“Dear? Dinner! You can talk to your librarian friends later!”
“Aw, mom!”
More like,
"Dammit, Mom, will you PLEASE turn the lights on and off 3 times before you come down here to do laundry! I need my PRIVACY!’
In the same way, it would be ideal if all laws could be revoked and then make a strong case for every thing we should make illegal. Also in the same way, short of creating a new colony on Antarctica where we can create our own government from scratch, that’s never going to happen. Once the cake is baked, you cannot audit its ingredients.
Unless there’s chocolate chips.
The mugger takes the money that you were going to save in the bank for several years and spends it on impulse purchases such as a new jacket, some crack and a nice bunch of roses for mom, thereby stimulating the economy and helping to keep small businesses afloat. This in turn keeps people employed and is a benefit to society. It’s a trickle-down philosophy, but starting from the middle class. It would work if we only had more muggers.
Wrong. The minimum wage does not represent an exploitation of the poor, unless you count the jobs lost to those whose productivity does not exceed the minimum wage.
Also wrong. Taxes aimed at reducing an income gap between rich and poor are theft, unless they have some other purpose As long as the poor have a reasonable standard of living, and the same opportunities of advancement afforded to the average citizen, taxes simply to reduce the gap are theft. Few taxes are merely for that purpose, and establishing how much of a tax is unwarranted is difficult to establish, but it does exist in principle.
Regards,
Shodan
Er, try again - reading for comprehension isn’t just for fun anymore! (Tip: don’t skip the “resulted in”.)
Read the OP, dim bulb. What the taxes are used for are completely irrelevent to the question of whether they’re “theft”. All that matters is whether it’s legimate for teh governement to ask you for your money. If it is, it’s not theft, and if it’s not, it is - regardless of whether the money’s going to pay for fixing roads or killing iraqis or feeding the poor or buying politicians yachts.
I’d say you could reasonably make that claim in a kleptocracy. In a non-kleptocracy, someone who refuses to pay his taxes is breaking his half of the social contract; he’s trying to refuse payment for the protection, benefits and services of the local government. If there ISN’T any “protection, benefits and services” and the money will just go to build the dictator’s fourth palace while you starve and his soldiers rape your wife then the social contract is already broken by the government. Of course, it’s even more problematic ***getting away ***with not paying taxes in such circumstances.
Social justice and keeping the country stable come to mind.
The theft argument itself requires belief that all the money people make comes purely from their own hard work and initiative, and that the Government didn’t contribute to their income in the first place. And this is what frustrates me the most - I literally don’t know anyone who could make a single dime if the Government wasn’t working behind the scenes to allow our economy to function.
Take me for example - I’m a consultant. Every morning, I get up and drive to work on streets paved by the government and controlled through traffic lights and stop signs - paid for by the government. Along the way - I benefit from police and fire protection provided by the government. I may even use my cell phone - which only works because the government effectively regulates the airwaves.
Once at work - I have clients with whome I enter into contractual relationships. These contracts are only of value because there is a legal system that I can use to enforce them. And that legal system is provided by the government. Further, I expect to be paid by my clients - through 1) currency that has value because of faith in the government, and 2) using a banking system that is insured by the government. That I can operate at all is because I have professional liability insurance through a company that I enter into a contract with (which relies on the legal system to have any value) and I pay premiums for (through a financial system secured by the government).
Some days I travel too. I do that on airplanes that are controlled by an air traffic control system - which is provided by the government. And I’m safer (in theory) because of the airport security provided by the government. Not to mention the military that protects our entire country.
Obviously - the list goes on. But fundamentally - the notion that I made all my money on my own and the government doesn’t have a right to it is just silly. The bottom line - I couldn’t earn a dime of my salary if the government wasn’t working behind the scenes to enable virtually every element of business that most people take for granted.
So you’re advocating the triumph of the will, then?
Because it is based on a false premise. Being against forced wealth redistribution is not equivalent to believing “all taxation is theft”.
Yeah, I agree. This is why I really am undecided about what constitutes ownership.
To say that a billionaire earned his money all on his own just can’t be true. OTOH, we do have a legal (and descriptive, as opposed to normative) notion of ownership that basically asserts as much. Furthermore, this notion of ownership is laid out by our social contract. But I guess this is the same social contract that allows for taxation, huh?
