Which Constitution are you using?
Using pennies, which is U.S. Government property, gives consent. If you don’t want to pay taxes, then work for pasta.
Your arguements are silly.
No, SM, I earned it. I originally picked $5 million for the sake of argument, but what the heck, let’s use $90k. In the eyes of durn near everyone, including the government, that annual income makes me rich, and therefore my income needs to be more fairly distributed.
Sources of my income: day job working for a salary and night job running my own business. I am the only employee. My weekdays usually run about 16 hours a day; weekends anywhere from 4 to 40 hours.
Explain to me again just exactly why the hell my income needs to be “fairly” redistibuted.
Sigh.
Those who are low income can better themselves and earn more. I did. If I can do it, anyone can do it. And I did by working three jobs while going to college, with a family.
And for the disabled, there are private sources of support that are far better run than the government. I question that the govenment has any business whatsoever being involved in welfare. If it were privatized, the recipients would be better off because they’d probably be getting more money (again, MNSHO).
If I can make an aside here, why are people always dragging up the poor steak guy? I have never been able to see why this is a problem, myself. I mean, do people not understand how food stamps work? You get, assuming you qualify, which is a problem all to itself, what amounts to a certain amount of money stamped “This money is only for use for food.” in letters large enough that everybody in line can see and bitch to each other about … well, whatever. It’s a fixed amount. You don’t get seconds, but apart from that, you are free to spend as you like. If you want to buy ten pounds of $1 a pound ground turkey, or one pound of $10 steak, that is up to you. Do you see the problem yet? Blow whole thing on caviar and you starve for the rest of the month.
So I’m sorry you were held up in line by the guy buying steak, but either he had carefully managed his allotment to fit steak into his budget (and what is this steak fetish anyway? I always go for a good stew myself) or he’s screwed himself. Justice will be served either way. And no, you can’t buy dog-food with it. Leave the poor guy alone.
False.
If you compare taxes to theft, you are wrong. Most people understand that.
If you have a $100 tax liability and you refuse to pay, then you are the thief. Think about it. If somebody steals $100 from you, who goes to jail? Okay. Now - if you fail to pay your tax, who goes to jail? That’s right. You.
If you have a $100 tax liability, you are even wrong to think of it as your money. If you were an accountant, and you thought it was your money, then you’d be engaging in accounting fraud. Try to think of it like this. If you are at McD’s, and you buy a $1 hamburger, then the moment you complete that transaction, the $1 is no longer yours; you owe it. Likewise, if you have a $100 tax liability, that arises out of some action of yours or some situation you are in. The moment the tax rule applies, the money is no longer yours; you owe it.
Many people would probably think of taxes as payment for the services they get from the government. (Services that the government overwhelmingly produces much better than anybody else could…) If nothing else, it is surely a far superior metaphor. If you have trouble understanding the concept of tax, maybe it’ll help you to keep that metaphor in mind.
The word “debate” does not mean what you seem to think it means. :rolleyes:
I suggest that you read the second, bolded definition, & realize that debates are not cheerleading sessions for closed minds. People can, will, and have every right to disagree with you.
And good arguments have been offered.
We are not here to stroke your ego.
Win by valid argument, or please refrain from wasting our bandwidth in Great Debates.
Ok…so who fixes the roads in your world? Who polices the streets? Who defends the nations borders? And how is it payed for?
At the risk of sounding like a scratched record, I’ll repeat this and what others have said.
How is Read Icculus accessing the Internet? Could it be… oh, I don’t know… over a communications infrastructure that was put into place using at least some government money? Or did he pay for the entire infrastructure out of his own pocket? How does he get to work? Over roads that were built with and are maintained by taxes? Or does he build his own roads whenever he wants to go somewhere? Where did he go to school? At a public school that is funded by taxes? Or was he homeschooled? If the latter, where did the books come from? The tax-supported library? Or did his parents buy them and have them delivered through the tax-subsidised mails? Ever watch Sesame Street growing up? And so on, and so on…
If Read Icculus uses any of the things I mentioned above, or any number of other things supported by taxes, then he needs to pay for them. If he doesn’t, then Read Icculus is stealing from the government.
