Daylight Robbery
In Daylight Robbery, Dominic Frisby takes you on a whirlwind journey through the history of taxation, from ancient Mesopotamia to the present day.
From the French Revolution to the great wars of the Twentieth Century, and somewhere underneath you will find a tax story. Wars are made possible by taxes.
In a world on the brink of revolution and revolt, Frisby argues governments need to radically change who they tax and how if they are to survive.
Book Excerpts
Tax is power. Whether king, emperor or government, if they lose their tax revenue, they lose their power. This rule has always applied, from the first king of ancient Sumer to the social democracies of today.
Every war, from ancient Mesopotamia to modern Iraq, was paid for by some kind of tax. Taxes make wars possible. If you want to end war, end taxes.
The aim of every conqueror, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon and beyond, was to take control of the tax base : the land, the labour, the produce and the profits. Conquerors plunder and then they tax. ‘ Taxes are the chief business of a conqueror of the world,’ said George Bernard Shaw ’s Caesar.
‘No taxation without representation ’ was the cry of the American revolutionaries. Ruinous taxes levied by the tsar against peasant farmers led to the Russian Revolution. Perhaps most explicitly of all, the Philippine Revolution began with the Cry of Pugad Lawin, exhorting rebels to tear up their tax certificates. From Spartacus to Boudicca to Robin Hood to Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest rebels in history were usually tax rebels. History looks different when viewed through this lens of taxation.
Rulers have a long history of justifying taxes on moral grounds. Former Chancellor George Osborne ’s sugar taxes were introduced not for the good of government coffers, but for the good of your health. French president Emmanuel Macron imposed fuel taxes for the good of the climate. The spin is apparent even in the language of tax – a tax is your ‘ duty ’, your ‘ tribute ’, your ‘ due ’
In 1187 when the great Kurdish leader Saladin annihilated the armies of the Crusaders and took Jerusalem, the Christian cause was shaken to its core. There must be a new crusade, said the kings of England and France, and to pay for it Henry II levied a special tithe, the Saladin tithe. It was a 10% tax on revenues and movable properties, with special exemptions for the ‘ arms, horses and garments of knights ’ and the ‘ horses, books, garments and vestments, and all appurtenances of whatever sort used by clerks in divine service ’. Everyone else paid – though if you joined the crusade you were exempted, which proved an extremely effective recruiting tool.
War Costs Money
The greater the war, the greater the tax burden. The second World War gave the world even higher taxes. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, ‘ War costs money.’
The real cost of war is perpetual debt.
Seeking to indoctrinate people about how to pay their taxes and to reduce public resentment following World War II, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr commissioned Walt Disney to make a film. It was called The New Spirit and Donald Duck was cast as the star.
The US turned to other entertainers in its mission to promote the payment of tax not just as a patriotic duty but also as a joy. Irving Berlin wrote a song, which Gene Autry sang: ‘I Paid My Income Tax Today‘.
Inflation is Taxation by Another Means
Like debt, inflation may not be an official tax, but that does not mean it does not exist. Indeed, it is often deliberately propagated, and its effect is the same : it confiscates wealth from one group and transfers it to another – from the salaried or the saver to the state, from creditor to debtor, from employee to employer. It is ‘ a particularly vicious form of taxation ’, said economist Henry Hazlitt.
Milton Friedman was equally damning: ‘ It is a hidden tax that at first appears painless or even pleasant . . . It is a tax that can be imposed without specific legislation. It is truly taxation without representation.
Frisby claims war is mass murder funded by theft and that conscription is the moral equivalent of kidnapping.
Care to disagree? Then read the book.
Tax reform is one of the few ways by which politicians really can change the world.
How the Book Started
In addition to being an economic writer, Frisby is a stand-up comedian. His book started life in 2016 as a comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival called Let ’s Talk About Tax.
Comedy gave way to a serious endeavor that took years to write.
Overlooked History
There is a tax story , often an overlooked one, somewhere near the heart of almost all of humanity ’s defining events.
British inventor Michael Faraday explained electricity and the discoveries he had made about it to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone.‘
But, after all, what use is it ? ’ Gladstone asked petulantly. Faraday ’s response was immediate: ‘Why, sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax it.
