The rich are on a Tax Strike

I've made this point many times, but it's time to make it again:

the High and the Mighty, The Gods Who Walk Among Us® are refusing to pay taxes on behalf of the Common Good. Period.

They won't do it, and you can't make them. Nyah, nyah.

Of course, you cannot have a successful society on this basis. Our leaders have been attempting to negotiate a compromise with Our Betters, to no avail. They will not pay to support the Common Good. They will not. They will not. They will not. And nothing we can do can make them. Nothing.

I've pointed out that this was the situation in France when the Nobles refused to be taxed to pay for Louis XV's incessant wars, and told the King to make the Common People pay instead.

The King got all he could out of the Common People before they were completely destitute, but it wasn't enough, and his successor, Louis XVI, had to call the Estates-General to come up with some additional revenues from the Nobles as well as the Common People. They took it upon themselves instead to declare an end to the Ancien Régime, and to separate the heads of any number of Royalty and Nobility from their bodies. As I've said, it didn't end well for Louis and his family, nor for many of the Highest and the Mightiest in the Royaume de France.

We know this to be true in the context of France, and maybe to some extent (who knows) in the odd case of Romanov Russia. Maybe in a few places here and there in Asia, Latin America. Europe. Africa. Now and then, here and there. Tumult and civil unrest appear. "They say they want a Revolution." And any nation worth its salt will put it down. Hard.

Compared to much of the rest of the Western and Near-Eastern Worlds, the United States has almost unimaginably calm in the midst of worst economic catastrophe most Americans have ever experienced. As the Ruling Class consolidates its wealth and position -- in the face of increasing misery for the masses -- the People do not rise up. They protest, yes, and they march and they demonstrate and they blog, but they don't rise up to seriously challenge the Rulers or even to slightly inconvenience them.

We have what must be the most rigidly courteous protest community on the face of the earth.

It is bizarre.

Even the thought of (ew) rudeness makes people take to their fainting couches clutching their pearls. We cannot do that, it would be wrong, and we are better than our opponents!

Bizarre. Telling.

The Gods Who Walk Among Us® have so completely bamboozled the People to believe that their salvation can only come through subservience to those who rule them that the very idea of The Demand (which is a key to any successful action or protest) -- that, for example, the Rich pay at least their fair share of taxes -- is too direct to be considered. The Demand, not "request" or "suggestion," that taxes on the Rich be increased is therefore not made.

And so we're stuck, and we'll stay here until the next collapse, and we'll wonder why this keeps happening, and then it will happen again. Until there is nothing left to collapse, and then it will be time to dust off the tumbrils and oil up the guillotines, and everyone will wonder why nobody predicted it.

Bizarre.