If Taxes Are Theft, How Will the World run? (salary, gasoline, death)

[T0103E]

Originally Posted by bUU

Right wing claptrap - a self-ratifying derivation of the actual universal principle, self-ownership.

I'm not understanding how the NAP isn't a principle. The initiation of the use of force is immoral. Self-defense is fine, but the person bringing violence into the situation is at fault. That seems pretty straightforward to me, and it's a principle I live by. If it's invalid, please explain. I might be missing your point.

Self-ownership is the right to have bodily integrity - the owning of one's physical BODY. It is the principle on which the right to privacy is based, but again, its scope is limited to one's physical BODY. You'll see me refer to this principle in my comments about how one has the inviolable right to live in accordance with their own beliefs and values within their own skin.

So do you believe that people have the right to act on their beliefs and values, as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others? If you do, I completely agree. If I misunderstood and you disagree, please correct me. Because I believe in self-ownership, I believe you have the right to support what you want to support and to choose not to support something you think is destructive or immoral. If you're against the war, for example, I would never force you to pay for it.

There are other rights that grant people shared dominion over their family, and still other rights that grant people a say in larger groups, specifically in accordance with the larger groups rules to that effect.

What do you mean by shared dominion? I think each individual has sovereignty over themselves (or should).

Calling something a universal principle doesn't make it one. Subscribing to Ayn Rand's fantasies don't make those fantasies actual.

I definitely have some disagreements with Rand's ideas...for the record.

The universal principal is different from what you claim it is. The principle is codified neatly as:

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

So your claim fails on two accounts. First: Taxation is not arbitrary - it is the result of deliberate action and due process of law - and therefore the principle doesn't apply for the reason outlined above.

I don't accept (2). I don't think a person should ever be deprived of their property, assuming it is rightfully theirs. Even if a law (which is just politician scribbles) says it's okay, I don't agree.

Second: The tax portion isn't your legitimate property, any more than your rent is your legitimate property once you incur the debt associated with occupying an apartment. Your property is the net income you earn, not the gross income.

If you assume the people in government own everything within their borders, I'd agree. I don't believe they have a legitimate right to anything they didn't personally create or earn, so there is no obligation to pay them "rent". If each citizen entered a contract with them and this was part of the terms, that's different. Which leads me to...

Another self-deception. Taxation is constitutional and legal and citizenship implies consent to live in accordance with the law.

The social contract is not a valid argument. I had this discussion earlier (maybe in another thread...I forget) so I won't go too in depth, but I don't see how a contract can be valid when the person bound by it never signed anything or agreed to it beforehand. If an internet provider charged you for Internet, whether you wanted it or not, and then claimed that you entered a contract with them by living nearby, that wouldn't be legitimate. To make the analogy more accurate, if you opted out of their services they would make you move to an area outside of their coverage where you would have the same thing happen to you by a new internet provider. I'd be pretty angry about that...maybe I don't want any internet at all.

The most compelling evidence of this is the acknowledgement by all but the most self-ratifying partisans that some measure of contribution to society by citizens is necessary, typically for national defense and such. Of course, that acknowledgement also tidily debunks their contention about any other aspect of contribution to society.

I agree with you, but I'm not one of those people. I believe society can function without forcing anyone to pay for anything. I believe that the market (people interacting voluntarily) is self-correcting, and force is unnecessary. I might not get what I want funded all the time, but if it's something people value they'll fund it. If they don't want to, I would never force them to.

[kidkaos2]

Originally Posted by Seabass Inna Bun

Who said life was fair? And why are you talking about reward and punishment? The market allegedly rewards hard work and talent and allegedly punishes laziness, not the government. People are taxed because it's necessary, and those that have more are taxed more. Government is not your mommy, it's job is not to give you a gold star for making money like Teacher does when you finally get 2+2 right.

Your own post is an argument against progressive taxation not for it.

If government is not your mommy and life isn't fair, then taxes should not be progressive. Picking and choosing to take money from one person and give it to another person is exactly a situation of government acting like a mommy trying to insure social justice.

You shot yourself in the foot with your own words.