I don’t really have a conclusion, I just wanted to say that Kiber hit upon a notion that’s been bugging me for a couple of years, and I just can’t resolve it.
Actually, it would be a very useful reform to have laws expire after a reasonable period (twenty years, give or take). That would check the tendency of government to overgrow out of sheer inertia, since powers would go away unless they were affirmatively re-authorized instead of accumulating indefinitely.
Not a half bad idea. How far up would it go, though? We’re not gonna have to re-ratify the Constitution once every couple of administrations, are we?
First, I believe the point was that a minimum wage prevents the exploitation of the poor, by that subset of the well-to-do who hold an “all the market will bear” amoral viewpoint. (Note that there are wealthy people who do not hold this perspective, but there are – or at least used to be – those who did.)
I have found that often the test of a blanket doctrinal assertion is to test it by looking at the extreme case. So suppose this: a wealthy and somewhat rapacious man lives adjacent to a large and fertile island. The islanders produce crops and harvest the waters, to produce what would be a good living for them. However, the landowner owns: 1. the only decent harbor on the island, 2. the only bridge connecting the island to the mainland, and 3. the company which has a defacto monopoly on merchandise from the island, by dint of allowing nothing off the island that is not sold to his company. As a result, the islanders are living at just above survival level, while he enriches himself at their expense. This happens in the land of Hypotheticalia, where no entity will step in to prevent this. In your view, is the rich businessman entitled to what he gets from the islanders? If not, what recourse should they be entitled to take?
As I said, this is an extreme – the ‘company town’ syndrome itself taken to an extreme. And an idealistic (non-Marxit) communism where everybody works according to their abilities to ensure that everyone gets according to their needs, bluebirds sing all day long, God’s in his heaven, and all’s right with the world, is at the other extreme. Is it plausible that somewhere between these two exercises in hyperbole is the proper place to be, where people are by and large entitled to the fruits of their labor, but government takes a proportion of their wealth to provide services and to ensure that emergency situations are dealt with to the benefit of all? And further, that exactly where along the spectrum from robber baron to idealized commune that proper place might be is something on which good people may disagree?
I suggested putting expiration dates on laws (or maybe on amendments) in the Doper continental congress thread and I was laughed out of the room.
The “et cetera”, of course, includes hair cuts for the Senators, free postage, low interest checking reserves, limousines, staffs and their salaries, office buildings the size of small nations, and all the stuff that goes in them like computers that don’t communicate with one another, and receptionists who keep you from speaking to your Representative or Senator, automatic salary increases, and enough pork for a year-round barbecue festival. Meanwhile, the roads are full of potholes, the schools are turning out morons with diplomas, the nation has never been less secure, and health care for people with only medicare is, well, isn’t.
Actually, I’ll match this and raise it - if the government is a democracy or representative democracy, then all uses of the money that are done in proper accordance with the legislative process represent compliance with the social contract on the government’s part. If you vote to buy fifty thousand dollar toilet seats, or vote in guys who vote to buy fifty thousand dollar toilet seats, then by Odin that’s what you’ve contracted your government to do. Barring literal embezzlement of government funds there is no way for the government to “steal” your tax money, since you have by-proxy agreed to every expenditure.
“But I didn’t agree to any of this!” you might protest. “These wars and medicare and road repair, I didn’t sign up for that!” The thing is, though, you did sign up for it. To choosing to remain as a citizen in the country is to choose to accept its legal and governmental systems. And in the US, that means that even when your candidate loses, you still are bound by the laws. That’s your end of the social contract.
Some people seem to think that they’re only beholden to the country when they and their representatives are the ones running the show. These people have no understanding of, or no desire for, democracy. Tyranny is more thier game.
Jesus, have you people heard of the social contract? Hobbes? Locke? Rousseau? This is freshman level political theory, people.
No, government by democratic republic. As opposed to the plutocratic oligarchy that the libertarians want, where money talks and the common folk knuckle under.
Say goodbye to all or most civil rights then. They’d last just as long as they take to sunset.
A concept that is regarded as irrelevant or outright evil by the Right. Who are all about “I got mine, screw you” or “God’s on my side so I can do whatever I want.”
[Nevermind