When you add to the trajectory the energy that comes from the current tax system being an excellent source of power for elected officials, plus the social engineering that it makes possible, it’s going to take an awful lot of energy to turn this boat around and set it on a new course.
There’s plenty of the needed energy available when you consider the number of people who want change, but unless that energy gets channeled it’s just going to waste.
And that waste of lots of energy by lots of people is nothing more than part of the plan to make certain the status quo is safe.
Look at President Reagan to see how difficult the task is going to be to bring about change, any change, in government at this point in our history. No one has gone to Washington in my lifetime with a more earnest desire to reign in the federal government than The Gipper. One of his campaign assurances was that he would oversee the job of getting a handle on the size and grasp of the federal government. Despite his best efforts government was bigger when he left office than when he entered.
A large part of the problem is that the average person is so busy trying to earn a living and take care of his or her family that they are completely unaware of the extent to which government has grown and the grasp it has on every level of our lives. Not just taxes, which have finally gotten high enough that they are impossible to ignore any more, but the thousands of little things that government has assumed responsibility for over the years, one small step at a time.
We are probably at the point where the only thing that’s going to bring about significant change is when the whole system collapses under its own weight. And that time might not be that far away. The surest way to have a system suffer a catastrophic failure is to run it too long at too near its capacity. It’s like tripping, if you walking along slowly you might be able to regain your balance and avoid a bad fall, but if you’re running as fast as you can then a fall is a sure thing.
Yep, I’m afraid we’re about at that point.
On the bright side, though, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who support the existing FairTax - and the congressional sponsorship and grassroots support is growing.