Jesus was only born in Bethlehem because Mary and Joseph were there to pay tax. And in 2017, Microsoft founder Bill Gates declared the robot that takes your job should pay taxes.
Get the book. It’s educational and fun. You will enjoy it.
Mish
I expect to pay taxes….what I object to is paying more than my fair share of taxes.
The people at the top have most of the wealth, and they don’t pay much….nearly half the people at the bottom pay no net tax….the people who make the high earned incomes but lack the tax protections afforded to the very wealthy pay far more proportionally than anyone.
And it bothers me that this impacts the most productive, hard-working part of our society. Anybody trying to better his or her circumstances runs smack dab into this….in order to beat it you do have to learn how to use the best tax reduction strategies that exist….otherwise you get hosed.
Eddie, you are definitely what a cynical person would call a “tax donkey”. People like you do the actual work and make this country function!
Mish is back.
“Frisby claims war is mass murder funded by theft and that conscription is the moral equivalent of kidnapping.”
In most places conscription is difficult to pull off these days. Back in the early days of WWI a good number of men on the fronts had no interest in being there, no animosity towards the grunts on the other side, and should have walked away en mass during the Christmas Truce. Of course when your government drops you in a foreign country surrounded by men with guns who don’t take kindly to AWOL that is easier said than done.
The fact that the Supreme Court didn’t consider the draft “involuntary servitude” (as expressed by the 13th Amendment) shows its willingness to ignore logic in favor of what the other 2 branches of the federal government desire. Thank God we have an all-volunteer armed forces now!
And so it goes. Mish is an anarchist with no sense of community. Taxes need to be collected to pay the bills. The bills are passed in the House and approved by the Senate. If you do not pay the bills you indirectly, unknowingly or intentionally support anarchy – Mish supports anarchy. If you do not agree on what bills are approved then either try to work within the system to elect persons that will spend funds on things you support or move to another country. The third option is to make all voting by for public office only by popular vote so no more 2 Senators per state (must be per capita like the House ), no electoral college and no filibuster – and if you do all of that we can then have a balanced budget amendment. Anything other than that, including the Republican plan/agenda to starve the beast which has been the plan since Reagan, is a recipe for a devaluation of the dollar and anarchy.
Framing this post as a missive for anarchy is odd. Congress doesn’t pay their bills (deficit spending, ballooning debt), are they advocates for anarchy?
Money=Power and going overseas to plunder others using superior arms isn’t a feasible means of gaining it these days. Mish has highlighted a book that views some well-known events through the lens of taxation and found it to be a thought-provoking read.
Lastly, some would say the devaluation of the dollar has continued unabated since about 1913 and through a means that is the opposite of anarchy.
My God, this rant is breathtakingly ignorant…you obviously don’t understand Mish’s point of view at all. Mish is logical and eminently reasonable, and we are all more intelligent for reading him.
Frisby is an interesting character with some good stories like being ordered out of a Church for supporting Brexit and wanting to have some of his video shot there.
“we don’t want your sort round here’ – so much for politicised religion, another con like taxation, worthy of a book.
Render unto Caesar……..
Doesn’t apply so much if it has no emblem on it and is hard to seize.
That might just be a reason for the likes of bitcoin.
Man in Germany had his seized but the authorities don’t have his password – he can access when he’s free. Thats why the likes of Lagarde dislike it.
Coming off the gold standard helped fund wars as it became much easier to issue paper debt. Along with that came inflation etc.
1871 gold standard was suspended in 1914, in UK the lords then lost budget veto which had been a barrier to MMT based on taxation. The following international system was based on central bank gold convertibility for international accounts. 1971 Nixon ended that and we have plain fiat since then with rates converging globally towards zero. The US copied from UK central banking in the 19th century, the UK having issued BoE a monopoly in that century. Earlier the US issued fiat to fund conflicts also, the french and many others. To think that what Powell or other CB heads say is anything more than window dressing is probably a mistake, these are decade or more long directions that are being implemented, all very sequential.
If they were actually taxing us to the extent they are spending we would all be paying much more attention to what’s going on.