Let me just say that I have few problems with someone removing one’s self from the obligations of society if they also forego the benefits of that society. If someone wants to go live in the woods, a la the Unabomer, and not enjoy the same services (roads, sewers, health care, police, etc) that others enjoy, I say go for it. The only red lines I have is that one cannot place one’s self outside of punishment of the law.
OTOH, if someone wants to enjoy public services, but doesn’t want to pay for them, I think the accurate term for such a person is a “free rider” or “freeloader.” Which, ironically, is the same terms that gets these people so riled up when they think about the poor. Hmmm… that’s good irony.
Man, people say that I missed the point.
Everything that you said above… Do you need the government to tax you, and mishandle the funds for those things to be in place? No.
I’m not wanting a free ride. Not even close. I want to pay for the services that I use. I’m obligated to do so. I want to pay for said services by choice. I want to contribute to the needy, etc., by choice. I want to plan my own retirement, by choice. The list goes on…
I do, however, not want it taken from me. I do not want to be coerced. I do not want my income “fairly distributed.” There is no such thing. Well, there is in a socialist structure.
I am not stealing from the government. On the contrary, the government has ridiculously usurped its authority and is stealing from me.
Living in a “free” society, when we aren’t even close to being “free,” is such a drag…
As I have noted earlier in the thread, an argument can certainly be made for an exclusively Libertarian (or libertarian) approach to society or for a modified libertarian approach. Such arguments have, indeed, been posted on this board in the past.
However, dropping by once each evening to issue the same whiny complaint with no actual support for one’s position while simply dismissing the positions of other posters as “wrong” without an actual effort to demonstrate how and why they are wrong is simply not a Great Debate.
I would have considered moving this to IMHO, but the whiny and unsubstantiated nature of the (often repeated and never elaborated upon) OP makes this pretty much BBQ Pit fodder.
Enjoy your new home.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
Thanks for the multiple whiny insults.
The support for my position is you, and fools in your vein.
One who makes sense is sent to flame out.
I hope your tax dollars fund ridiculous programs. Wait, they do.
Damn.
It’s a drag…
You say you want those things.
You say you are willing to pay for those things.
You are paying for those things.
What you appear to be objecting to is being forced to pay for those things.
In other words, you’re saying that you would gladly pay for those services if only you weren’t being forced to pay for them.
But…
You say that on your salary, you cannot afford to pay for the social services you say that you want and that you say that you’d gladly pay for voluntarily. The implication, therefore, is that you will not choose to pay for those services. ‘Oh, my house isn’t burning. I think I’ll not pay for the upkeep of the fire service this year.’ ‘I don’t have any children. I don’t think I’ll pay to support the schools. After all, I’m not making use of them.’
If you agree that the services and infrastructures everyone is listing are valuable, and if you agree that they must be paid for, and if you would gladly pay for them (if only you were not being ‘coerced’), then paying your taxes is the quickest and easiest way of paying for them
If you don’t want to pay taxes, the solution is simple. Don’t earn any money, and don’t buy anything.
Because if you do a job in a suit instead of scrubs, your time is worth 100 times more, and you are worth 100 times more. A white-collar worker is inherently a better person than a bluecollar worker, don’t you see?
That is the ugly underbelly of libertarian and right-wing economics: elevating the human worth of the wealthy and degrading the poor, relegating them to subhuman status.
We just had a GQ thread on this particular fallacy:
What logical fallacy(/ies) (if any) is this?
Liberal, a libertarian of the first water, supplied an accurate analysis.
Now you have just claimed that socialism is fair. Make up your mind!
This is what happens when you stop teaching Dickens in schools.
At least I quoted him in my first post. 