Milton Friedman's greatest regret.
The federal government discovered the perfect crime in 1943: make employers collect taxes before workers ever see their paychecks. You think you earn $60,000 per year, but you actually earn $75,000 and hand over $15,000 to politicians without ever touching it. The psychological difference is enormous.
Before payroll withholding, Americans wrote quarterly checks directly to the Treasury. Picture yourself sitting at your kitchen table, writing a $3,750 check to the IRS every three months. The pain was immediate and visceral. Politicians faced constant pressure to justify every dollar because citizens felt the extraction in real time.
Withholding transforms this concrete loss into an abstract accounting entry. Your employer becomes an unpaid tax collector, and you never experience the actual cost of government. Worse, most people celebrate their tax refunds as government generosity rather than recognizing them as interest-free loans they provided to politicians. The Treasury collects your money throughout the year, spends it immediately, then returns your own cash and receives gratitude.
This system enables the explosion in government spending you witness today. Defense contractors billing $640 for toilet seats, agricultural subsidies for corn syrup, and congressional salaries for 535 people who rarely show up to work. When taxation feels painless, voters stop demanding accountability for how their money gets spent.
Milton Friedman helped design withholding as a wartime emergency measure and later called it his greatest regret. Free market economists recognized that the psychological pain of direct taxation creates political pressure for fiscal restraint. The temporary always becomes permanent in government hands, and the emergency justification disappears while the extraction mechanism remains forever.
Thomas Massie is an absolute legend. He's the only man on Capitol Hill with the integrity and moral fortitude stand up and name the Epstein paedophiles and demand that justice is done.
Thomas Massie says he plans to publicly read the names of Epstein clients before leaving Congress.
If he follows through, Washington is about to enter full panic mode.
A news reporter asked Michael Jordan if he thought the ’90s Bulls could beat LeBron’s Lakers.
MJ: Yes.
Reporter: By how much?
MJ: Two or three points.
Reporter: Why so close?
MJ: Most of us are almost 60 now.
“Consumers don't produce inflation. Producers don't produce inflation. Inflation is produced only by too much government spending and too much government creation of money, and nothing else.”
— Milton Friedman
🚨🚨THIS IS INSANE🚨🚨
Cincinnati #Bengals standout guard Dalton Risner ran a 5K RACE with his wife.
Risner is 6-foot-5 and 315 rounds.
Dalton ran three miles in just 26 minutes.
Offensive lineman are some of the best athletes in the entire world.
🤯
The House passed FISA Section 702 renewal yesterday. I voted NO.
This was a Uni-Party vote in favor of unchecked government surveillance without adequate warrants or accountability.
🔥🚨JUST IN: Los Angeles Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt’s new political ad that he just released is already being hailed as one of the greatest political ad of all time.