Owning it All
I remember riding in my best friend’s car one day years ago. We found ourselves in the most modest of neighbors: white doesn’t even begin to describe it. The street a smooth and wide surface that made even his old wheels sound reliable. The homes, two stories and big windows, shining back on us the sun light which crept over the tall oaks that dotted their green landscapes. Suburban America…the living and breathing dream that we all were enveloped in from the day we were born into this providential red, white, and blue land. It was nice…
My best friend and I sat silent, as best friends are able to do. Both taking in the sights and listening to the sweet whisper of the American Dream within our consciousness. He looked over at me and said, “Ya know…no one owns any of this.”
And in the most amazing way, he would go on to change my life.
He went on to tell me, in the most centered and even voice I had ever heard from him, that no one really owns anything. Looking over his steering arm, he explained that people were foolish to believe themselves to have any real private property rights in America. I listened without saying a word…
People do not own their homes, the bank does. And they allow you to live there while you promise to pay them back. The very money that the bank lent you to “buy” your home was borrowed from a regional bank who borrowed it from the Federal Reserve who in turn created it out of thin air. A system of debt…overwhelming and intrusive. And the bottom pawn, the American consumer, comes out of this tunnel of shit and anoints himself “home owner,” king of the Castle and all Creation. He trailed off softly, “No one owns anything…”
I looked at every home, the rows and rows of Castles, and I finally broke my silence. I told him that he was right, but some people do pay it off–some people truly do own their homes. He laughed, as he is prone to do, and asked me what I thought property tax truly was. Before I could answer he erupted, losing the even tone he had previously held. He told me that property tax was nothing more than rent to the Great Landowner, that every year we pay the government for the right to use this land. I agreed, but incompletely. I argued that, yes, while it is reminiscent of rent the government does not have control over your private property like a land owner.
“Private property?!” he seemed to say, quite amused. You see, he was right. The government was the Great Landowner and our property tax are nothing more than our rent. Should the government choose to build a public work or bless a private party to build an “economically advantageous” establish, they can and will take your home. If you own something it cannot be taken away, and in America you pay rent and when the curtain calls, you will lose everything.
That conversation changed a lot of my perspectives on the American Dream. I realized how completely phony it was. How it exists to create the illusion of success and progress, but does not deliver and never could. Even our wages, the fruits of our tireless labors, are the property of the government. The Sixteenth Amendment created an unapportioned tax on our income, which means that the government can lawfully take one-hundred percent of it. You are not taxed at thirty percent. You are merely allowed to keep seventy percent of it. You do not even own the money you make.
The entire system is fraudulent. The entire dream is bankrupt.
Owning it all.
Owning nothing at all.
The truth is we are slaves. You are a slave–a wage slave who rents his time and returns to “his” mortgaged home with what little money the government has allowed you to keep. I am a slave–a cog in the red, white, and blue plantation. I return to my rented apartment, upon rented land, with what little money the government has allowed me to keep.
My best friend, possessor of the humblest of ideas, changed my life. I no longer see Castles and small kings, but towers in a system of illusion. A fleeting dream we all wish to believe…a reverberating chorus that whispers so very softly, “We own it all…”
And then one day you wake up, owning nothing, nothing at all…
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