Honestly, I wonder now if I can make it in the “real world.” It’s not a matter of working hard.  And even though it pains me to live by someone else’s schedule, I’m certainly able to do it. What I wonder is if I can learn again how to deal with people. Especially people who overshare (do I really need to know about the person to whom a coworker lost her virginity many years ago? About how another coworker commanded her husband to take care of the kids?) and people who expect me to do the same.  There’s a lot to be said for superficial relationships between coworkers.  For pity’s sake, get yourselves a blog, people.

I decided to “go Galt” in February of 2009.  (1, 2) As a small business owner, I was tired of living under an unfavorable tax situation, and heartily tired of the paperwork required by the government to maintain the business.  I was frustrated by the statistic that only 40% of Americans are filling the federal coffers while the other 60% make withdrawals.  I decided I didn’t want to be a forty percenter, and that I would prefer to “hasten the inevitable economic crash” rather than stay on the hamster wheel while the government takes more and more of our money to punish companies for creating jobs and to pay other people to not work.

No job is perfect, but in spite of my dislike for some aspects of owning a small business, I would not have dreamed of giving it up if it weren’t for the annual tax hit we took.   My goal was to reduce our household income to get us right to the line where we’re not taking money out of the system nor living above the 40% line where our income is redistributed to others.

So how’s that working out for me? We’ve had some major changes in our household in the last six months – my mother has moved in with us, since she is now disabled.  We’re adding a mother-in-law suite to the house. With the increased expenses, rather than restart my old business and work at a higher tax rate, I’ve actually taken a part-time job working for someone else.  It’s not exactly a roadside diner, but I’m working far below my capacity – both in ability and earnings – and I’m looking forward to a refund of most of what we’ll pay in taxes next year.

The fact that I’m working for Obama’s nemesis, Rupert Murdoch – mind you, at the very bottom of the food chain at one of his many companies – just makes it sweeter.

Gee, nobody could have predicted these things.  Except, you know, everybody on the right who DID.   And everyone who’s been watching California’s collapse.  Since Congress purposely did not pass a budget before Bush left office – they kept stalling until The One was inugurated – this train wreck is all yours, lefties.  But at least we’re finally going to stop being subjected to the blame-shifting.   Now, what have we learned from all this, boys and girls?  Why, to add more taxes!   I’d sing, “California here we come,” but evidently California is going to come to me.

As to my progress in going Galt, my business income has been reduced by more than half, and I’m still shedding clients. I have about 70 to go; I’ve been dragging my feet because I’m mildy addicted to Mafia Wars and other personal business keeps pulling me away from the tedious process of clearing the server one… client… at.. a… time…  We’ve cut a lot of fat from our budget, and the more I cut, the easier it gets.  I’ll be making my first batch of laundry detergent later this week – I’m enjoying learning to make things I’d previously have bought.  So overall, things are going well, though I’m going to try to pick up the pace on both the income and budget reductions.

[Post title shamelessly stolen from Glenn Reynolds.]

There’s certainly no reason we cannot, as Ghandi suggested, withhold payment of taxes, yet still stay within the law. Just make the decision to earn less. That’s a difficult decision for people to make as it involves a bit of personal sacrifice, but it’s far less sacrifice than the penalties for tax evasion, and it’s more effective.

For conservatives who want to take the fight to the left using the left’s methods, it’s a tailor-made solution. (Which is why leftists scream like banshees and mock those who promote it. They know it will work.) It means taking advantage of the Cloward-Piven tactic of overloading the system until it collapses. The work slowdowns by slaves were a similar form of protest – when the system relies on your productivity, then the failure to be productive will eventually collapse the system. A final example may be found in the Montgomery bus boycott; people made personal sacrifices and worked around every obstacle but they did not give in.

The left’s idea that the nanny state will take care of us all is, to use the word of which they are so fond, unsustainable. It’s unsustainable in any event – it’s never worked before, and it’s not going to work now. This is one area where we can take Vladimir Putin’s word at face value. The Chinese, too, are worried because they know the American left is doing great harm not just to the United States but to the world’s economy. The outcome is not in doubt. The only variable is the speed at which it happens. I hope to hasten the inevitable collapse.

As a practical matter, what can we do?

You don’t need to break the law to give less to government. But if you are willing to consider breaking the law, then you should have no problem considering making a few personal sacrifices which will not put you in jail. As an added benefit, these “sacrifices” often come with great benefits for families that do them.

If you’re sending your children to private school, consider one parent quitting their job and homeschooling the children. You don’t need to be a teacher. There are many great programs available so you do not have to plan a curriculum and schedule. Your children will be freed from busywork and the tyranny of the slowest or least behaved student in the class. When they can learn at their own pace, they learn more.

Look for ways to cut your budget, and then cut your income accordingly. The average family spent approximately one of every three food dollars on meals eaten away from the home in 1997. Imagine the effect on the system if a million families stopped doing that. How much does your family spend on entertainment? Wait until that movie comes out on DVD, or better yet, hits your public library’s shelf. When you rent a movie, watch it with friends so they don’t have to rent it too. Don’t buy a new car. Buy a used car. Whenever possible, barter.

