If we withhold payment to the IRS there are no real options besides paying or going to jail right? How much could the government collect if they removed the threat of jail time and made paying taxes voluntary? I would guess "zero" but, considering how many folks I saw blindly following official decrees the last 5 years I'm not so sure any more.
The government has shown us many, many times that they don't actually "need" our tax money anyway. Anything the government "needs" that isn't covered by tax receipts is paid for using newly printed dollars.
Isn't it amusing then to see American citizens angry that "their" tax dollars were used to teach Pakistani transvestites how to correctly use condoms? Who ever gave Americans the impression they had any say whatsoever on how the government spends tax money they forcibly removed under threat of violence?
Obviously, I do not recommend not paying your taxes. Thankfully, it's perfectly legal (for now) to question why we are paying them which is to say that we are still "allowed" to complain as long as we comply.
For me, doing my taxes, collecting all my documents, paying my bookkeeper / accountant and spending most of this month calculating the minimum of extorsion dollars required to avoid jail time has become psychological torture as I watch those who take my money under threat use it for purposes that make my head explode.
The great "unravelling" has begun and there will me much more to come.
A few weeks ago I wrote "get ready for disruption" and this is what I meant without knowing all the particulars. It has been obvious to me how unsustainable the situation was and continues to be. This reckoning caused by DOGE revelations is necessary and good but it will be hugely disruptive short term.
Most of the problems we face were already "baked in the cake" and manifest well before now however they were being actively hidden and covered up using the US reporting agencies like the BLS. I was warning late last year that the Biden administration had been lying to the country about the actual condition of the economy and was planning to dump the actual (really bad) data on Trump's lap, and here we go!
We are going to have a recession this year according to the actual data.
“We are seeing a recession in 2025. The rest of the globe is already starting to roll over. It’s going to be a worldwide recession. There is going to be a mini housing crisis. Housing has been stagnant for the better part of the year. There is no transaction volume, and nobody can afford homes. We are hitting the 18-year housing cycle. The last housing cycle was in 2007, and you add 18 years and you get 2025…
The economy for the middle-class is going down. . . . As time goes on, we are going to see GDP numbers go lower and lower and lower. . . . It’s kind of a perfect storm for the Trump Administration. There is no way to avoid the pain.”
The inflation picture is already having an adverse effect on small business owners who are struggling to stay above water:
"Slaughter’s team last increased prices in October 2023 due to inflation. “We’re trying to do everything we can to not raise our prices. No one wants to go into a breakfast place and have to pay $25,”
"While Americans thought they were saving for retirement, the government was spending the money. When the government “guarantees” a pension fund, they just add some more paper IOUs. Any default or dollar devaluation will devastate retirees."
2025 is going to be a very interesting year my dear friends! A perfect storm of lower demand, higher prices and stagnating incomes is beginning; the destruction of asset values will be epic. The best strategy to survive and thrive is to protect the value of your rapidly depreciating dollars by putting them into value-stable assets like Precious metals which can be converted easily into cash or business inventory that can be sold. I suggest we play the hand we're dealt and embrace the challenge of navigating successfully the white-water economy now developing. There's no question in my humble opinion that the ripple effects of all the disruption in payments to and from the DOGE targets like, USAID for example, are only just beginning; it will take time for those effects to show up in unknown sectors since a lot of that money wasn't being followed at all.
Stay tuned, I'm watching and reporting the things I see and hear as I speak with business owners across America about their capital needs.
Here are some interesting links I've been following:
"Like it or not, a major reset is coming. It makes little difference who won the election, the incoming administration must fix the sins of the past caused by the entire political class."
"For example, the USAID spending millions to prop up leftist propaganda machines like Politico is quite the eye opener, but what about the billions of dollars that went into ESG venture capital projects to fund dozens if not hundreds of liberal online media outlets, movies, TV shows, video games, woke advertising, etc."
“If the Fed cuts interest rates too early, it increases the likelihood that we will see a repeat of the 1970s. The Fed has no other options than to keep interest rates higher for longer,” Slok said.
