What will happen to the poor in a free society? They will finally be taken care of. Repealing the income and Social Security taxes will leave a trillion dollars a year in the economy that is currently being sucked out by those taxes. That will buy a job for everyone who can work, and charity for everyone who can’t work.
Social reformers and crime-busters try to explain away the destruction of our freedom and civil liberties by saying these losses are the price we pay to create a better world, a better nation, or a better community. After all, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. But, somehow, it’s always someone else’s eggs that get broken — never theirs. And the omelet never materializes — only cracked shells and broken lives.
You’re free, aren’t you? After all, you get to keep roughly half of what you earn. You get to choose among the products the government has allowed to come on the market. If the government approves, you get to go into business for yourself. You get to own your own home — provided you pay your property taxes and provided the government doesn’t want to take your property for some other purpose. What more could you want?
Is it greedy to want to keep the money you’ve earned — to spend it on your own children, to secure your own future and retirement so you won’t be a burden on others, to buy a home of your own, to provide your family with the things that make life more enjoyable? Or is it greedy to want something for nothing — to want the government to confiscate money from those who have earned it and give it to you or to your pet social project? Greed is wanting the government to force other people to conform to your desires, to outlaw your competitors, to remake the world in your image because you think you know more than everyone else.
Harry Browne
