What is the most popular fairy tale among adults? No, not the one about “I’ll start exercising next Monday,” and not even the one about “we’ll call you back.” The most resilient and beloved fairy tale is the myth of the “fair tax system.”
Every time another politician in an expensive suit (bought with your money, by the way) takes the podium and begins to proclaim: “We will make the rich pay more to help the poor!”, the etatists are selling us the image of a noble Robin Hood. But in reality, we get the Sheriff of Nottingham, who simply shakes the change out of the pockets of the working class.
Let’s look at how this “celebration of justice” works in real life. It is important to understand that you are the one paying for this entire banquet—the very same shrinking and vanishing “middle class.” People who just want to live normally, pay off their mortgage, go on vacation, and provide an education for their children.
How does the state sell us taxes? “Look, that guy in the Maybach! We’ll introduce a progressive scale, a luxury tax, strip him of his wealth, and we’ll all live well!”. Sounds like a great plan, right? But this is where harsh reality kicks in.
The thing is, truly wealthy people don’t receive a salary. They don’t have a pay stub that accountant Marya Ivanovna looks at with a sad sigh while slicing off a third for the state. The fortunes of the rich lie in stocks, trusts, funds, real estate, and clever financial instruments. They don’t need to withdraw millions in cash to buy a yacht. They simply take a bank loan secured by their shares at a ridiculous interest rate. And loans, as we know, are not taxable!
The ultra-wealthy also have something we don’t—entire armies of high-paid lawyers and tax consultants. For them, the tax code is not a noose around the neck, but simply a restaurant menu where one can always find a loophole, a discount, or an offshore zone. They don’t evade taxes, but they optimize them. And they do it brilliantly.
Now let’s return to our middle class. To you, to me, to the guy working as an IT specialist, a doctor, or running a small coffee shop. To the state, we are all ideal dairy cows. We stand in the pen, we can’t run away, and all our incomes are as transparent as a baby’s tear. The state is too lazy and it’s too expensive to chase wild mustangs (billionaires and their lawyers) across the prairies. Why strain yourself if you can just come into the cowshed and take what you want?
Of course, it’s useless for the middle class to complain about why, after all the deductions, VAT in stores, excise taxes on gasoline, and hidden levies from their salary, they are left with nothing. The oligarchs have already transferred their assets to the Cayman Islands. So, you will be the one chipping in for the new curb and the golden toilet brush for the mayor’s office. Nothing personal, just social justice!
That is precisely why the middle class is currently being destroyed worldwide. The state is constantly tightening the screws, inventing new levies, fines, and fees, presenting it under the sauce of “caring for society.” We are sheared so often that we don’t have time to grow our wool back. You strive, you grow as a professional, you take on side jobs, you open a small business, after which you suddenly move into a new tax category. You are now “rich” (in the eyes of the tax office, if you can afford meat every day, you are almost a Rockefeller), and they start milking you with double the intensity.
In the end, what do we have? Taxes are not just robbery (although the phrase “Taxation is theft” will never lose its relevance), but banal injustice. It is a system where the poor depend on handouts, the rich play by their own rules in the VIP room, and the middle class pays for it all, becoming poorer every year while trying to stay afloat. So next time you hear a fairy tale from another etatist about how taxes make society “equal and fair,” just laugh in their face!
