She's an outdoor survivalist, and promotes hunting gear and outdoor survival topics. I guess this all stems from her stint a few years ago on a Cable TV program called, Naked and Afraid, where contestants try to survive out in the wild with no clothes and just a knife or something like that for a couple of weeks. I never watched it but I have heard of it. I'm sure episodes could be found on the internet somewhere, if one really wanted to watch something like that. I have no interest. But moving on.

One of her latest videos got my attention when she started describing all of the different taxes Europeans have to pay these days. Like Europe, each American state has it's own tax structure, just like every country does. Then there are the federal taxes. In Europe, the main one is this VAT rate that each country sets for all consumers. It's pretty high. On average, it runs around a 20 to 25 percent tax rate on everything European consumers buy. In some EU countries, it's less but they are just a small handful.

Since I want to sell my book in the EU, I had to open a VAT tax account in Ireland at the start of this year, when I expanded my online store in this website. So anyone in the EU who buys my book or my son's poetry book directly from my store, will have to pay the VAT rate based on where I ship the book to in the EU, and that money goes to my VAT tax account in Ireland, where I have to give them that tax at the end of every quarter, if I collect any.

Here in the North America, it's different. As I said earlier, each state has it's own tax structure. And this applies to Canadians as well. Each province has their own tax rates that would apply to direct sales, if someone in Canada were to buy a book.

I think I have my store set up to automatically calculate those taxes but I am depending on people buying a book to find out for sure. I hope I have it set up right.

But to taxes in general. We all know we have to pay taxes, period. That's as much a fact of life as eating and breathing. Unless you live by your self on a deserted island somewhere. Which I don't recommend that for any lengthy period of time. That lifestyle is not conducive to any longevity. I have been to quite a few south Pacific islands in my much younger days and they were not places I would ever want to live for more than a few days at most. I don't imagine any other small islands with no people on them are that much different. The only thing, as it pertains to this blog post, is that you don't have to pay any taxes because you would be the sole member of the government, such as it would be.

In the real world, we pay lots of taxes that are supposed to be used for the common good of the people. You know, things like local infrastructure building and maintenance, public schools, and so much more. But as we see these days, most of that money seems to end up in the hands of the oligarchs like Elon Musk, by way of the politicians we elected to represent us and manage that tax money for us wisely.

The only people benefiting from all of that are the corporate owners and CEO's and the politicians, who get their cut off the top for funnelling all that money into these private entities. I have an article from Chris Armitage's Substack, The Existential Republic, that details how our tax money could be relocated into public entities that use that money for what it's intended for, while still making a profit for the states and local municipalities that control them. I will post a link to it at the bottom of this post. It's not paywalled, so you can read it for yourself and decide if that's something better than the system we in the U.S. currently have.

I'm all for it. In the United States, the system of governance is so broken right now, I am of the opinion that only a major political upheaval will bring about positive change at this point. When I say major political upheaval, I'm talking about another revolution by the people to topple the current government and institute something along the lines that's outlined in The Existential Republic. A government for the people (all of them equally), by the people (with a lot more guardrails to prevent the level of corruption we see now), of the people (with a lot more state laws preventing outside and internal election interference).

If we the people don't do something very radical pretty soon, the oligarchs will win and this democratic republic will be lost to the ultra wealthy corporate owners. The constitution will become just another historical document in a museum in Washington somewhere, lost to time. We're almost there now.

My podcast from last week was mostly about the corruption and draconian immigration policies now being carried out in the United States under Trump's second presidency. What a lot of people don't understand, is that these policies are not new. Just more brutal because of the internet and instant video production on the newer smart phones now.

Ever since the end of WWII, the United States has had different presidents who decided to crack down on undocumented Latino immigrants and others. Some were outwardly cruel from the start, such as the roundup of millions of Mexicans during President Eisenhower's presidency during the 1950's. But every president since George Washington has gone after large groups of peoples declaring them enemies of the state and removed them any way they could.

Most of us are aware of the genocide carried out in North America against the native Americans starting with the first English colonists in Jamestown, Virginia and Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. President Andrew Jackson, of the War of 1812 fame, was one of the first, and blatantly racist president the relatively still new United States had at the time, but he wasn't the last by any means. So you can imagine that if you have a very publicly racist president, a lot of the politicians in his congress and courts were also very racist. Remember, by this time in U.S. history, African slavery was nearly at its height in U.S. south eastern culture. And out west, the Mexicans and other Latinos were also being enslaved by other means.