Ah, but if they said taxation is immoral, or taxation is unethical, they’d be making a moral or ethical statement which can be argued. But saying “taxation is theft” is making a legal statement, since theft is illegal (even when it might be moral - starving mothers stealing bread and all that.) Since in our country taxation is done only with the will of the majority (or a supermajority in California) I reject equivalence with muggers. Taxation is more of a contract with the government, agreed to on our side (as in shrink wrapped licenses) by making use of the product/staying in the country. I feel comfortable saying it is a contract since the taxpayer gets something back, unlike the person robbed. The situation in a monarchy would be something different, and there might be an argument for taxation being like theft there, especially if there were not free egress.
We can call induction slavery, we can call being forced to stop at a traffic light bondage, but that doesn’t make them true.
In fact, I’d turn it around. Most people who claim taxation is theft still agree that government does fulfill some valid functions, such as defense and police work. Since they don’t appear to have any way of paying for such without taxes, they either agree that taxation is okay, and the only problem is that they are paying for stuff they don’t like (already covered in this thread) or they wish to not pay taxes but still have the protection of the military, in which case they are effectively stealing services from the rest of us who do pay. So, I’d argue that not paying taxes is the true case of theft.
Only if the go under the mattress of the White House or something. Given a level of taxation, however set, how that taxation is allocated is not going to result in anything like theft no matter if it all comes from the poor or all comes from the rich. How is taxing the rich 20% not theft and taxing them 30% is? Ditto for the poor. Or do you think it is impossible to rob the poor?
Either someone’s labor is worth more than minimum wage, or it is not. If it is, a minimum wage does not prevent exploitation. If it is not, you don’t get hired. How does that prevent exploitation?
Sure, as long as corporations have a similar life cycle. You incorporate, run the thing for twenty years, then all the assets are sold off and the profits divvied up upon the shareholders.
I think what we are seeing here is part of the extreme right wing fantasy of competence. In their world other people’s lives would be nasty and short, they’ll rule the village because they are tougher and more competent than anyone else. It’s John Wayne as a political philosophy.
If there were no minimum wage, why would it not be in the best interests of all businesses to pay well below what a worker was worth? This would only apply to workers whose skills are more or less interchangeable, but that is who the minimum wage applies to today. No explicit collusion would be needed. As we’ve seen from health insurance benefits, the needs of workers has nothing to do with how wages would be set (that would be socialism :eek:)
This is not just theoretical. When I lived in Africa we had a guy who worked for us cooking and cleaning. I learned from my parents that there was strong social pressure in the community to not raise wages, because if one person did all would have to. No meetings were held on this - everyone knew.
I though of an analogy that might be more understandable to the right. When there is a debate on military tactics, it is not helpful for someone to rush in shouting that “war is murder.” War may or may not be ethical, and specific wars may or may not be ethical, but was is not murder in any reasonable sense of the term. A pacifist with this behavior (I haven’t seen any around here) would be as much of a boobie as the taxation is theft crowd.
Oh, yes, I hear that ALL the time from these people. They don’t need the FDA to tell them if food or drugs are poisonous, they are too smart to be fooled. They don’t need OSHA safety rules, those are for stupid people. They don’t need the ADA, because they’ll never be disabled. And so on.
First of all, if you’re going to pit a meme and claim a group espouses it, I think it behooves you to provide some examples of representative members of that group espousing that meme in the way you describe.
The idea that it’s a generally held conservative meme is bullshit.
Secondly, placing this in the pit instead of GD tells me that you’re not really interested in seriously discussing this in an intelligent fashion.
That reminds me of the response to the creationist fundie owners of “Dino Adventure Land” who claimed religious persecution after getting in trouble for not bothering to get any building permits :
The OP presumes that it’s taken as given that many* Republicans, especially now, do view all taxation as theft, and do always want lower taxes. Do you or do you not claim otherwise?
well, at least more than a few - at minimum, enough to be annoying. Which on the internet means “at least one”.
The OP is arguing that conservatives in general as a group are making the claim that taxes being spent on things they disagree with constitutes theft. In fact, this is such a broad and constant claim that it requires burial in the pit, according to him.
I myself have never ever heard a conservative make this claim in such a way. It behooves the OP to give an example or two, lest he be accused of flailing at a strawman.
In the interests of clarity I would argue that some taxes are theft. The argument would have nothing to do with me being a conservative.
If, for example, a government entity created an extralegal tax which it collected because it would be difficult and expensive to challenge, than yes, I would thing that would constitute theft, i.e. The Pennsylvania personal property tax which was overturned.
The poll tax (a nod to you Mr. Kennedy) repealed largely to the efforts of the recently departed was in fact a theft of civil rights, and money.
Or, if the taxes are onerous and disproportionate and then used improperly, that would constitute theft. I.E. There was a property tax surcharge to build a new school that was not needed around here, so that the old school and land could be sold to a family member of the head of the school district substantially below market value and then resold at an insane profit to a developer. They were prosecuted and I think those tax dollars were stolen.
I could keep going with examples of taxation as theft that I think we can argue or find agreement on independant of political affiliation.
I have simply never heard conservatives (or anyone for that matter) making the claim in the manner the OP seems to feel in such need of rebuttal and would like to see some examples that such is widely held among conservatives.
