The Strategy To Serfdom

Serfdom: The State of Being a Serf

Historically serfdom was a big deal from 800 to 1400, or so, in Europe.

"A serf's duties were working on a plot of land, especially during the medieval period when Europe practiced feudalism, when a few lords owned all the land and everyone else had to toil on it. In Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries, large plots of land were ruled by lords who made serfs work the land for the lords’ profit."

Let's translate that to the 2000s.

A serf's duties are working for little or nothing - transition plan to nothing well on its way - in the enterprises of a few obscenely wealthy lords who own everything. In current day America huge pots of money are possessed by a few lords who make serfs work their enterprises for the lords’ profit; and profit can only really be maximized in a wageless society.

But we are not there yet; the proto-serf class still gets "paid".

But "there" can be seen from "here".

Since Reagan, the IRS has been starved to extinction.

The result is that the lords already pay little or no taxes.

The legal snarl that allows that is so complicated that it takes a large and skillful tax enforcement apparatus to keep the lords honest.

Funding to the IRS is basically nonexistent, and its vestiges are being eliminated, so there isn't any such enforcement apparatus.

So the lords, with their legion of tax attorneys and tax accountants, and the legal snarl that is our tax code, do battle each tax year with an agency shrinking into oblivion.

But, since the rest of us can be audited, harassed and indicted by an intelligent algorithm using our easily available earnings records and periodic tax payments, we pay taxes.

The flip of the lords' tax exemptness is the rest of us's tax liabilityness.

And the nearly non-existent IRS can keep track of the rest of us with ease and an algorithm.

The republicans have a reason for this: keeping excess income out of our hands greases the skids on our road to serfdom.

So, 1% of us have 31% of the wealth, and the balance will flow to them when most of the rest of us are serfs and we are working for two meals a day and one side of a twin mattress. 

But more work needs to be done.

And it is being done.

Elected republicans - in half of our states - who stay if office at the pleasure of the lords' campaign contributions - are enthusiastically passing laws to make voting very difficult for most people; or impossible (things like ID cards that require access to transportation and the money to pay for transportation and to pay for the ID, and the free time from earning their pittance to do the travelling and paying, etc. etc. etc.) and by purging their names from voter rolls and disallowing re-enrollment from those so persistent as to try.

And lots of other barricades to the ballot box.

They are doing that work every day.

But, what about the other half of the states where such laws are generally not being enacted, and where, in many cases voting is being made easy?

The lords have that problem covered.

The national republicans have for years been after the Post Office.

The Post Office is a real leak in their plans for the rest of us.

People in a lot of states not controlled by republicans can vote by mail.

That's so easy that even poor people, people without cars, can and do vote.

And they are known to not vote for the lords' best interests.

The republicans, years ago, delivered the coup de gras to the Post Office.

They passed a law that forced the Post Office to pay all retirement and health care obligations in one lump 30 years in advance.

And then, ever since they have railed against the insolvency of the Post Office.

Last time enterprises faced that sort of solvency problem was the banks in 2008, and Congress coughed up a trillion dollars to bail them out.

With the Post Office down but not out the republicans are doing to it the same that they are doing to the IRS.

Starve it out of existence.

Those are the three prongs of the Strategy to Serfdom.