The bedroom above your garage isn’t airtight. Your elderly father, who’s getting absent-minded, is living with you. Today, after driving home, he safely parks his car, but forgets to turn off the ignition. Then he closes the garage door.
You’ve had a hard day. So you’re taking an afternoon nap upstairs. While you sleep, you gently breathe the carbon monoxide in the car’s exhaust that has seeped into your bedroom.
When your husband gets home hours later, he hears your dad’s car running in the garage. He turns off the motor and rushes inside and finds you. In a panic, he checks for your pulse — but finds none. Your body is lifeless.
Carbon monoxide can kill you before you experience any symptoms. When you breathe it, there is no choke reflex. If you’re asleep, it doesn’t wake you. It slowly deprives you of oxygen.
Like carbon monoxide, inflation is a silent killer, slowly and almost imperceptibly reducing the purchasing power — the value — of every dollar you earn and spend and save. It’s a hidden tax on your livelihood.
Big Government Democratic and Republican politicians cause inflation by printing dollars to fund each year’s deficit spending. They authorize the Federal Reserve to print currency — out of thin air — which devalues our money.
When the government refrains from printing money, prices stabilize.
But Democratic and Republican politicians want you to believe that inflation is some naturally occurring phenomenon, and that prices always rise, just as summer always follows spring. They refuse to acknowledge that inflation — the ever-increasing prices you must pay for virtually everything you buy — is caused by Democrats and Republicans’ reckless overspending.
Democrats, Republicans and their media allies are perpetrating a massive con on the American people.
By taking your wealth by simply spending more than they have, Democrats and Republicans are levying the “Inflation Tax” on you — while avoiding the usual “choke” reflex of a direct tax increase. When they overspend, there’s no protest against higher taxes. There’s no notice of a tax increase in the morning paper or on the evening news.
That’s why inflation is the carbon monoxide of taxes — the most insidious tax you pay. It’s a hidden tax, a silent tax that depletes the wealth of Americans slowly, silently, year after year.
Just as compound interest multiplies every dollar you save, so, too, the federal government’s year-after-year compounded inflation may well erode 50 percent of the money you’ve saved for your golden years, and 50 percent of the purchasing power — the value — of your retirement income in your 70s, 80s, and beyond.
For millions of seniors, this Inflation Tax could be the difference between a retirement of abundance — or of poverty.
For millions more who will need long-term care, the Inflation Tax could be the difference between living comfortably at home and living in a desolate, understaffed nursing home.
For millions of others, the Inflation Tax could wipe out any inheritance they would leave to their spouse or their children.
After all the miraculous productivity gains created by technology, innovation, and efficiency measures made by workers and entrepreneurs in the last 50 years, working-class Americans today should be sitting pretty, middle-class Americans should be rich, and everybody earning more should be mega-rich. But instead, Democratic and Republican politicians soaked up that wealth with high government spending and high taxes — both of which are direct forms of taxation — along with the silent tax: inflation.
Just as odorless carbon monoxide cuts off oxygen, high government spending cuts into your livelihood by forcing you to pay more for products and services.
Every time Democrats and Republicans pass a budget that exceeds tax revenues, your grocery bill rises. Gone are the days when $50 would buy you enough groceries to fill the trunk of your car.
Every time Democrats and Republicans vote to raise the debt ceiling, your rent goes up. Apartments that rent for $900 a month today went for $300 just two decades ago.
Every time Democrats and Republicans raise spending or take handouts from the federal government (which they do in all 50 states), they’re raising the cost of the next car you buy. The cheapest new car you could buy in 1973 cost $1,995. Today, the cheapest, most bare-bones car on the market costs $12,000.
Every dollar of government overspending equals more Inflation Tax levied on you.
Today, Democratic and Republican politicians routinely pass into law 10-year budgets that are dangerously unbalanced. They’re packed with trillions of dollars in more deficit spending — and more Inflation Tax on you. They’re wiping out your hard-earned savings, setting up millions of Americans to live in poverty, and putting the country on a collision course for economic disaster.
It’s not just federal politicians who are the problem. Whenever local and state politicians raise spending, they’re levying the Inflation Tax on you too.
“But,” you say, “state and local governments can’t print money, so they can’t cause inflation.”
While it’s true that they’re usually required to balance their budgets, state and local politicians get away with overspending just as Congress does because they balance their budgets with multi-billion-dollar federal handouts and bailouts. By colluding with federal politicians, state and local Democrats and Republicans are tapping into the federal government’s inflation gravy train and, in effect, levying the same Inflation Tax on you every time they overspend.
Do you want to stop this madness and force politicians to stop overspending? Do you want to end politicians’ backdoor grab of your wealth?
Do you want your wage increases to be real increases — not just adjustments in your salary to partially offset inflation?
Do you want to secure your family’s future by stabilizing the dollar and the prices you pay?
Would you rather keep the 50 percent of your retirement that inflation will take from you in your lifetime — if we don’t stop it?
Here’s what you can do.
Stop voting for Big Government Democrats and Republicans — who are equally guilty of government overspending. Equally guilty of taxing you both directly and through inflation.
Refuse to vote for any politician — federal, state, or local — who raises government spending or who votes for total government spending that’s higher than tax revenues.
Seek and vote for candidates who will dramatically and immediately cut spending — and preserve your wealth. Vote for candidates who will cut today’s taxes — both direct taxes and the hidden Inflation Tax.
Every time you vote for a Democrat or Republican — more than 99 percent of whom regularly raise the Inflation Tax on you by overspending — you’re aiding and abetting the demise of the American economy.
Refuse to give them your vote!
Don’t buy the lies that these tax-and-spend addicts are your only choice. You may have a small-government, Libertarian candidate on your ballot to vote for instead.
And you always have the option to leave that line on your ballot blank.
If there’s only a Democrat and Republican on your ballot (or another candidate who will raise spending), do not buy the lie that you must vote for one of them. That’s just another manipulation aimed at tricking you into voting for Big Government — and giving them license to raise the Inflation Tax.
Vote for small-government Libertarian candidates who vow to balance the budget immediately. No deficit spending. No more government debt. No more Inflation Tax.
Vote for bold, small-government Libertarians who call for dramatically and immediately slashing government spending.
Vote for small-government Libertarians who will make the federal government small and who will end the Federal Reserve.
And be sure to vote every election — even if you must blank every line on the ballot — until a small-government Libertarian candidate comes along.
This shows that you refuse to give them permission to inflate the dollar and deplete your wealth — and that you stand ready to vote for a small-government candidate in the next election, who will never raise the Inflation Tax.
Your vote for Big Government politicians authorizes high taxes, deficit spending and inflation.
Your vote against Big Government politicians and for small-government Libertarian candidates demands fiscal responsibility. It de-authorizes high taxes, deficit spending, and inflation.
Please tell your friends to do the same. Share this column with the people you know who are concerned about high government spending. Let them know that their financial future depends on them refusing to vote for Big Government and always voting for small government — or blanking the ballot.
The pain of filing taxes may be over for a while. But the insidious, poisonous Inflation Tax seeps into your finances and steals your wealth every day.
Are you ready to stop the silent carbon monoxide of taxes: inflation?
Refuse to vote for Big Government. Vote Libertarian.
