During the American Revolution, armies of both sides of the conflict would run around from house to house, farm to farm and take whatever provisions were necessary to sustain the armies well being. The "Property" taken was anything that belonged to a household that was not nailed down. Property was food, livestock, wood, housing, wagons, virtually everything that one commonly considers as one's property. The Takings Clause was put into the Bill of Rights to require that should government take property of any sort from an individual, it would be obligated to compensate that individual with something of equal value.
Our capitalistic economy and nation took roots, grew and blossomed from this most basic of principles -- equal value for equal exchange of property. This is not meant to say that those who pay more taxes should necessarily get more benefits from government. Rather the productive segment of our society should have an opportunity to guide the nation to greater compassion and prosperity. Unfortunately, the politicians (and majority) of our nation have lost sight of this most basic principle. They have made long careers taking wealth from one person and giving to some special interest in compensation for votes or campaign contributions to support this redistribution process. One can measure the depth of the result of this political spoils system of management of wealth with a hole that is many trillions of dollars deep with many other trillions of dollars in future liabilities.
War on Property (aka War on Poverty)
In many ways, the War on Poverty is analogous to the marauding armies of the Revolution. The only exception is that the Soldiers in the War on Poverty are the ubiquitous tax collector. Our landscape is littered with examples of the lack of civility of this army of tax collectors who are not all that much different than the armies from Revolutionary times. These "soldiers" run around the nation and collect property from the hard workers of our nation. This ill gotten property is then redispensed by the political general's to the special interest collectives that support that particular politician. There is very little, if any attempt, to provide some compensation to the taxpayer for the property that has been taken by the War on Poverty, or rather "War on Property" if you wish to put in it proper context.
In the current industrial and technological revolution that is transforming human civilization to another plane of existence, there is absolutely no reason that the wealth of the average individual should not be growing geometrically along with technology. Instead our nation is trillions of dollars in debt and the average worker is stuck in an economic malaise were much of his hard earned wealth (property) is taken from him and redistributed to entitled others for the promise to promoting the longevity of the politician promoting these entitlements.
This is not the vision that our Founding Fathers had for this great nation. The problem is directly related to the lack of check and balance in collecting revenue via the income tax. The income tax gives a democratic majority the ability to directly take property from a wealthier minority without any compensation. As most everyone knows, making the income tax code progressive even allows this system to become more tyrannical. The mobocracy that results is the tyranny of democracy that many founding fathers were concerned about. This fear of tyranny by democracy is also the reason that our Constitution had so many checks and balances protecting the delicate counterpoise necessary to keep our nation moving forward to prosperity for all.
A Taxpayer Directed Budget restores much of the delicate check and balance upon which our nation's democratic principles were designed. Most notably, individuals filing a TDB will get some reasonable degree of compensation for the hard earned tax dollars taken from the average taxpayer. They may be helping to direct the nation's future in direct relationship to the contributions they are making to the nation's prosperity. At a minimum, they may learn how much of their tax dollars are being spent on various government activities.
We have seen what lies at the end of the road of ignoring the basic principles of a just society -- trillions of dollars of debt and even more in future liabilities. It is time to get this nation back on track towards individual prosperity for all citizens by providing for individual involvement in our nation's future direction. This was one of the basic historical principles upon which our nation was founded. That principle is still valid today. It just needs a tool (such as a Taxpayer Directed Budget) to bring civility to the forefront of our political process.