church and state would no longer be divided.

Which is...patently absurd.

For one thing, the stance of tax exemption creates its own political support. Why would a church ever afford any kind of support to change that? It's a law that is in dire need of re-evaluation, surely.

Or maybe the argument is that they shouldn't have to pay taxes because they shouldn't pay for the fiscal needs of their community because they attend to the spiritual needs of their community. Which means that their priests and clergy and other assorted staff should do it for the sake of the community too, right? SO they shouldn't benefit or be able to claim any money from...oh.

I like the idea of people paying proportionate taxes. Like, it is a proven successful model. Even the most incompetent and buffoonish of governments in most democracies seems to do a slightly better job than individuals would if they paid no taxes but had to provide everything themselves.

It's already reasonably easy for those with means to just...avoid paying taxes if they want to. It's hard to ignore that fact. That's not cool. I suppose that it would be naive of me to think that people who push trickle-down economics would actually willingly let some of their wealth trickle down. Stupid of me.

But if you're fabulously wealthy, AND vaguely religious? ...well you just...sidestep it all.

I can't imagine that there's an army of revenue service people chasing down every rich preacher who claims that their private jet is for congregational or spiritual purposes. Probably too busy writing angry letters when someone misses £10 from their council tax payment.

The thing about taxes is that...when something needs doing for the benefit of everybody, it is easier to draw from a pool that has already been assembled - and spend in a way that (in theory) people qualified to make the decisions have prescribed as best - than it is to just let everyone keep their taxes and hope that they all do the right thing. Most drivers don't know how to resurface a road (though I live on the Isle of Wight so I have doubts about some of the professionals too), most mortals don't know how to spend their money efficiently on shares of medical hardware, and most homeowners don't know how to put in individual flood protection.

We take it for granted. We grumble about the taxes we spend, as we walk on a pavement, over a sewage system, under streetlights, on streets not under several gallons of water.

And then something happens like Harvey.

Not just Harvey obviously. It's the example I am drawing from as it bears relevance to my initial point. Storms, floods, awful shit like it happens all over the world with terrible regularity, and is only getting worse due to man-induced climate change (YES IT IS SCIENCE NO IT IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE). But what you need, when something like that happens, is a large amount of centralised resources with which you can help those locally.

Of course, I have talked about something similar to this before.

Those who have, panic. They want to shore up their investment, their stuff, their things, their resources. They want to make sure the house stays locked so, while they wait it out in their aunt's house in Missouri, they won't have to worry about the silverware being snatched away. Because, you know. When I am drowning, I always go for the silverware.

So it's common for the wealthy to hoist up the ladders and leave everyone else to fend for themselves, and thus worthy of comment and compliment when they don't.

Joel Osteen.

This Tim Allen looking motherfucker.

So not only does this guy run a faith-based scam - as I call all "prosperity churches" and the like, who seem to make those in charge of them very wealthy and not a whole lot of prosperity goes anywhere else. Not only is he made rich essentially through playing shell games with people's beliefs, but he doesn't pay any damn taxes.

Houston gets dumped under enough water to swallow the Alien Mothership from Independence Day - and this guy's massive church just...sits there with the doors locked and bolted, while the city's mosques and other religious institutions immediately offer sanctuary and aid to anyone who can get to them.

Takes this guy three days to help, at all. In that time, even Dumpy Trumpy has managed to put a hand in his pocket, though seemingly unaware that perhaps his cuts on flood protections and other federal investments might make him doing so seem to be two-faced in the extreme.

And Osteen's excuse? Tax-dodging conman Osteen? That preacher who looks a lot like the dude from Home Improvement? He says he didn't open up the church...

...because the city didn't ask him to.

Which is of course why the Good Samaritan was like: fuck this guy by the side of the road, the Pharisees haven't told me to help him.

Which is of course why Jesus didn't feed the five thousand, because he didn't have any official requests from the local government.

Which is why Oscar Schindler didn't save anyone, because there's no way the Moravian protectorate's administrator would have given him permission.

So not only has he taken away people's money, which they may have been taxed on, which could have been allocated to FEMA and other localised measures - nor has he paid any taxes of his own on that money, which again could have gone into protective measures - but this fucking great ugly-ass building that he built with his effectively stolen money didn't even open its doors until the waters had started to subside.

They are shitweasels, people. Shitweasels who don't deserve what they have.

And that's why they should fucking pay tax.

Kraft und Macht, Wille und Geld

(For those of you reaching for Google Translate - the title literally translates as "Force and Power, Will and Money".)

To bring a Sesame Street theme to the blog - something I should perhaps do more often - today's blog is brought to you by the concepts of Will To Power, and Elite Panic, and the number 99.

First, a definition of each of these concepts:

Will To Power is a concept central to Nietzsche's philosophy. It states that the urge and ambition to reach the highest possible position in life, and thus control the environment that one is surrounded by, is the greatest driving force behind human nature.

Elite Panic is a notion I've only come across recently - it is best described by Astra Taylor in an interview with Rebecca Solnit, both fascinating and forward-thinking people:

One of the most interesting ideas in the book [A Paradise Built In Hell, by Solnit] is the concept of “elite panic”—the way that elites, during disasters and their aftermath, imagine that the public is not only in danger but also a source of danger. You show in case after case how elites respond in destructive ways, from withholding essential information, to blocking citizen relief efforts, to protecting property instead of people. As you write in the book, “there are grounds for fear of a coherent insurgent public, not just an overwrought, savage one.”

