The deadline for filing US federal income tax returns falls (usually) on April 15, a date that’s worked its way into the American vocabulary as “tax day.” That’s really not a very accurate term.

For one thing, most Americans pay all sorts of other taxes (sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes, etc.) all the time. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a tax … and there’s probably a tax on swinging cats, which I recommend against doing for all kinds of reasons other than potential tax implications.

For another, most Americans pay federal income tax year-round through withholding from their paychecks (or quarterly “estimated” payments). April 15 is just the day when the government demands that you do their paperwork for them to make sure they took as much as they wanted to take from you last year.

And even when you’re not paying up front, you’re still getting taxed.

Last year the federal government took $5.2 trillion directly from US taxpayers, but spent $7 trillion. Congress borrowed that extra $1.8 trillion, promising their creditors that, sooner or later, they’ll get the money, plus interest, out of you or your descendants. It’s still tax, just with payment temporarily deferred.

Not all taxes fall on all Americans evenly, of course.

Because federal income taxes are “progressive,” the top 20% of American earners pay 66.1% of federal taxes, while the bottom 20% of earners pay 0.8%.

State and local sales taxes are, for the most part, income-neutral, but the poor end of the spectrum gets hit harder as a practical matter because they spend more of what they earn to get by, while the wealthier save or invest larger percentages of their own incomes.

Social Security taxes? They’re “regressive” because of lifespan — working class black males, who die younger, subsidize the retirements of middle class white women, who live longer.

Speaking of dying younger and living longer, that’s what taxation is really all about: Draining your length and quality of life to keep government going and make it ever more powerful.

It’s no more complicated than that, no matter how much garbage propaganda you’re fed to justify it.

Taxation isn’t about “helping the poor” or “defending the country” or any other supposedly good cause. It’s about taking money out of your pocket (which to some extent means taking food out of your mouth) and putting it into politicians’ hands. That’s all it’s ever been about.

So happy tax day, I guess.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Are The Terminator, The Matrix and other such films entertainment, or are they prophecy? With the fast progress of artificial intelligence over the last few years, that’s become a real question of real concern to real people.

Out at the edges of the opinion bell curve, we have “doomers” on one end and extreme “optimists” on the other.

The former warn us that AI will eventually supersede humankind, quite possibly enslaving, or even exterminating, us because it won’t like us (or maybe just won’t care about us either way) and because it will be able to do whatever it wants with us. In a word (actually a portmanteau), “AIpocalypse.”

The latter predict an era resembling Aaron Bastani’s “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” in which AI increases production efficiency, reduces resource scarcity, and addresses externalities so well that we’re all free to become full-time artists, philosophers, extreme sports practitioners, etc. (or, if we prefer, veg out on the couch 24/7) with our material needs fully provided for absent any effort on our part.

The AIpocalypse sounds pretty scary. Fully Automated Luxury Communism sounds kind of cool, but only if we naively assume that evil human actors won’t find ways to exploit it in service to their desire for power.

In my view, the real AIpocalypse has already arrived. It’s not fully developed, but we’re already seeing it in action.

The real AIpocalypse is a massive decrease in our ability to know what’s true and what isn’t.

Two of the most obvious manifestations:

First, “deepfake” technology that allows bad actors to “show” us events that didn’t actually occur, put words in the mouths of public figures that those public figures never said, etc. That’s already pretty far along. You may have seen such videos hawking “miracle cures” with deepfake material featuring the likes of Tom Hanks and “Dr. Phil.” It’s only going to get worse.

Second, the wave of AI “hallucination” making its way into areas as important as jurisprudence. We’ve seen numerous cases in which lawyers have been caught submitting briefs that cite non-existent court cases. They had AI write the briefs, then inserted them into court proceedings. Their AI “assistants” simply generated fake “case law” supporting a desired outcome. That’s only going to get worse, too.

The problem with those two examples goes beyond immediate effects. The fake material will inevitably produce (probably already HAS produced) “source pollution.”

Suppose you carefully, intentionally avoid AI and its product, for whatever reason. Maybe you distrust its output. Maybe you just prefer to do your own research, and reach your own conclusions, from primary human-created sources.

But how can you know AI-generated content hasn’t previously “polluted” the human-created sources with “facts” that aren’t true?

You read a claim of fact in an op-ed like this one … or in a chemistry textbook.  The source claims to be human-created. It may even run a disclaimer denying that AI was used in its creation.

But what if, somewhere back along the chain of knowledge transmission, someone DID use AI, and a non-fact worked its way into the body of presumptive knowledge?

The problem isn’t new. People have always lied, and often those lies have persisted and spread, becoming “common knowledge” despite being false. AI, linked to a mechanism of near-instantaneous global spread (the Internet), can produce and distribute lies far faster than humans once did by word of mouth or through print on paper.

We may already be past the point where the only way to even semi-reliably establish truth is to consult printed material published prior to 2018.

Or just learn to love living in a “post-truth” age.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Oil Refinery Fires in Tehran, Iran

US president Donald Trump says that his war in Iran — currently in a supposed ceasefire — resulted in “total and complete victory. 100%. No question about it.” The Iranian regime, via a statement from its Supreme National Security Council, also claims “great victory.”

If the war is really over (I’m skeptical), who actually won?

Well, not you.

“You can no more win a war,” said Jeannette Rankin, “than you can win an earthquake.”

Rankin, the first woman ever elected to the US House of Representatives, entered Congress in 1916, just in time to vote against US entry into World War 1. Unseated in 1918, she managed a comeback in 1940, just in time to vote against US entry into World War 2.

We could use a few Jeannette Rankins these days.

Not so much to vote against going to war, though: Congress hasn’t bothered with that formality since 1942, leaving such decisions up to whatever emperor-in-all-but-name happens to occupy the White House and suddenly find himself in need of a distraction from the various domestic problems that presidents always get blamed for (and are sometimes actually to blame for).

The real function of a Jeanette Rankin or her equivalent is to remind us now and then of an immutable and irrefutable truth:

War is always a damaging and destructive thing.

Apart from a few politicians and generals who get to crow about “winning,” and some politically connected profiteers pre-positioned to knock down fat contracts at the expense of taxpayers,  everyone, on all sides, loses.

Some — soldiers and civilian non-combatants alike — lose their lives or end up maimed or orphaned.

Others see their homes destroyed and are forced to flee to hopefully safer locations, sometimes never to return.

Even those far from the front and seemingly safe from shelling, aerial bombardment, or rocket attack find that their paychecks don’t go nearly as far and that some things just aren’t nearly as available at any price as during peacetime. I still have my mother’s World War 2 ration book. Fortunately, Americans haven’t suffered those levels of privation at any time since, but many people, in many places, have seen that and worse.

War may be, as Randolph Bourne said, “the health of the state,” but it’s all down side for regular people who just want to live their lives in peace and prosperity.

Here’s hoping that the Iran earthquake wasn’t just a foreshock, and that the aftershocks are minor. Support peace!

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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