It is a warm late summer day. Not a cloud in the sky. A young single mother of two walks out of her office building and down to the local bank branch to cash her pay check. She cashes her check, safely tucks the money into her wallet, and heads to her car. She is thinking about the yearly fall school shopping she and her two young children are to take the following day. But she is stopped on the way by a robber. This person forcefully reachs into her purse and takes her wallet. They pull out all the bills and set the wallet on the hood of her car as they walk away. The young women cries in desperation “Please give me back my money. That is half my months pay. My kids and I need that to live on.”

There should be laws written to make that action illegal. There should be police there to prevent the crime, and if that cannot be done, then apprehend the perpetrator. There should be judges there to hand down harsh sentences as punishment, so harsh as to deter anybody from doing a heinous act like this ever again!

Luckily we do have some laws written that do make the above a crime, police to enforce them, and judges to hand down the sentences. Unfortunately we also have some laws written that make the above legal. The legal versions are just handled a bit differently, but the outcome isn’t any better. In fact far worse. The legal versions are where the governement takes half a person’s income through taxation.

The above summer day could have been written with innocent bystanders jumping in to save the day by forcefully getting the wallet away from the robber and subduing the villan until the police arrived. But when the money was taken from the young vulnerable mother of two by the government, the bystands just stood there and watched it happening. In fact, editted for today’s America and many of those bystanders would be cheering the act of forcefully taking the money and chanting “Take more! That isn’t enough.” And after the money was taken, they would have walked up to those that took it and asked for their “fair share.” In today’s America, the bystanders are no longer innocent, but instead they are complicit because they take these tax dollars in the form of programs funded by these actions.

Which version is scarier? The latter by far. The lone unlawful criminal doing a single random act of theft is just that, a single incident. We have systems in place to catch and punish this behavior to teach this person, and others, not to act this way. If they continue with such behavior we remove them from society for long periods of time to protect ourselves, our wallets, and even our children. This nightmare will most likely only be experienced once. With the government punitive taxation version of the story, the nightmare is reoccurring. It happens this month. Again next month. Again the month after that. So your dreams are haunted night after night. You think about the school clothes you wanted to buy your kids but couldn’t. You dream about the lunches you wanted to buy them but couldn’t. You have nightmares about putting them through college and wake up screaming, in a cold sweat. Then, not being able to get back to sleep, you weep because you realize there are so many that ask the government to take a “fair share.”