Imagine the life of a cow. She gets bred. She calves. We take the calf away from her to feed it something not mother’s milk. The cow goes out into the field and chews on grass all day then comes in from the field to feed on something more substantial. Then, while they are eating, we milk them. Measurements are made of the amount of feed that goes in the cow rated against how much milk we get out of her. When she can no longer breed or the ratio of milk to the amount of feed we give her goes down, what do we do? We send her to the slaughterhouse.

Now imagine that you are that cow and your money is milk. They don’t wait for you to come in from the fields before they milk you. Taxes on your grass come first. Income taxes. Taxes on tobacco, alcohol, gasoline, sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, and so on. Then there are the taxes that aren’t called taxes such as a driver’s license, car registration, parking fees, fishing and hunting license, building permit, taxes on phone and utilities, fees to retrieve copies of documents you need, and bed taxes if you can afford a motel. There are also the taxes you don’t see but pay anyway such as import taxes, property taxes if you are a renter, and so on.

Whew! That was quite a list, but we’re not done yet. Buy. They want you to buy. So they put commercials everywhere: the TV, internet, billboards, displays, your clothing, your car, the read-out for your media screen in the car, the screen on your gas pump that reminds you coffee and doughnuts wait inside, your email box, texts and calls you receive on your phone- buy, buy, buy. So they can milk you. To milk you even more, they give you a card to make purchasing easier and because they know that people with credit cards spend more.

When you get too old to produce more than you consume, they don’t send you to a slaughterhouse. Instead, they send you through a maze of elderly medical care because the stuff they have sold you to consume over your lifetime has given you illnesses and physical problems that can be directly attributed to their products. They give you Medicare, a program you’ve paid into all your working life except now you pay a hefty premium instead of a few dollars from your paycheck.

But that is not the end of it. You still have those co-pays, and they continue to solicit you with products made especially for the elderly. You are still taxed on your income. Social Security is taxed. Your company or government retirement is taxed. The money that was untaxed when you socked it away in your 401K, is taxed as you draw it out to pay for expenses your retirement income doesn’t cover. You are still paying sales taxes in some states and in every state, you are paying all the other consumer taxes mentioned above for the privilege of having a phone, power to your house, and a car.

Since you are retired and have some time, you go to a state or federal park where you pay a parking fee or a use fee. Maybe you go fishing or you can still get around enough to hunt. There are license fees for both. Perhaps you go on a trip instead. There are taxes on your fuel, bed taxes on your stay at a motel, parking fees when you need to stop and park the car, and so on.

You die. Is that the end of it? No. There are the final medical fees, which sometimes can eat up most of what you left behind. There are inheritance taxes if you managed to leave too much to your heirs. There are the internment fees or cremation fees to properly care for your expired body. Then you have legal fees for handling your estate.

In a Universe that rarely intersects with the one you and I inhabit, lives a small group of people who never worry about any of the issues I have brought up. Why? They are the ones drinking the milk extracted from you. Moooo!