Being an indentured servant during the 16^th and 17^th Centuries was quite common for those who didn’t have money for passage into the “New World”. In order to be able to get to the North American Continent one had to work aboard a ship that crossed the Atlantic as a crew member until they had earned enough wages with their slave labor to satisfy whatever a one-way ticket would have cost back then. Many who signed up for this type of risky arrangement ended up being slaves forever or being worked to death if not dying of scurvy.

Sucked dry

As modern day taxpaying citizens we endure income tax, retail, tax, capital gains, tax, gas tax, utility tax, cell phone tax, investment tax on profits and more! There’s even death taxes and a tax when you’ve passed and have distributed your estate to your heirs! So, are we similar to indentured servants of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries? Aren’t we more civilized then that? Aren’t we more technologically advanced than that? Perhaps, but are we any smarter than that? Truth is no!

The hamster wheel

You have been indoctrinated into a socio-economic system that lies to you about education, opportunity, and even politics. You have been led to believe that if you pay an exorbitant amount of money and time for an education that the job of your dreams and qualifications will come jumping into your lap! Wrong! Studies show that many who majored in a particular degree never end up at that particular position that they originally chose as a profession. As a matter of fact, they don’t end up with the intended salary they has anticipated either. The there’s that student loan that they should be paying back.

Nonexistent promises

After entering the workplace one finds out very quickly that the once vaunted American ideal of getting employment with a huge corporation and putting in your 20 some odd years to get your pension is a farce too. As today many are on one year contracts, or see their employer merging with another company that may not keep them on as staff, or maybe that corporation has decided to outsource to China leaving you without employment at all.

Result of your labor

Yet, still there will be taxes even levied against your retirement income if you are lucky enough to get that far or have invested enough in order to get your measly 4% yield over the last 30 years that taxes will eventually even penalize. Most of us never stop and think that we work from January to May each year in order to pay income tax without even considering all the other taxes of everyday living. Only those who have learned to properly invest, or become self-employed, or have managed to invent some disruptive technology that forever changes the markets, while most of us never break free of the indentured servancy of taxes for the rest of our lives!  It is the illusion we continue to chase like the mirage on the horizon to a man in the desert dying of thirst. We chase that trophy of retirement in the future. Sad isn’t it?