 The question is what it means to be wealthy or prosperous. The common answer you hear is in terms of money, in having it or having access to it. For the most part, prosperity is considered highly desirable, something worthy of the effort to attain. Those who are wealthy seem to have more options provided to them. They are accepted as being more attractive than others who have no wealth to offer. They are considered more influential than others. But what does it really mean to be wealthy? The answer is not an opportunities or influence, though these are obviously impacted by having wealth. The answer is in freedom. The answer is in having options in what you choose to do. The answer is in denying others the ability to direct your actions or tell you what you must do. When we are talking wealth and prosperity, the answer is in economic choices and opportunities that there are fewer things denied to you for lack of sufficient resources. There are choices for what a wealthy person can do that those who lack wealth cannot do. The concept of implementation is ownership. It is having a right to use or direct the use of our many types of property. If you own a car, you probably have a set of keys to give access and nobody is legally able to seize upon it and take it away from you without committing a public crime. The law protects ownership. Even our Constitution forbids public leaders to use their authority to interfere with citizen ownership. It takes a specific order, a warrant, to authorize any interference with a citizen's property. Ownership is that right to be secure in one's houses, papers, effects, with papers and effects addressing things of wealth. A citizen who is employed earns money or credit and that becomes his or her property. A citizen who invests in stocks and bonds has a paper that witnesses to his ownership in the investment. A citizen with cash owns that money and his or her ownership is protected by law. A citizen who has a bank account has ownership in the money that is held in the bank. A citizen who hangs a valuable picture on his wall owns the picture. All these are wealth. They are inherent in the value of property that is owned and they are protected by law from others acting as owners. Even a person's reputation with other people is considered property. As something that has value, it is protected in our law from slanders of other people. All these are wealth. They are value that is owned. They are property rights that have value under our laws and contribute to prosperity. Wealth is the accumulation of value. And prosperity is sufficient accumulation to have reasonable levels of choices in how that wealth is used and expended. Wealth is having uncommitted value. Wealth is having options in when and where the citizen decides to expend or invest that value. Prosperity is having such uncommitted wealth that the options are many. Wealth is how people get to store value so that it is available to them for their prosperity. Wealth is desired as economic freedom and prosperity is in the choices available for the use of wealth that the citizen has in various ownership. In another sense, we can address government taxes where the citizen is legally protected from others who might take away their wealth. Government leadership has taken upon itself a right to seize upon wealth, challenging the prosperity of its own people. Prosperity is economic freedom and loss of this freedom is what we the people must suffer from excessive taxation. Real property is so severely taxed that it is difficult to address in its own value. It is more like property leased from the government with taxes as rent. The US and our various units of government have reinstated a form of feudalism. Prosperity is having economic choices and taxing personal ownership of income and ownership of personal property works to limit the choices available. Limiting any excess that might be directed to satisfy the wants and needs of citizens. And here is the challenge, seizing upon the property of the common people is a way for a sovereign ruler to secure his or her wealth. It is forbidden to American citizens to seize property of another citizen under pain of criminal prosecution. The people cannot legally authorize their government to do what US citizens cannot do. They most certainly cannot authorize their government to take criminal actions in their name. We do not have a government that has sovereignty over citizens. We have a sovereign people who have granted authorities to those who govern. The people could not grant the right to seize upon the wealth of their neighbors. It is a power that is beyond constitutional government over a sovereign people. Amending the Constitution to grant authority to commit crimes against the people does not authorize leaders to criminal behavior in the exercise of their public offices. As noted before, the US government has not limited itself to granted authorities, but has acted in sovereignty. In many ways, it has become the government that is like to the English government against which the American colonists rebelled and from which they won their freedom. One major driver for American Revolution was open-end taxation. Taxation in spite of having no voice in the government that laid the taxes. Do we have a voice in government, in laying of taxes? The answer is that the question of acceptance by the people has not even been raised. If the people in one congressional district or state decide that some taxes are unacceptable, then they are likely to be three votes against it in Congress of over 400 leaders who do not represent them. If taxes are set by majority of leader votes, consent to the government is not even a matter of issue. But then we also know that the government needs funds to operate and to represent the people in its operations. If property is the wealth of the nation, then it makes sense to tax it in order to give the benefits of government to the people. There is a great deal of nonsense in this, but there is also a basis for a better understanding of wealth and government operation. Our U.S. government only exists to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. In specific, securing the blessings of liberty is freedom and prosperity, the very things that modern government assaults. There was an initial agreement on the funding of government and it delegated the power to tax for set purposes to pay for the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. This was no blanket authority to fund whatever Congress might vote to fund, nor is the welfare of the United States different than the welfare of we the people. As a performance professional, I have a practical rule for eliminating much of our government's excess funding. There is no valid public purpose to authorize spending where the people do not receive the benefit from the expenditure. The people are the public, and if the people do not receive the benefit, then neither does the public. As far as our constitutional government is concerned, we the people are the nation. The Department of Education should only be funded for services that the people receive and value. If the people do not receive and value some educational service, then it has no public value. The Environmental Protection Agency should only be funded where it provides services to the public. Can you hear the scream that this is for the welfare of the nation? And the answer is that if the people do not receive the value in what it does, then it has no public purpose. The environment is not a separate party and interest in our government. Organizations such as the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Justice should be terminated as they provide nothing to the public. They perform internal government processes and should be administrative offices in the groups they exist to serve, as those provide value to the public. Groups that give service to the public would have their funding limited to the services they provide where the people receive and value those services. Many would be reduced to providing the services that people are willing to accept for the cost of providing them, and participation in the programs changed from regulatory mandates to voluntary participation. That is what freedom is all about. It is giving the choices to the people. That is what prosperity is all about. It is giving the economic choices to the people. So, what are the chances that citizens can come together and change the way our representatives determine how to spend the money that is taken from us? Can we demand that they criminalize progressive income taxes? Can we demand that they only spend money in accord with the purposes set forth in the preamble to our Constitution? Can we agree upon a citizen review panel to okay the expenditures that 500 elected leaders do not represent any one of us decide that they will authorize? Are we really consenting to be taxed for services we do not receive? Whenever and wherever we the people come to agreement, we are the only party in interest, and we speak for the whole nation. And finally, the wealth of the nation cannot be greater than the wealth of the people of the nation, for we the people own this nation, even as we own its government. If we are being burdened with government that does not serve, then it is a blight on the nation, even as it is an assault on the prosperity of we the people. Our challenge is not so much finding improvements. It is in finding those improvements upon which we can come to effective agreement. It is only as we find our voice as we the people that we get to direct our government to serve. If the great American experiment and self-government is to continue to the next step, it will happen because we come together to assure that it does.