"Spending reductions in the tax code"

A reader who would like to remain anonymous circulated the following email among his friends recently:

Fellow Citizens,

There is an old joke, at least in capitalist circles, which goes: Q: “What is the definition of profit?” A: “The amount of money the government lets you keep.”  The joke’s humor is in the upside-down perspective of how we normally think of profits deriving from the value that is created by the supplier rather than the value that is (or is not) taken away from him.

In his April 12 “Deficit Reduction Speech,” our President offered a substantially less humorous upside-down perspective. He repeatedly featured the peculiar phrase of “spending reductions in the tax code” rather than speaking the unpopular sound bite “higher taxes.”  It’s nothing new to hear the politicians equating specified tax cuts with Government Spending, as they can both have a similar effect on the calculated deficit.  But this new euphemism goes much further: It implies that ALL of citizens’ “after-tax earnings” are Government Spending. Not the equivalent of Government Spending, but literally, by its own definition, direct Government Spending. Ergo, according to the President’s slight-of-tongue paradigm, we all actually get paid by the Government’s tax code, not by our customers or employers. That is, the value we create through our inspiration and perspiration first becomes the bounty of the Government, and then the Government determines our pay through the wages it lets us keep. 

I, for one, reject this attempt to further interject of the State between the links of contribution and compensation.  I reject it because such Statist control can only be achieved through the tyranny of forced coercion, inherently destructive of life, liberty, and property. With his clever oratorical construction, our President has described our Nation as one in which the Government is the master of the people, rather than the people being the master of the Government.  Sometimes, upside-down is not funny at all.