Our Taxes Are Now Called "Contributions"?

There, doesn't that make you feel better now? Your taxes have not been raised, you only "contribute" more to the federal government, under penalty of imprisonment!

I sh*t you not:

The name of the new 3.8 percent “Medicare Tax” on investment income (imposed on people in the upper two tax brackets) was changed the day before the House vote. Its official name in the law signed by President Obama last week is not the “Medicare Tax” (the name in the text released 72 hours before the vote) but rather the “Medicare Contribution.”

For the moment, a tax is defined as:

An involuntary fee paid by individuals or businesses to a government.

While a contribution is:

To give or supply in common with others; give to a common fund or for a common purpose.

So the government now is pretending you are "giving" additional money to them, voluntarily and without duress, as opposed to the legally enforceable nature of a tax. And if you choose not to play along, and to withhold your "contribution"? I think some men in dark suits would quickly appear to tell you that when they say "contribute", they really mean "put all your money in this brown paper bag"...

And wait until we learn what "volunteering" is about to mean in the Age of The One....

Ironically, of course, the raised amount of your "Medicare Contribution" has nothing to do with Medicare, or with contribution as the word is currently defined:

....it is part of legislation that substantially reduces Medicare by cutting Medicare Advantage; and the “contribution” is in a new Internal Revenue Code section whose operative language refers to it as a “tax.” Only the name of the tax was changed — to eliminate the word “Tax.”

So while the government claims you have merely increased your contribution to Medicare, the truth is they raised your Medicare taxes, with the intention of gutting Medicare, and using the money elsewhere.

Somewhere, George Orwell and Ayn Rand are sipping tea together, exchanging knowing glances and sighing deeply....