Last week I bought a small can of spray paint. $4.99 the label said. I took the can to the counter and paid for it. I didn't think much about it until I looked at the receipt. The price of the paint was indeed $4.99 but I paid $5.39. Well 39c won't kill me but ...
I started thinking about little taxes. Today taxes are like a spreading virus, they're everywhere. City taxes, State taxes, Federal taxes not just big taxes like property tax and the April 15th variety but the ever increasing small taxes and the micro-taxes that are built into every part of every little thing we buy. These little taxes are relatively painless until we think about them. Man, these slimy politicians even tax death!
How many ways can our government suck blood out of us? Taxes are a lot like small leeches, thousands of them, and leeches go for the blood!
Just a little more revenue ... The leech's mantra is MORE!
I remember a hot humid night in Assam India. We were on a hunt quietly winding through the bush; our guides were barefoot, wearing shorts and tee shirts. I was wearing tennis, tee shirt and long pants. In an hour or so we paused and I noted our guides scraping their legs with small sticks. They were scraping off the ugly leeches they had collected on our hike. I was fascinated, I had never seen leeches, I'm a California boy. These leeches, large and small were ugly, like varicose veins out of control. The guides were scraping them off leaving their lower legs bloody and bleeding.
As I watched, suddenly the thought came to me ... what about my legs? I pulled my pants up and sure enough my legs were loaded with large and small leeches. Leeches I never knew I had, rather painless until ... the flashlight revealed it all. Those slimy leeches were after my blood.
An analogy came to mind.
Little taxes, like leeches, come on so gradually and even painlessly we aren't aware that they're sucking our life blood. The leech starts small, it quietly and persistently starts sucking and then begins growing larger and larger! Yes! Ever larger! (Sound familiar?)
This analogy, as in all analogies, breaks down.
The leech, unlike the government will stop growing and when it's full will drop off. The government leech, well, it will continue growing and develop a life of it's own. And true enough the government does something for all it's blood sucking, however the more it grows the more corrupt, incompetent and cumbersome it gets, that's the very nature of the government leech. There's just something about parasites I don't like.
Could it be that the ultimate end of a parasite is to cripple and destroy it's host?
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