Of all the fees, assessments, charges, penalties, taxes, and other little financial ticks that one has to deal with just to get through life, there's this concept of underpayment of estimated tax that I was sent by the comptroller of the state today. Today, February 10, in the middle of tax season, I got sent a nice letter that came in a pink slip (conjuring up bad thoughts right way) for the previous year's assessment, that I need to pay interest for money that I never even had, that was theoretically "theirs" by virtue of taxing me a certain amount, and because THEY didn't withhold enough money from money I made, I need to pay interest on it because technically I'm holding on to the state's money (like I'm manically setting fires around the world and living my best life with this extra money). It's just diabolical logic for the state to make more money, and the more I think about it the more I get upset, as well as subscribe to the theory that organized governments are just organized crime/ gangs but legalized. The whole concept of a sales tax is, when I buy something that I need, the state gets a cut of that purchase. Why? What is that sales tax being used for? I get being taxed for income coming to me so the govenrment can take a cut of it off the top, but sales tax is taking money that's flowing out, I'm not getting any of that.
I've really looked hard at living in states with no income tax, and I've narrowed it down to a few states that MJ would find (barely) acceptable and that I can, you know, find a job in: Texas and Washington state. Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota- yea I get why there's no state tax there. If you think about it from the baseline of starting with no state tax, then each year I live in California and/or other states, I'm paying upwards of 5 digits on tax, just free money I deliver to the state government. Am I really getting compensated for that money through public services? Yes, highways, but they're always crowded. Yes, DMV but they're always mean to me. Yes, fire department but the fires showed public disasters can wipe out your home ASAP.
The concept of interest bugs me too, just the idea of the amount I owe ticking up like a clock each time a new hour strikes makes me lose sleep. It makes my stress levels go up, makes my blood pressure go up just thinking about owing money, kind of like Mr. Beast's challenges where the money count goes up incremenetly. I do NOT want to owe any money to anybody, a lesson American don't really understand otherwise credit cards wouldn't be able to charge an exorbitant TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT INTEREST RATE! Even my current mortgage that I got at the rock-bottom low rates of 2021 right after the pandemic when everything was depressed, I'm still fretting every month about paying that evil line that says "interest" and not "escrow" or "principal." At least I can justify having the 2021 interest rate because it's lower than what I can get through dividends or savings accounts (I get taxed on those by the way), but now with the federal mortgage rates on a 30-year mortgage at 6.833%, not an all-time high but definitely high considering the last decade, and about the rate my first student loan was charged at for law school, I'm not feeling on aking on more debt.
Who created interest? Apparently even ancient civilizations had this concept of interest, so human beings have devised ways to screw other people for thousands of years; it's nothing new. Just like the ancients, if anything, I want OTHER people to be paying ME interest...... which is what the bank (and Robin Hood and other financial institutions do), but of course they're taking your money and ledning it out at a larger interest rate to other people. It's all just a sick game in a world revolving around money. I really feel bad for the people who earn a lot less than I, who have just one stream of income, but so many greedy hands coming to pick at it through interest and other organized means. So I declare interest to be........one of the worst inventions of mankind.
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