- Candace Caddick
Excerpt from Guidebook about Politics and Taxes
Guidebook to the Future: Practical Advice for a Changing World
The Guidebook to the Future covers the current relationship of elected representatives to the electorate, before talking about how it will change. The archangelic authors also talked about taxes in the same paragraphs because government and taxes are intertwined. I thought today would be a good day to finally put a book excerpt up as an article. Â This book covers a lot of different subjects and the table of contents is here: www.candacecaddick.com/books/guidebook-to-the-future/
Because everything is changing now, the established political systems across the world will also begin to change. Today countries can have populations in the millions with relatively few people in the central governments. Many of the decisions taken by politicians on behalf of local areas can be counter-productive. People are once again in the position of working for others, this time to earn enough money for taxes and it’s very hard to change this situation. Think about whom is taking advantage of your labour and the associated energy of enforced slavery, the unhappiness of slaves and the lack of light present in those who live off the work of others.
In the beginning of civic government men came together to organise services such as schools and fire fighting. These days it’s been forgotten what tax is for or how to use it. Taxes are to pay for services that benefit the whole community such as roads and hospitals. You live in communities of people, send your tax money away to the centre and have little say in how it is spent locally. This isn’t just about taxes; involvement in your own community strengthens it and you stop being a powerless bystander. The community stands a better chance of getting what it needs when local people participate in organising and choosing services.
There are many reasons why this does not happen already, including the fact that you are all so busy that it is a relief to hand any job over to someone else. Your lives are not balanced. We’re talking about working alongside others and taking responsibility for the community and environment you live in. This isn’t about service to others so much as helping yourselves by making local choices, sharing and joining together. You are one soul and every action that brings you closer together is going in the right direction.
In the past you tried different forms of government, and many of you in the West belong to systems where you each vote for someone to represent you in the capital. In democracies you are often represented by one person, and many of these representatives do not fully devote themselves to the electorate. For representatives in many countries it has become a very lucrative career with high rewards. The representative becomes distanced from those who elected them, and most of the time is spent with their new colleagues in the capital and not with the electorate. Developing their own interests and career connections within their new community of elected representatives is normal, and they jostle for position among themselves. They haven’t forgotten their constituencies, but they no longer consort with them. It’s become two-tiered, with the electorate one step further away. Once in power they can be lost to those who elected them.
Today your representatives are the ones who have the greatest influence on how tax money is spent locally. This is one of the main reasons you are represented, to divide up the taxes that were collected. Their own financial interests are tied in with their new position, and their decisions for the rest of you can be based on trade-offs with other representatives. These are some of the conversations we sometimes refer to as taking place behind closed doors. In the end you are told that jobs or money are not coming your way, but you rarely know the real reason why. Politics today, from a dictatorship to democracy exploits the common man in large part due to this central pot of money paid in taxation…
Fortunately this will change, and in some countries is already changing now. Also, Belgium is doing just fine without any elected government at all during the last year.
©Candace Caddick