The parable of the tenth man as a metaphor for paying taxes in the United States is inept. First, on statistical grounds it uses numbers that exclude taxes paid most heavily by the middle class and poor - Social Security and sales taxes.

Second, it fails to ask a most important question: who benefits most from government? Is the military really here to defend you - or the trillions of dollars and real estate owned by the wealthy? Does a penniless beggar care if the government is capitalist, socialist, or communist?

A family earning right at the poverty line has little chance of accumulating wealth. They live from paycheck to paycheck. While we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on law enforcement - they're probably living in the worst crime areas. Who are the police protecting?

Is welfare an altruistic program or a means of keeping the peasants from revolting? How many charitable donations would still be given if they weren't tax exempt?

Here's a neat trick: during the Reagan administration I was a married soldier in the army - my family qualified for food stamps. After the big tax cut, my paychecks decreased - even though I'd been promoted. The increases in Social Security taxes outweighed both the higher pay from my promotion and my tax cut - even though my family was living under the poverty level.

I'm especially amused by Libertarian arguments; every piece of land in this country is owned by force or threat of force. When they come to this realization and are willing to hold that *all* land ownership is a crime, we might be able to start talking.


An interesting example of revolution, or killing the tenth man, is Nicaragua. After the Sandinistas took power they almost immediately began using the wealth the country produced, which until then mostly flowed into the bank accounts of a few dozen families, to start building homes, schools, hospitals, and roads - not to mention ending the drug trade. This was a bad example to be setting in the third world -- at least in the eyes of US foreign policy makers. We funded the Contras war, placed economic sanctions on Nicaragua to hinder their economy, illegally mined their harbors, etc., etc.

They took us to the United Nations and World Court, where they won. But we simply disregarded the verdict and continued on our merry way. The brief period of progress for the masses ended when the Sandinistas relinquished power voluntarily and a US backed government resumed control.