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     After all, "income" is a technical legal term referring to profit (1), and the only one accumulating profit from an employed or commissioned worker is the broker (otherwise known as an "employer" or "commissioner") who is selling (offering for trade) liquidity in exchange for labor. The broker’s program is to trade x dollars for (x + y)’s worth of labor delivered in the form of a product or a service, keeping the y as potential profit. The broker does this because they’ve found or devised a way of converting the y component to liquidity that they can retain for their own benefit. I do it because converting my labor into trade tokens (dollars) lets me exchange it for other peoples labor a lot more efficiently than barter, and because tapping into the broker’s package of overall product, marketing, and delivery converts my labor somewhat more efficiently or effectively than I could manage by freelancing and carrying the marketing and delivery burden on my own… enough so as to offset the loss that I absorb in the form of the broker’s cut.

     Everyone will convert labor at different rates, of course; highly experienced or well-trained individuals deliver work-product at a higher volume per unit of time than others. Such things are measured by the replacement or duplicative time requirements of the overall pool of workers. In other words, the amount of labor converted by a surgeon in an hour (presuming the work is diligently and competently performed) is reflective of all the training and experience that lie behind his expertise. If another person were to elect to perform the work on their own, what takes the surgeon an hour to do would require many hours of study and practice by the do-it-yourselfer, which time would establish the value of the work.

     This is not to say that a great deal of effort isn’t devoted to claiming value for work that exceeds its realistic replacement cost-- what is known as rent-seeking by those able to apply government force against their customers through schemes such as professional licensing and other barriers to both competition and direct end-user self-satisfaction are rife and ever-growing. Even an honest vendor will seek to inflate the value of her own product or service through marketing or such tried-and-true guild practices as secret knowledge, specialized nomenclature and tools, and cooperative and mutually beneficial exclusionary agreements with other related vendors.

     Though I have no good to say about the rent-seeking villains, I sympathize somewhat with the others; after all, one’s labor is a finite resource which is further exhausted each and every day whether successfully converted or not and the achievement of high conversion-rate expertise is not within the scope of every worker. Furthermore, the market tends to sort out the value realities of those trading peacefully and honestly, howevermuch they may seek to obscure the true replacement cost of their offerings.

     I hope that everyone will join me in this calling a spade "a spade". The promiscuous use of euphemism, after all, is violent to its immediate objects (the real concept and the receiving communicant), and causes a lot of collateral damage as well by fostering both the habits of imprecision and a tolerance of obfuscation and fraud. The rule of law and the protections of a written Constitution are utterly dependent upon the accuracy and immutability of the language, and frankly, America has a lot of lost ground to recapture in this regard. I think that this is as good a place to start as any.

     © Peter E. Hendrickson

     02/13/02

     P.S. On a completely different subject: Those who advocate or passively abide the growing momentum for implanted ID’s, or even biometrically enhanced identification cards don’t understand (or won’t admit) that such a system would invite or even demand the kidnapping, at best, and more probably, murder of innocent chip or card carriers in order to acquire either the chip itself or the biometric data needed to create a fake card. It certainly won’t stop a suicidal (or even non-suicidal) terrorist identity thief.

     P.P.S. Even as work commences on a luxury palace for its members deep beneath the capital, Congress prepares to vote on Shays-Meehan and McCain-Feingold, measures designed to dramatically reduce, if not eliminate, the influence of the non-professional-political class of society. Once these "soft" money restrictions are in place, the ability of the citizenry to organize and promote a political agenda contrary to, or more nuanced than, that of the main party political machines and the incumbents that they either control or work for will be severely restricted. I dare say that even if every informed and interested constituent in a given pol’s district told him to vote against them the temptation to disregard those instructions and vote for the bills would be great indeed, for once these bills pass, the instructions or ire of involved voters become meaningless, as their ability to persuade the remainder of the constituency to punish, much less influence, the disobedient public servant would be nil. Once these bills pass, the only way for an outsider to influence the outcome of a race is to give money to a machine approved candidate, who becomes the sole arbiter of what issues are in play; what campaign promises are required; and what "mandate" is claimed or must be acknowledged after the election.

     If, as one with conservative or liberal leanings you rightly perceive that your vote is taken for granted now, just wait until you can no longer pay to force the inclusion of a difficult issue in the "debate", and the agenda in the contest is much more firmly controlled by the Republicrats and the Demlicans.

     All of which leaves for another day a discussion of the damage done to the fabric of society by the institutional embrace of so clearly unconstitutional a law…

     (1) In Connor v. U.S., 303 F. Supp. 1187, (1969), the Supreme Court iterated this point with rare and refreshing clarity:

"Whatever may constitute income, therefore, must have the essential feature of gain to the recipient. This was true when the Sixteenth Amendment became effective, it was true at the time of Eisner v. Macomber, supra, it was true under sec. 22(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1938, and it is likewise true under sec. 61(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. If there is no gain there is no income…Congress has taxed income, not compensation". (Emphasis added).

"…it becomes essential to distinguish between what is, and what is not ‘income’…Congress may not, by any definition it may adopt, conclude the matter, since it cannot by legislation alter the Constitution, from which alone it derives its power to legislate, and within whose limitations alone, that power can be lawfully exercised." "...the definition of 'income' approved by this court is: The gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined, provided it be understood to include profits gained through sale or conversion of capital assets."

Furthermore:

"…’income, as used in the statute should be given a meaning so as not to include everything that comes in. The true function of the words ‘gains’ and ‘profits’ is to limit the meaning of the word ‘income’."

"Income within the meaning of the Sixteenth Amendment and the Revenue Act, means ‘gain’…and in such connection ‘Gain’ means profit…proceeding from property, severed from capital, however invested or employed, and coming in, received, or drawn by the taxpayer, for his separate use, benefit and disposal".

"There is a clear distinction between "profit" and "wages" or compensation for labor. Compensation for labor cannot be regarded as profit within the meaning of the law"