May 19, 2023

“Balance of power” doesn’t mean the bureaucrats on either side of the aisle get to take turns using our tax dollars to enact their prescribed versions of “good policy.” It means a government that is fully accountable to the people therein – a novel idea, we know.

“I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

– Thomas Sowell

In all fairness, taxation isn’t really theft. Ratlike though they are, it’s not like IRS agents are wriggling through the crevices in your house’s foundation each night so they can take your stuff when you aren’t looking. Taxation is actually extortion, because the IRS will send armed men to engage you for not forking over one-third of your income each year. Remember, Jesus only wanted 10% to feed the poor.

We have more respect for street criminals than we do the IRS. When you get right down to it, the junkie who points a sharpened length of rebar at people’s throats is practicing entrepreneurism. It’s a crude form of entrepreneurism, true, but at least they’re self-employed.

Henry Hazlitt Quotes on Economics

“The government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn’t first take from someone else.”

“We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces.”

“Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.”

Government agents, on the other hand, don’t even have that much initiative. They’re dispersing goons to do their dirty work, and they aren’t keeping the fruits of their misdeeds for themselves. They kick it up to Uncle Sam, who in turn gives them back a little sliver – kind of like giving a pig a potato in exchange for digging up a truffle.

Hell, the only difference between the mafia and the government is that the mafia has better tailors.

We know, we know: “But who will build the roads?” Ideally someone who doesn’t also piss away trillions of dollars on foreign aid, foreign wars, elaborate galas, foreign hookers, corporate bailouts, undeserved welfare, and seafood dinners.

“The envious are more likely to be mollified by seeing others deprived of some advantage than by gaining it for themselves. It is not what they lack that chiefly troubles them, but what others have. The envious are not satisfied with equality; they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge.”
– The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt

“The essential function of the State is to maintain peace, justice, law, and order, and to protect the individual citizen against aggression, violence, theft, and fraud.”

Thanks to reader Liberace'

https://blog.libertasbella.com/henry-hazlitt-quotes/?rfsn=6526614.ca4aa6e