Reagans First Job Requires Gubbmint Permit and Tax Forms at 15 Years Old

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – My baby girl goes off and she found her first job at 15 years old.   She has to go get a work permit, a permission slip, from the Parish government so that they will sanction it.  Of course, I and her mother have already sanctioned it, but that’s not good enough.  You have to trudge off to get some bureaucrat’s approval.  Actually, you’ve got to give them $25. Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  My baby girl goes off and she found her first job at 15 years old.  Gee, I wonder where she got that work ethic from.  She has to go get a work permit, a permission slip, from the Paris government so that they will sanction it.  Of course, I and her mother have already sanctioned it, but that’s not good enough.  You have to trudge off to get some bureaucrat’s approval.  Actually, you’ve got to give them $25.  Having said all that, I informed her, I said, “Did you fill that W4 form out yet?”  She said, “No, I can’t do the forms until I have the permit.”  I said, “Guess what’s coming your way, young 15-year-old?  You’re going to go fill a form out and you’re going to be signing your life away because you’re going to give them your social security number.  Guess what you’re going to get in about two weeks?  You’re going to get your first check.”  “I can’t wait.”

“Let me save you the anticipation.  What’s going to be on that check is going to change your life and is going to shock you.  They’re going to confiscate more money from you than you’re going to make.  They’re going to confiscate it from you for things that you will never ever receive the benefit of.  Let me tell you what two of them are: Social Security, or FICA is what it’s going to say on there, and Medicare.  When you fill out your W4 form, there’s not going to be an option box to check ‘No thanks.  I don’t want to participate in social security.  I’m just fine.  I got my own savings account.  Don’t need it.  Thank you.  Bubye.’  That will not be on the W4 application form.”

They’re going to tax my child’s wages and they’re going to tax her for Social Security and Medicare benefits that she is never going to get back, ever.  [mocking] “Mike, her grandmother might get it back.”  Yeah, I doubt that, too.  Here is the double-edged sword here.  She’s in a situation where — AG, I don’t know if you ever waited tables or did any of those restaurant duties where you share tips or get tips, so you agree to a lower wage, the tip wage.

The IRS and the Congress in its infinite greed decided we don’t trust you, Alice the waitress-types, to accurately report your tip earnings.  We think you’re liars and cheaters and you’re much like Wesley Snipes and the rest of the tax cheats, so we’re going to assume that you make 15 percent on all your sales.  We’re going to tabulate your sales for you.  We’re going to force every restaurant to buy the software or to have some form of software that does that.  We’re just going to go ahead and tax you and assume that you received those tips.  We’re going to tax you.  I told her, “You may actually wind up, some weeks, you may actually owe.”  She may actually get a check that says -$2.34, meaning she actually owes.  She didn’t earn anything, and if she didn’t make it up in tips, too bad.  Thanks for playing our game, young whippersnapper.

That is the environment in which today’s teenagers, this summer, if they’re lucky enough to find, or should I say beat the pavement enough, to find a summer job, that is what they are facing.  Wouldn’t it be better for the youths to be able to experience at the very beginning, at the genesis of their working lives, to be told, “There is no safety net.  Ain’t no unemployment.  Ain’t no disability.  Ain’t no Social Security.  No retirement.  Ain’t no medical benefits.  You don’t get anything.  You will be paid a competitive wage.  If the guy down the street offers you more and I want to keep you, I’ll have to pay you more.  Whatever you take out of this restaurant, you better put it on the side, little girl, because there is nothing on the back end of this that is going to be given to you or is being set aside.  You’re the set-asider.”

AG:  I’m just amazed that after her parents okay her to work, she then has to pay a fee to be able to work to the government.  The very beginning of your story, I was amazed at that point.

Mike:  What part?

AG:  The $25 fee.

Mike:  Yeah.  You have to get a work permit.  I think it’s $25.

AG:  That’s the amazing part, to start off a child’s working environment as one that you then have to pay after your parents allow you to work.

Mike:  Your parents aren’t sovereign.  Your family isn’t sovereign.  Only the Parish of St. Tammany and the Sheriff of Nottingham the tax collector is sovereign.

AG:  It’s mindboggling.

Mike:  He in the almighty parish council, I guess, are the ones that made up these stupid rules.  [mocking] “Well, Mike, what about child labor?”  What about child labor?  I agreed to it.  So what?  There are stories, and I think one of the most famous ones is — who was the ten-year-old?  Was it Carnegie?  Who was the ten-year-old whose father left, who was left with his mother when he was ten years old?  He had to quit school and go out and find a job and support his mother and his brother.  I think that was Carnegie.  It was one of the men that’s derisively called a robber baron.  I wonder, if they would have had workers permit laws then, they would have told little Carnegie or whoever, “Sorry, son.  You can’t save your family from starvation until you’re 15.”  “But I’ll be dead by then.”  “Well, thanks for playing our game.”

Here’s the equally offensive part.  She gets to find out firsthand that from now until the end of her life, unless I am able to do something about this, or members of this audience are able to do something about this, she will have to deal with the menacing, meddling hand of an extraterrestrial agency, or an extra-familial agency.  It’s not good enough that she and an employer chose to do something, in other words to contract for labor or whatever the case may be.  That’s not good enough.  Also, what else is she learning here at the tender age of 15?  The governments at all level are going to know everything about her, when she was born, where she was born, where she lives, what her phone numbers are, what she earns.  The list goes on and on.

From an early age, we stick them right into that cauldron, right into that oven just so that they can do what?  They can be good model citizens.  I say they be good model citizens if we teach them to tear down this apparatus.  Believe me, brothers and sisters, if you’re not doing this at home — we do this at home.  I don’t mean rebellions.  I just mean to resist the tyranny of government.  Now they have to deal with it at 15 years old.  We had a little talk yesterday and I told her, “You think you’re going to go earn all this money, and you might, but you’re only going to get to keep half of it.”  She said, “That’s not fair.”  I said, “Of course it’s not fair.  Just imagine when you start earning a lot of money and you get to keep even less than half of it.”

End Mike Church Show Transcript