There are a million creative ways you can save money and find ways to survive (and thrive) on less income. And because you are trading money for time, you will have more leisure time available to take advantage of money saving tricks like making your own laundry detergent for a fraction of the cost.

The bottom line is if we are serious about protesting what is happening in our government, then we should be equally serious about making day to day changes in our lives. It lacks the “glamor” of tax evasion but it will be far more effective. We have an opportunity, right now, while the Democrats have control of the White House and Congress, to show how empty and lacking in reality that their big-government promises are. The house of cards is going to fall anyway, but if they fall hard enough, it will be many generations before they are able to muster up the support to try this again.

If you think it’s a good idea to stop paying taxes, then do it by going Galt.

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Added: As a Christian, tax evasion is not even an option. We are required to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.  But in the United States, because we are a federal republic, part of what is Caesar’s is participation in government; taking the time to be informed and involved, and going Galt is a form of that engagement in politics.

Note: Yes, I’m aware that Atlas Shrugged is poorly written. Yes, I’m aware that Rand was a raging athiest who thought people like me are idiots for believing in God. I espouse objectivism from my perspective as a Christian Hedonist. Yes, I’m aware that John Galt created an amazing machine and that the loss to society of me and people like me is nothing compared to how that fictional genius inventor deprived his society of his talents. Yes, I’m aware that we don’t have a large, hidden, gulch to which to relocate and that we will continue to economically interact with society at some level. “Going Galt” is nothing more than verbal shorthand for suggesting that the productive people on whom society depends deprive government of tax revenue in order to starve it.
Cross posted at Hot Air’s Green Room.

No one seems to question that if you want less of something, you tax it. That’s why we have high taxes on cigarettes. Activists of all stripes are open about their desire to make it too expensive to smoke, and politicians agree. It’s for our own good! And if we insist on smoking, well, we’re going to have to be punished with a tax.

So to the left, it’s win – win – win. Higher taxes, more government control over individual behavior, and the health/environut cabal is appeased.  It’s the same for alcohol and every other sin tax.  This is all well known and accepted; I’m really pulling a Captain Obvious to write it out like this.

But it’s obviously not just sin taxes, it’s all taxes.  When we charge people more to earn money via income taxes, regulations, and similar means, history has proved time and again that people earn less money.  Whether that’s by choice, where people like me purposely throttle back our income in order to pay fewer taxes, or by government fiat, where government takes more money from businesses, the bottom line is that productivity goes down and everybody, including the government, gets less money out of the system.

Therefore, there only rational explanation for these taxes is that the goal is not more money for the government.  It’s more control for the government.  The ability to control, not opportunity, but outcome.  That’s the dirty little secret that the media does not publicize, though we are compelled to know about every detail of Republican sex lives each time the opportunity presents itself to discuss it.  Obama said plainly during the election that he intended to punish the productive and a relative handful of people on the right went ballistic over it.  (But what do we know?  We’re racists.)  If a Republican said this, the left would be screaming that he was a power-mad control freak.  Every disingenuous word would be parsed and widely publicized.  No interview would be complete without a reference to this statement.  Oh, and the best part is when he says you can’t take out a credit card from “the bank of China.”  Enjoy:

He’s getting exactly what he wanted – people are making less money.  A falling tide lowers all boats.  How’s that “fairness” working out for you?

I own a (teeny little) web development company and I have a dedicated server to host my client’s websites.  I’m still in the process of moving them off my server and giving those accounts to another company which will take excellent care of them.  This process sucks because I’m doing a lot of unpaid work to get them moved.  And ironically, new requests – from existing and from potential new clients – are coming in nearly daily now.

We’re cutting back on our personal expenditures.  Eating out less, cooking more.  Using Pandora instead of Rhapsody.  It’s spring and the weather is pretty moderate, so I’m keeping the windows open instead of running the air conditioning even though the house is about five degrees warmer than I’d normally keep it.  That sort of thing.  No major sacrifices at this point – just a scaling back, and preparations to scale back still further.

This disengagement isn’t just financial.  I’m a good deal less interested in politics than usual.

I’ve been blogging less and spending more time on devotions – I still have a sense of… well, something.  I’m not feeling particularly apocolyptic, nor do I believe that Obama is the antichrist.  But I do have a sense that now is the time to prepare for big things.  I couldn’t say what those things are… I just have a feeling that now is the time to buckle down, study, and pray.  I have no idea What It All Means.  Take it however you like.  Anybody else feeling the same?

So on behalf of those few of us who still believe in the Land of Opportunity, I beg you and implore you, in the name of our common patriot ancestors who worked so hard and sacrificed so much so that we could become so spoiled and ungrateful: take your 60% of the total income taxes and just go away.Because if you do, then there will no longer be an Enemy for the Left to stick it to. Then, perhaps, the half of the country that pays no income tax might have to put some skin in the game. Then, perhaps, with most of the wealth generation gone we will turn to our community organizers to provide the wealth creation, and the tax dollars, and the innovation. When you have gone the President of the United States, supported by an army of little acorns like Joel Berg, will have to start calling for the rest of us to be taxed more to address the inequality gap.That’s what I want.

Preach it, brother.

And about that “inequality gap” – it’s a load of crap.  The gap between the rich and the poor is shrinking, in terms of consumption.