You are correct, sir. With the National Debt at $222,000 per taxpayer many of us would be severely pained………. https://www.usdebtclock.org
We are most definitely taking advantage of the “exorbitant privilege” of being the world’s reserve currency. Unfortunately, we will probably ruin ourselves with our free-spending ways
Try this one. Written from references to historcal documents only.
Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War
by Gerry Docherty, James MacGregor
I ordered the book on your rec, Mish….thanks.
Dominic Frisby singing his brexit song link to youtube.com
https://www.google.com/sorry/index?continue=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2zJ8vaB5jo&q=EgQs5Q8wGMLDjIEGIhkA8aeDSyx830Uav-iVQES_Z8oJNr6GNE0wMgFy
War is the health of the State.
War is a racket.
The power to tax is the power to destroy.
The State is stationary banditry.
Of all evils, war is to be the most feared, for within it develops the germ of all other evils.
Somebody posted this on another thread here and I also saw it on another forum I frequent…in both cases it was given as “proof” of how the election was “stolen” from Trump.
Not sure how you get there from the actual article, which imho basically just says there was a large bipartisan group of politically active people who worked hard to make sure Trump couldn’t get away with…well, with exactly what he tried to get away with….which was to use lies and his social media clout to try to overturn the election results.
What’s your takeaway here?
My takeaway? It was a full court blitz with media, Influencers, Far Left, Left plus Corporation heads. The whole kit and kaboodle with no rock left unturned. The result was disappointing with no blue tidal wave and barely over the finish line with a very fragile majority in the House and a split Senate. Long-term I do not expect the opposition will be not as naïve. If this article is true it reinforces the idea that there was a widespread conspiracy directed from above for the benefit of the above. I fear it might be a Pyrrhic victory. Something has been lost if it is viewed that way by enough people. Scepticism can turn into certainty. To do it that way was that way was risky. For Time to reveal it and celebrate it is folly. To paraphrase Talleyrand “It was a mistake”. That’s my take.
To take the other tack. I can easily see how Trump could have cheated his way into four more years if this effort hadn’t been successful. And….none of it was anything the least bit illegal as far as I can see. Mostly I see it as a massive preparation for an election that had to rely on mail-in ballots…..because of COVID….nothing particularly sinister.
Covid looks more to be the excuse rather than the reason. Massive mail-in ballots have been on the Democrat agenda for a long time now. A couple of states in Europe uses them sometimes in some elections but the counterparty is that the the verification process is draconian. For those who are comfortable with a continuation of the Bush and Obama years then this election was a good thing. For those who are not, seeing how this election was “managed”, their reaction would be anger and disgust. Time will tell but the next time the same tricks will not work. Other more advanced techniques will have to be put into place to guarantee that those in power stay in power.
Looking forward to reading Daylight Robbery….but not sure how much I’ll enjoy it. I’m already have a whole lot of resentment around this issue. lol.
Remember Joe Stack. I don’t condone what he did, but I sure understand how he felt.
So…does the book also tell the story of how Milton Friedman sold the idea of income tax withholding to the US under than guise of patriotism, during WWII?
“I was an employee at the Treasury Department. We were in a wartime situation. How do you raise the enormous amount of taxes you need for wartime? We were all in favor of cutting inflation. I wasn’t as sophisticated about how to do it then as I would be now, but there’s no doubt that one of the ways to avoid inflation was to finance as large a fraction of current spending with tax money as possible.
In World War I, a very small fraction of the total war expenditure was financed by taxes, so we had a doubling of prices during the war and after the war. At the outbreak of World War II, the Treasury was determined not to make the same mistake again.
You could not do that during wartime or peacetime without withholding. And so people at the Treasury tax research department, where I was working, investigated various methods of withholding. I was one of the small technical group that worked on developing it.
One of the major opponents of the idea was the IRS. Because every organization knows that the only way you can do anything is the way they’ve always been doing it. This was something new, and they kept telling us how impossible it was. It was a very interesting and very challenging intellectual task.
I played a significant role, no question about it, in introducing withholding. I think it’s a great mistake for peacetime, but in 1941-43, all of us were concentrating on the war.
I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn’t found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now.”
A cautionary tale.
So gun control is really “aimed” at eliminating the ability to stage a tax revolt or election drubbing.
The great equalizer…..maybe taxes or a myriad of other issues.