Having read more than a couple of articles related to the concepts in the book in recent days, I got to thinking about what it means. It does, at this point, bear mention that I have no formal education in any of this stuff. This is all just observation, opinion, and highly based on my own view of the world.

If we take as given that the will to power is indeed the primary driving force behind the human subconscious, then the acquisition of wealth is certainly easily explained as a means to achieve that end. The more currency one has at their disposal, the easier one can influence the world around them - as that world has been informed and constructed by those with a significant amount of currency.

Every stage of wealth obviates one from needing to worry about the concerns of the stage before, from extreme poverty all the way up to the mega-rich; I dare say nobody that lives above the poverty line really needs to worry about clean water, for example, nor would any HNWI (High Net Worth Individual) be troubled by their electricity bill.

The link between acquisition of wealth and one's will to acquire it is, in an anecdotal sense, very real. Popular thought envisages those who are self-made millionaires as being wilful, strong individuals that grasp for what they can and make the best of it. Brad Klontz states in an article here that if one associates money and its gain with evil or amorality, one is less likely to acquire it, simply through the basic psychology of aversion. (Whether or not becoming rich is actually amoral is a blog for another day.)

What this could engender, however, is the outlook that everyone sees the world in a similar way.

We tend to do this, as human beings. Our reference for other people's behaviour and mentality is our own behaviour and mentality. In the same way as how someone's own view of God is often a quite close reflection of their own personality, unless one recognises themselves as flawed, one imagines that all mentally "normal" and healthy people see the world in the same way as they do.

If this is true - this means that wealthy people assume that everyone wants to acquire wealth just as much as they do. Further, assuming the will to power is indeed our driving urge - then our initial assumption is actually true, in a very base way.

Which offers us a basic explanation as to why the wealthy would fear those less wealthy than they are. Of course the poor want the things the rich have. Of course they covet those things. It's what society wants us to do - the society so wonderfully constructed to be a trickle-up economy, so adroitly turned into a system for rewarding the pursuit of currency.

I found it quite hard to track down statistics for just how much money was taken or made via high-level financial fraud and tax evasion last year; also, what actually constitutes such a crime is a fairly muddy subject, as what is morally objectionable (foreclosing on people's homes, absurd rates charged on unscheduled overdrafts) is rarely illegal. A great example of this is the attempted re-branding of tax evasion as "tax efficiency". Tory peer Lord Fink - very appropriate name - even claims that literally everyone does it to some degree, which many families and individuals that try and make ends meet every month will probably find incredulously inaccurate.

Let's be real though. Those HNWIs we talked about earlier, they want to live in gated communities with each other - because while other HNWIs are the kind of people that are more likely to engage in such high-level theft, it's the poor folks that are coming to rob them in more direct crimes. I would be willing to place bets that the amount of money taken in physical theft pales in comparison to the amount taken via financial fraud and tax evasion, but as we all know, perception of crime is not necessarily informed by statistics or reality.

So of course, the elite are going to panic whenever it looks like those below them are getting riled. Lurid pictures of potential rioting and looting were painted during Katrina - pictures that were actually not that accurate. Protests about the unbalanced fiscal state of the world tend to be given very specific treatment in media owned by right-wing individuals and by police forces that are by their very nature right-leaning: downplay them if you can, contain them if you can't, and invalidate them if at all possible. The very reason this happens is because those who own the news media and those who inform the laws upheld by the police are terrified that those poor grubby people with dreadlocks and colourful clothes are coming for their material goods, because if the situation were reversed, it's what they would be doing.

As I have always said - almost every conspiracy theory isn't a conspiracy. The truth of the matter is easily explained, entirely obvious, statistically evident, and worse than the theory in the first place.

The Illuminati isn't a group of cackling evil millionaires that sit around a desk and have a secret handshake. There is no Illuminati. There doesn't need to be. It's the nature of the wealthy to wish to remain wealthy, to wish to increase their wealth, and to protect that wealth from those that would take it. Right or wrong, that's your conspiracy. Simple psychology.

Of course, the only real way to prevent people from wishing to correct a massive gulf between rich and poor (as presented here in the US and here in the UK) is to actually close that gulf somewhat. A decrease of overall poverty, and a subsequent decrease in wealth inequality, would probably go a long way to calming down us angry poor folks. It would also lead to increased spending, healthier economies, stronger growth, greater financial security in the markets, and the easing or curing of several global problems that only a reduction of poverty can provide. Malaria, for example.

Hence the number 99 mentioned at the beginning. If the gap between the 99% and the 1% was reduced, the 100% would have better lives.

If only we had the will to make that change.

Neitzsche talks about Kraft - force - as being something that every being possesses; a drive, an urge to control the environment around it. He talks about Macht - power - as being the proper and thoughtful application of that force in order to effect the changes necessary to achieve that control. In our little discussion, we see wealth, raw currency, as Kraft. It is force. A means to an end. With sufficient Macht, the elite would never need to panic ever again.

But hey...I highly doubt anyone that could begin that particular rich man's revolution reads my humble little blog, eh?