The wealthiest man in America gave away dimes. His credo was, “I believe in the dignity of labor, whether by head or hand, that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man opportunity to make a living.” John D. Rockefeller’s words are immortalized in a magnificent building complex that bears his name in the center of Manhattan.
Rockefeller lived in an age if immigration. People came to America to find work, establish a home for themselves and their families and to contribute to society. Like the Rockefellers and a host of industrialists and investors in the development of the United States, we are all immigrants. If it is pushed back far enough into history even native Americans were not native to the Americas. Long ago they migrated here across a land bridge that connected Siberia to the northern reaches of the continent.
That said, a rather startling set of statistics came across my computer the other day. It was one of those unsolicited circulars that gets sent and resent, begun by some dissatisfied person that gathers them to make a point. The statistics offered that there are 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. It went on to postulate that there are 3 million crack and drug addicts, 42 million unemployed on food stamps and 2 million incarcerated in 243 prisons.
Many politicians hoping to score with voters rant and rave about the “rich.” Rich and poor become the dichotomy in election rhetoric. Politicians try to find a scapegoat. Some class of people that can be picked on as a class then pointed to as the root of problems caused by incompetent management of the nation and its resources.
Rich can be defined as someone on welfare. The benefit package includes free housing, free food, free medical, hospital, dental and total health care provider services anywhere they choose and in any hospital of their choice. It includes free transportation, free gift vouchers, no taxes to pay and no responsibility. For a tax paying ‘rich’ citizen, after income taxes, all of those free benefits would add up to a big wad of money.
Everyone has been in line behind a person paying in food stamps. The system has now been modified to pre-paid credit cards so no dignity is lost in the transaction. The shopping cart is filled to the brim with succulent foods. It also contains alcoholic products and cigarettes. The clerk must take cash for these commodities and does from an ample supply quickly produced from the welfare recipient’s pocket. Where do the wads of cash come from? How about the gold chains, hot cars and garish tattoos?
Some sell drugs, some sell their food stamps at discounts and use the money to buy alcohol or drugs, some work off the books. American millionaires of the last century were called Robber Barons. They used labor to build their empires. The cheapest labor available. Immigrant labor. Every country in turn sent their laborers to America. Slavery of Indians didn’t work out. They died off and were subject to white man’s diseases. Black labor came in the form of slaves that were more robust in the building process. After the Civil War and into the 20th Century laborers came from Ireland, Italy, Germany, Russia, China. People looking for work. Today immigrant labor comes from Central and South America.
Agricultural workers that have no legal status work farms and fields of Texas, Florida the mid-west, everywhere crops require tending and harvesting. Gang bosses bring them across, hire them and exploit them. Illegal immigrant labor is still in demand although crack downs on employers in the wake of anti-immigrant sentiment has caused rethinking in the way the labor force in agriculture is handled. Soon, therefore, all produce will be imported.
There is an underground society of laborers. The antiquated income tax and social security system in the U.S. makes it impossible for businesses to compete with foreign imports. The U.S. labor force, in contrast to foreign laborers, is not as efficiently cost effective.
The result is that “Made in the U.S.,” is an endangered species and may never be viable again. After World War II Japan was restarted with manufacturing as America helped reconstruction. The Japanese would buy shiploads of scrap metal and turn it into manufactured goods for export. The joke at the time was, “The Japanese buy scrap here and ship it back the same way.”
No one can doubt the high quality of Japanese manufactured goods today. Many other nations have been sought out for quality manufacturing at low cost. China is one and of course Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore and India are others. Many of these countries produce English speakers. The new labor wrinkle is to employ them at the other end of toll-free telephone lines to handle airline reservations, computer technical questions, credit card and bank transactions.
There are millions of people in the U.S. that work off the books. They take cash for their services. No sales tax is paid nor collected, no income tax or social security taxes are paid on the transactions and no recourse is had by government.
Government has become like the Godfather, the villain dipping its beak into the pockets of working people. People resist and find ways around the onerous and complicated burdens put on them by a government that is so saddled with debt and incompetence in a failing economy that no solution is in sight.
Off the books workers are in every field and in every dimension of life in America. Yes, some of them are illegal immigrants. They work cheaply for cash. Most are respectable business people that just cannot make it if every dollar must be divided with all the taxes inherent with federal, state, local and business taxes, fees and assessments.
It is often hard to fathom how small retail businesses survive in the U.S. today. High rents, high taxes, high utility and telephone bills and insurance make their ability to turn a profit a hurdle. Many Americans turn to service businesses to survive. They run pool services, train horses, walk and wash dogs, do handy work. All cash, all unreported and thus untaxed.
Businesses have huge U.S. Labor Department posters they must put up announcing employee’s rights and minimum wages. Employers must pay all manner of taxes for their employees’ unemployment, disability and other mandates for health and safety. Bookkeeping becomes a costly nightmare. With it all government complains the social security system is failing. Why?
Here’s one example. A family adopted a boy. The family made $1.5 million in property sales profit thus were wealthy. The boy developed a mental disease diagnosed as schizophrenia. They brought their adopted son to the U.S. and enrolled him on the disability program under Social Security. “He’s taken care of for life. He gets food stamps, medical, living allowance for rent. He’s set,” the mother said. Set he is as a perpetual burden on U.S. taxpayers and a Social Security system being used not for retirement by people that paid into it but for support of those that never did and never will. I should add that the mother sells stuff off the books via the Internet.
Another simple example is that of a restaurant manager and waiter. He rakes in tips as cash but is, so far as government is concerned, under the poverty level. This ‘poor person’ is thus entitled to a medical program that insures him and other welfare benefits. He is active in politics and is a big shot in a political campaign for this year’s elections. He campaigns and votes for the party that panders to his off the books ‘poverty.’
What do we do about this? Nothing. There is nothing we can do. Already our every move in the U.S. is monitored by hidden video surveillance cameras, government and private. Our private affairs appear on computer records and our livelihood is taxed in ways only a genius can figure out looking at a telephone or utility bill. The ‘we’ here are those that support the burden of those impoverished millions working off the books.
Well there is one way to fix it of course. Eliminate social security for other than retirement. Change the income tax system. It is archaic and unwieldy at best. Many have oft-suggested a national sales tax. A percentage of what is bought goes to run government. Of course trimming government waste and spending has never worked because government is like the Big Blob. It grows and feeds upon itself. Sounds like government is working off the books as well.
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Note: The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and are not necessarily representative of Epoch Times.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Christopher Fine investigated government activities around the world while attached to the U.S. State Department’s Inspector General’s Office. He served in many posts including Special Counsel to U.S. Senate Investigating Committee and Senior Assistant District Attorney in New York County.