Before going further, the author ought to warn the reader that he or she is about to read a spoof. I will explain how this essay began.

A few years ago, the author was sitting in his caravan (trailer) in a remote part of Australia, near the Tropic of Capricorn, listening to Australia's government television station. The recently elected Prime Minister, leader of the Labor Party, had maintained in his campaign speeches that he would not raise taxes. Whereupon, after election, he raised every tax he could, except the one tax visible to the laboring man, the income tax. The Prime Minister didn't need to raise the income tax rates, for the inflation he caused neatly took care of that. Australia has always had a steeply rising income tax rate, and the ensuing inflation pushed the average taxpayer into the "soak the rich" brackets.

During some twenty years in the wilderness, the Australian Labor Party had developed its ideology, its governing concepts. Finally, because of the opposing party's long tenure, incompetence, and lackluster candidate, the Labor Party gained power.

It would be painful and superfluous to recount the idiocies of the Labor Party's short reign; suffice it to say that in three years the Labor Party brought the Australian economy to its knees.

It was early in this Labor period that Labor's Prime Minister announced another tax increase. The payroll tax would be increased. Now this wouldn't have directly affected the electorate, particularly the Labor Party supporters, but your author was an American. He owned his own company and the increased payroll tax was mainly out of his pocket! He had come to Australia to develop a chemical process and had no concern with politics. After all, this wasn't his country.

But a payroll tax struck directly at his hip pocket nerve, as the Australians say it. He was furious. As he looked out the door of his small caravan, be wondered what one could do about this. Surely a guest shouldn't make any comment on what were Australia's internal affairs. Was there no way he could register his protest?

Yes, there was. Political tradition contained numerous examples of situations in which sarcasm and satire, even a single well-turned phrase, had wrought sudden changes in political attitudes. Did not the phrase "little man on the wedding cake" defeat Thomas Dewey, one of the most promising of the Republican candidates? Did not the expression "Prosperity is just around the corner" destroy Hoover, one of the ablest men who ever occupied the White House?

Satire it would be! And so this essay was born. In a year the author had completed his work in Australia and returned to the United States, but the essay was far from complete. When he arrived back in the U.S., he saw the same nonsense practiced as was practiced in Australia. He saw the politicians in charge of every phase of life, squandering and diverting the people's money in what were obviously ploys to gain votes, camouflaged by pompous social pronouncements about "redistributing income" and "transfer payments."

It was no trouble at all to redirect the essay, make it applicable to the American situation. Surely there were differences, but were there? With a few cosmetic touches, this essay was refitted to the American scene. Here it is; judge for yourself how close it comes to the mark.

Naturally a fantasy such as this had to have a happy ending. Perhaps that won't happen, but life is nicer if we dream. Note that the only victims in the story are the taxmen, the IRS, lawyers, and accountants. They are the ones who finally come to their deserved reward-didn't I tell you this was a fantasy?

Pray now take thought for the fate of your poor author, who may have given you a few chuckles, perhaps even revealing a little truth. The IRS will now be after him with a vengeance. Little will it avail your author that he has led a blameless life, tax-wise, for some thirty-six years. He expects to be hounded to the grave by audits, investigations, harassments of all kinds. Just consult the tax news column of the Wall Street Journal if you don't believe it.

Surely Watergate set the precedent that one politician doesn't prey on another using the IRS. That is a step forward at least, but what protects an author? Search the Constitution as you will, there is nothing there to protect him (or you) from the taxman.

Pray for your humble author while you read this; he is your sacrifice. The great commoner, William Jennings Bryan, said, "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." Little did he appreciate the effectiveness of 1040 and the withholding tax. "Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect" has been the prevailing doctrine of our time. There is little evidence that things will change. This essay is merely a pebble cast into a deep lake; there is little likelihood that its ripples will be noticed on the beach, and yet ... if we laugh at them-the politicians? Perhaps that will cause more good than trying to fight them. Perhaps it will be like the flower in the National Guardsman's gun barrel in the sixties.

Our childhood history classes made much of "54-40 or fight." Will our children find a similar and equally memorable phrase to record our struggle with 1040?

But on to the fantasy!