America the Unfree

by Paul Craig Roberts

The Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal´s tenth annual Index of
Economic Freedom pulls the wool over our eyes. The deception is unintentional
and arises from a fatal flaw in the index.

The index delivers the comforting conclusion that the US is the 10th most free
country, far ahead of 155th ranked North Korea. However, the index ignores the
simple truth that people who do not own the product of their labor are not
free. People subject to an income tax do not own the product of their labor.

Our Founding Fathers understood this. Indeed, historically the very definition
of freedom has been self-ownership. Serfs and slaves are not free, because
they do not own their labor.

Any American who thinks he owns his labor can test the proposition by refusing
to pay his income tax. He will quickly discover that he is not a free person.

The Heritage index is ahistorical. It is blind to the enormous loss of freedom
in the 20th century, especially in the US and the UK. It takes as its starting
point the re-enserfment of populations and predicates a "freedom" index on
unfree labor.

This extraordinary failing reduces a valuable study to a propaganda device.

Compare an American taxpayer´s situation today with that of a 19th century
American slave. Not all slaves worked on cotton plantations. Some with
marketable skills were leased to businesses or released to labor markets,
where they worked for money wages. Just like the wages of today´s taxpayer, a
portion of the slave´s money wages was withheld. In those days the private
owner, not the government, received the withheld portion of the slave´s wages.

Slaves in that situation were as free as today´s American taxpayer to choose
their housing from the available stock, purchase their food and clothing, and
entertain themselves.

In fact, they were freer than today´s American taxpayer. By hard work and
thrift, they could save enough to purchase their freedom.

No American today can purchase his freedom from the IRS.

Slaves could also run away. Today, Americans who run away are pursued to the
far ends of the earth. Indeed, the IRS can assert its ownership rights for
years after an American gives up his citizenship and becomes a citizen of a
different country. The IRS need only claim that the former American gave up
his citizenship for tax reasons.

I challenge Heritage and the Wall Street Journal to initiate a broader index
of freedom, one that not only includes self-ownership, but also the Bill of
Rights that defines our civil liberties and the 14th Amendment that insists on
equality before the law.

Such an index would reveal that the US is a stunningly unfree country. The
lowest federal tax rate in combination with the Social Security and Medicare
tax confers serf status upon lower income groups. The top tax rate, federal
and state, converts successful Americans into government´s slaves.

The protective principles in law that ensure our civil liberties - no crime
without intent, no bills of attainder, no retroactive law, the attorney-client
privilege, no self-incrimination - have been eroded beyond recognition. Wars
against the Mafia, drug dealers, child abusers, and terrorists - accused whose
convictions are thought necessary at all costs - have eviscerated the Bill of
Rights. Today not even multi-billionaires can fight off prosecutorial
frame-ups.

Americans believe that they are free until they encounter the "justice"
system, at which time they learn that they are as helpless as medieval serfs.

The "civil rights revolution" destroyed equality before the law. Today rights
are race- and gender-based. We have resurrected the status-based rights of
feudalism. The new privileges belong to "preferred minorities" rather than
noble families.

Neoconservative delusion that America has a monopoly on virtue and the right
to impose American values on the world prevents a realistic look at the
deplorable state of freedom in America today. It is a paradox that a country
that has abandoned freedom and re-enserfed its population sees itself as role
model for the world.

January 28, 2004

Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for
Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former
associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary
of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Copyright © 2004 Creators Syndicate

Paul Craig