A Day in the Life of the Average Joe Citizen
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The following is a hypothetical scenario that is presented here as one way to answer Shane Radliff’s challenge for the October 25th broadcast of LUA Radio on the Freedom Phalanx Radio Network, which is, from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep, how much is the government involved in your life during the course of a normal day?
By: Kyle Rearden
October 23rd, 2015
Waking up from my slumber, I find myself at home, which has been zoned as being residential by the municipal legislature where I live. Blinking my eyes, I’d prefer to stay in bed, yet if I don’t get out of bed, how will I afford to pay my annual property taxes? As I stagger out of bed, I head to the kitchen to grab a glass and fill it with water by turning on the tap, which provides such a life-sustaining liquid from a corporation that enjoys a “public-private partnership” with the municipality.
Once I’ve showered, dressed, and ate, I grab my car keys and drive right smack into morning rush hour traffic on the badly designed government roads. En route, I drop my children off at the nearest public school, which is funded by those same property taxes I am worried about paying. Arriving slightly late into the workplace, I settle in at my desk, and then begin sifting through all the paperwork generated by the business “regulations” imposed by the administrative agency tasked with “regulating” my occupational livelihood.
Throughout the workday, I consult with my employer’s attorney, who is kept on retainer in order to avoid any potential legal entanglements in court that might end up reducing the company’s bottom line, and likely my job along with it. I pay for my lunch using American dollars, which are issued by the Federal Reserve Bank to the national United States government, at interest. During lunch, I think about calling my parents in order to discuss a sensitive personal matter, but I choose to delay that conversation until I visit them next week, since it is common knowledge that the entire telephonic infrastructure is being dragnet wiretapped.
Since I got all my assigned work done rather quickly, I ask my boss if I may leave work early today so I can spend more time with my family, and he agreed given that he has been pleased with my recent performance. Driving quickly in order to pick them up from school on time, I caught the eye of a patrol officer, who pulled me over for a traffic stop; ultimately, he ended up issuing a citation ticket for speeding and improper lane change. Unfortunately, the cost of challenging the ticket in court is noticeably greater (I found out later) than just paying the fine, yet the fine itself removes that financial cushion I had already budgeted for income taxes, so unless I get a secondary temp job, I don’t know how I can afford to pay both the property and income taxes on time.
I put on a good face on for my children when I see them, but then discover that one of them has been using a cell phone on school grounds, and will not be getting the phone back, which was a Christmas present from her grandfather; this reminded me of when I lost my first car because of a civil forfeiture action that I couldn’t afford to contest. Now that my child has been unjustly profiled as a “misbehaved student,” she will be monitored closely by the school psychologist, and at the next slightest deviation from the rules, because of the school’s “zero tolerance” policy, my child will be forcibly medicated, regardless of my approval, or more likely, lack thereof. I am so exhausted from today’s events that I say nothing to her about the phone and instead we go straight home, even though I had originally wanted to take all of my children to the park, which is funded by the county government’s general revenue fund. Arriving home, I pop some frozen dinners into the microwave and serve them to my children, despite the fact that they are loaded with high fructose corn syrup, which is only made possible by all the corn subsidies given by the federal government to Big Agribusiness, but as a struggling parent, what else can I do?
After the children have been put to bed, I take a look at the traffic ticket again, and then check the balance of both my checking and savings accounts. Feeling overwhelmed by a sense of impending doom because of financial insecurity, I decide to relax on the whimsical hope that I can be inspired by something, anything, that presents itself as a solution to my current predicament. Suddenly, I remembered how my best friend, who attended college for free thanks to his patriotic service in the military, used to smoke cannabis in order to treat his PTSD. I considered heading on over to his house in order to get his dealer’s contact info so I can score some weed, but then I decided not to because he used to work as a police informant in order to “beat the rap” for both his possession and intent to distribute felony charges, unless he “cooperated” with the local government police.
Instead, I decide to whip out some alcohol I bought, whose particular sales tax is allocated based on the state legislature’s discretion through their own general revenue fund. Plopping down on the sofa, I turn on the idiot box, whose blue flickering shows me Keeping Up with the Kardashians. While numbing both my brain and body, I tell myself that America is the freest country on this planet, yet, this self-assurance rings awfully hollow.
And worst of all, tomorrow will look very much like today, but with only slight variations. Maybe if I vote for Bernie Sanders as U.S. President in 2016, then he’ll expand the threshold for public assistance as I think he implied in his promises, so all my problems with be solved if I only just apply for food stamps! Besides, who says there ain’t so such thing as a free lunch?
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