Taxation is theft and immoral

Taxes are worth it if it provides free health care to people who can't afford it, if you that isn't the case, taxes are pretty useless.

 

Taxation is charged to everyone who works, it would be theft if certain people were subjected to it. I on the other hand agree that % of income taxes is retarded, it should be a flat amount of what people make. And if that requires the gov't to chip in for the poor then so be it. Idk, i'm from the USA, taxes are screwed rn as it is so ya. Immoral, definitely not. We live in systems, system's need to run, taxes is our payment into the system, that is fair. And in all honesty, the money that gets taken out of any paychecks us simpleton's get doesn't matter, the gov't is giving away the money to other people anyways. Our money believe it or not is probably in circulation in the country you live in.

 

taxes in the US do go towards medicare and medicaid as well as social security. But those are the only reasons you would understand taxes making sense? What about paying for the military, the roads, public schools, police, firefighters, etc, etc. taxes don't seem so useless now, and how else would those be funded and why do they not matter as much as healthcare

You said % of income tax is retarded, and that it should be a flat amount of what people make? what does that even mean, sounds like a more complicated way of saying % of income. Paying a percentage of what you make sounds fair to me, rich people pay a lot poor people pay a little.

 

600b for military is superfluous and is the reason China is going to take over the USA economically. Obviously there's other valid uses for federal spending but healthcare makes up a significant portion of it while education and roads make up less than 5%. Even if they did equate proportionality you could privatise all of them (education for the most part already is) but you can't privatise healthcare.

 

I agree with you. It bothers me when people say healthcare should be privatized. I was fortunate to be born into a family that can afford solid healthcare, but my aunt can barely afford shitty healthcare. She can't afford to get sick. She can't afford to be injured. Her manager, who has better benefits and pay than her, was injured and the doctor recommended surgery. With the company health plan, it would have cost her I believe $50,000. She now has to struggle to walk with a limp because she can't afford surgery, physical therapy, or anything. She just has to take advil all day every day to be able to weather through it.

 

You benefit more than you pay. The average Sythe neckbeard doesn't possess the skills to survive comfortably in a government-free world.

 

At the end of the day, a tax isn't taken with consent, people may say they don't want to pay taxes but in reality, they understand the benefits they receive from it.

 

I'm back! Sorry all, been busy with work/travel.

I'm only arguing that empirical evidence trumps theory.

When I say that they benefit from the state, I mean that they're receiving literal benefits. I'm not speaking in terms relative to other hypothetical societies, I'm not saying that a voluntary society would be better or worse. I'm not thinking from an opportunity cost perspective, since there's nothing to compare it to, empirically. That's why I say that if there's evidence of a private system being more beneficial, I'm happy to see it.

Good question. It's subjective, of course, but in my opinion it would be a society as generally agreed upon by all the people - provided that they're all behind the veil of ignorance.

(For the unaware following this discussion - Veil of ignorance - Wikipedia)

Sorry, I meant to say empirical conclusions. Mathematics is, of course, based upon axioms and valid mathematical conclusions are true by definition.

By staying in the territory, knowing that the government extracts taxes, and working nonetheless, I would say that you're agreeing to those taxes.

If X has gotten taxpayers to break the law, then it is those taxpayers that the government would come after. If X is not subject to the law, then X cannot be held as having broken the law.

That wouldn't be mutually beneficial as soon as thousands of businesses spring up 20 feet from the border. There's a reason most countries (not sure if all do) ask if you have anything to declare while crossing borders.

My point stands. Corporations, in theory, are designed to profit. There's excess money to go around. Excess money that's up for grabs will literally make people make a grab for it. Governments, in theory, are designed as non-profits. Of course, governments can be corrupt, and unfortunately sometimes you have to "play ball". The difference, though, is that government is, in theory, accountable to the people, while corporations are accountable to profit - whether it be shareholders, CEO bonuses, etc.

