Hot Rod's Guide To Taxes

By Hot Rod 

It's Tax Day again. It's not as exciting as Fri Day like that song because there are no cool black dudes rapping about Tax Day, even though there are literally zillions of thirteen year old girls singing about taxes. 'Boy-oh-boy' my Uncle Barney would say when had to think about grown up things like taxes or giving my mom a ride to the abortion clinic. But the thing is, you see, that without taxes neither abortions or my Uncle Barney would exist. My Uncle Barney is on disability from his pelvis accident, and all abortions are paid for by our tax dollars. Without the federal government demandating abortions, no babies would ever die. Can you even imagine that? Heaven would be such a sad place - with nothing but old people there, wishing there were still abortions so that they'd have babies to play with. I took care of a baby once for three whole days. One of my mom's boyfriends got a free baby through his business (I think he was a blacktopper or a lawyer or something) and gave it to me when hitting it wouldn't stop it from crying. I knew better. I had just the trick - freezie pops. Everybody loves freezie pops, but especially babies because they don't know any better and they think it's ice cream or cigarettes or a margarita. I fed the baby freezie pops and let it sleep in my freezie pop wrapper drawer until my mom took the baby to the zoo. It hasn't come back yet so it must be having a lot of fun. Either that or it got an abortion and went to heaven. I named the baby 'Slayer' and even gave it a Slayer tattoo by taping the cassette cover of 'Reign In Blood' to its diaper. I loved that baby the way a me loves a pet anole. Though I don't love anoles as much when they turn all brown and hollow and don't run around anymore. That's when they go into my anole drawer and I have to save up another three dollars to get a new one.

So yeah, taxes. People don't like 'em but that's only 'cuz they don't understand how money exists. Money isn't worth anything without a government saying it will arrest you if you try to take it from somebody that already owns it . Otherwise the dollar store would have accepted as payment for freezie pops all that confederate money I stole from Uncle Barney. There is nothing to enforce the value of confederate dollars so they're just as worthless as paper. Paper is worthless unless there is someone willing to buy it. And you can't buy anything without money. And money isn't worth anything unless there is a government that controls the exclusive use of legitimate violence and is willing to enforce its worth through legitimate violence via a legal system. I can already hear you asking well, 'what if I trade cigarettes for freezie pops?' and 'how do you know about 'government control of exclusive use of legitimate violence?' The answers are 'that'd be dumb because cigarettes are even better than freezie pops, but property doesn't automatically exist either - think of animals, they have no exclusive property, if they want something they just take it or they attack another animal to get it if they have to - humans have used reason to agree not to attack each other in order for some people to 'own' some 'property' so that others could own other property and everyone could live a more peaceful existence, but without a government that can put someone in jail for attacking you trying to take your property, you are just at the mercy of the wild and gold is worth much less than a very sharp stick; and I don't. Money gets its value from the violent strength of the government enforcing it - explicit strength through military power, and implicit violent power through economic prosperity. Governments can only employ a finite amount of violent strength, there is only one pie (that through globalization has expanded to include the entire global economy but as a developmentally disabled teenager I wont get into that at the moment). So governments need to collect taxes in order to perform functions in the economy. And American government performs functions because we believe that people are created equal. For that to mean anything though we can't just be equal before the law - that's just the explicit agreed-to violent threat - we need to be equal economically as well - to account for the implicit violent threat that is enforced through the law. Economics is an inexact science however, so people cannot be literally equal economically, but our job as a democracy must be to provide as large of a social safety net as possible. It may be attractive to live a rich, luxurious lifestyle, but it is necessarily done so on at the expense of those that are not. It is simply not part of the agreements that make property and money able to exist. If we are all created equal, then we are equally entitled to everything in this world - even though my hair isn't cut evenly like the rich kids' that laugh at me when I talk to myself at the swimming pool, I have the same right to exist as they do. And since I am born into a world society that has propertized, monetized and governed everything already - since I do not have the ability to decide whether or not to be a subject of this global society, I need a guarantee for the most basic aspects of survival and human freedoms. That is what human rights are. That is what taxes do. Since all money is a government creation, taxes, in reality, are a cut to the largest entitlement program in existence.

Gosh, I think I need a margarita after all that. I wish this margarita bottle I got at the dollar store made me drunk like beer does. I think I just have to drink a real lot, like 10 gallons or something. Actually, I just wish my mom would buy me some beer. But she hasn't done that since she bought me a forty ounce bottle of Icehouse and I tried to poop on the neighbor's front door as a prank. I really just pooped in the toilet and fell asleep in the bathroom with a lit cigarette that I dropped on the floor and burnt a hole in the linoleum. That actually sounds kind of fun instead. Well, I'm off to fall asleep on the bathroom floor with a lit cigarette. But YOU remember to pay your taxes. Or else you're a dick and you'll get eaten by a lion.