Sure. If you can show me an economy that has a track record of transparent, open, honest corporations that are more accountable to their society than their governments, then I'll be happy to do further research.

I'm sure that I can't craft a solution.

The only difference, then, between my perfectly transparent government, and your perfectly transparent corporation, is what they're after, yes?

Sorry, I was trying to address where you said:

"This is a huge economic myth. You will always invest your currency if you exceed your required purchasing power return over a given holding period."

My point is that a very large chunk of the population does not do this. For the rest of what you said:

"What actually happens is the factors of production get conserved and only deployed when the projects which may meet the above criteria arise. This is in contradistinction to an inflationary economy where as interest rates decrease the suite of projects vying for capital increase, since the projects which generate a NPV = 0 increase, and the capital is increasingly deployed towards that are relatively worse. What you have is fake growth insofar as it is spending, and insofar as total spending = GDP; not all spending is growth. Spending money to dig and fill-in the same holes contributes to GDP, but is it not growth in any honest sense of the word."

To be completely honest, I'm not 100% sure that I'm in favor of inflationary policy. Some economists are pro, some are anti, but I don't know if there has been a solid consensus one way or the other.

Great point - government spending doesn't necessarily have to come from printing/borrowing money. And the question of what the government spends money on is decided by policy. There's no universal "government spends on this" law.

Your analogy painted a picture where one side was objectively advantaged over the other.

I think we agree on this, if I read the quote right - financial institutions essentially gambling with bad debt (balancing mortgages and refinances) is destructive to the everyday man.

To clarfiy, based on my understanding of the law, you are trying to create a whole new cause of action that, quite frankly, would make little sense in its mechanics.[/quote]

Sorry, not sure what I meant by that. What I mean to say is that outcomes would (probably) be similar to now.

Yeah, that's a tricky area. I don't have any familiarity with how the law is applied from country to country...maybe all electronic records can be pulled up, with wise individuals taking care to document ideas that come from them?

Just to make sure that we're on the same page with the term "fiduciary" - in my duty owed to a client it demands that I make the best determination that I reasonably can, given my skills, knowledge, resources, etc. If we both accept that definition, then I can see why employees who sign a fiduciary contract (between themselves and their employer) as a term of employment have their creations torn away. In short, they agreed to that, right?

As you've laid it out, I fully agree - if John meets Rachel for a drink at the local, and John tells Rachel all about his idea for a book series (of which no records exist), and Rachel steals the idea for the series, and is wildly successful - John cannot reasonably expect a court of law to take his word for it that he was the originator of the idea.

 

Unless you want anarchy, pay your tax. Tax is a good thing btw. The thing which determines if it goes to the right places is how efficient, and maybe corrupt your government is.

 

Taxation is the price which we pay for civilization, for our social, civil and political institutions, for the security of life and property, and without which, we must resort to the law of force.

 

The system is set up where we are born in this world with no other choice but to abid to the system.... Water we must pay for... Food we must pay for... Its almost lowkey slavery. I know you can hunt for your food and go out and filter or get clean water but that is almost nonexistent and harder to do than back in old days.

 

In order to have a civilized society, taxes are a necessity. We all contribute towards the common good. I live in the US, and in fact, I wouldn't mind paying more if it meant that we had a restructuring of our healthcare system... If you take into consideration the high premiums nowadays as well as the possibility of being denied for pre-existing conditions, raising taxes would still result in being cheaper in the grand scheme of things. If paying a good bit of tax money means everyone in this country gets the health care they need, is well educated, and they get the social services they need when they become older, I'm all for it.

With that said however, I'm a bit skeptical about what my tax money is actually used for. I hate subsidizing large corporations when they pay their employees poverty wages and force them to get food stamps, and I don't want my money going towards the military industrial complex to build more jets they won't ever even use, so that the defense contractors get richer and richer at the expense of our infrastructure.

Capitalism is ideal for the US, but only if there are effective checks and balances in place... The system we have now is more like crony capitalism, and I fear that it will only get worse from here.