[mkpunk]

Originally Posted by Gungnir

People have little choice where they live. Don't believe me, try emigrating to France, Germany, the UK, Sweden, Australia. If you're a refugee you might get in (you're not, the US isn't classified as producing refugees), otherwise there is no way you can emigrate without an immediate family connection, even if you did you're still liable for US taxes, and the US has to consent to your renunciation of citizenship (they don't need to accept it if they think it's for tax evasion purposes). How many people could emigrate and not need to work?

Not a whole lot but while in college one can look to work abroad and go there and not need to return to the US. Someone working for a US firm abroad could do the same thing. The point is income taxes are a part of the agreement of living in the US. It's like a rent agreement, if you don't like it, you can move elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Gungnir

The analogy is the same, the only difference is that no one gets to choose what they're having, they get what they're given. Then figure out the bill.

It's the figuring out the bill part that's in question.

The difference is that a restaurant is bad analogy. You can chose what you eat and have an incentive to under-consume whether you have economic resources or don't. You don't have that in taxes at all and if it were like that, it wouldn't work. The following comes from Farah Stockman's 2013 Boston Globe editorial in favor of choosing where money from taxes go, even stating people may want to pay a little bit more if they got to choose programs.

Obviously, you can’t run a government like this. But if people were allowed to direct at least a portion of their taxes to what they care about most, wouldn’t they be happier paying taxes? Wouldn’t they be willing to pay more?

To tie back into the restaurant analogy, you can get appetizers or you cannot. If enough people don't get the appetizers they aren't on the menu for long even if it's one you love to get. However we can't do that with government. Just because you and others don't want to You can't say well I want my taxes to go towards say the debt, instead taxes work more like a buffet. You may only consume a little bit but your money covers everything from every item you got on your plate as well as every item you didn't decide to put on your plate, wages of workers, salaries of managers, the rent, cleaning supplies, structures, utilities, etc. The same goes with taxes, the article I cited shows a breakdown of it and your taxes include money going towards the White House itself, Air Force One, and the IRS ontop of the programs that you don't use. This is why many of the choice proposals for tax reform would never happen because many want to only pay for the programs o debt they want.

Originally Posted by Gungnir

Forget welfare because where the money goes after it's taken is irrelevant to whether the taking of the money for the same services one person gets is higher or lower than the money taken from another person based upon their income. How the money is used after it's taken is a justification or excuse for why it was done, it does not now or ever effect the taking of the money.

It actually is relevant. Would you honestly complain about paying what 20/25% on your taxes if you could pick the services.

Originally Posted by Gungnir

Yes I'm pinning you down.

Not when you use strawmen and irrelevant examples to support your claims.

Originally Posted by Gungnir

Question.

As a contractor would you consider it fair if I charge you $50,000 more than your neighbor for exactly the same work he had done, because your income is 25% more than his, and I charged your neighbor $200K?

Was the 50K a market rate? If so I would be fine with it. Now if I was the one charged 200K, that would be different, unless it was a credit error in your favor deal.

Originally Posted by Gungnir

If your answer is no then taxation of people based on their income is not fair. Indeed it may be less fair than that, because the very people who pay the greatest proportion of taxes are the people who rely least on government spending. Thus they're underconsuming and paying most of the bill.

That is partially due to the resources you have. If you are rich, you don't need hand-outs or leg-ups because either you didn't need them already or had them in life. Others don't. Is it fair that they wouldn't have a chance at anything. There would be no social mobility (which is already the case.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDWkfwAAJM8

Originally Posted by Gungnir

We don't

We bill.

Consider the US spends $610B annually on defense, that's around $2000 per person per year. We bill every person $2k, with the ability to reclaim the debt if they fail to pay. Now we can quibble about whether that's sufficient, insufficient or overly sufficient, but you now know on average how much you need to spend for the current level of defense spending (this is not a bad thing to know).

If we charged everyone in the US $2 the government for just administration would have $640M purely for administration costs.

Interesting proposals but didn't you already say that is kind of theft? I mean if this lasts 30 years, wouldn't college graduates be citing the same argument as you. Also the US population include those who would not be able to pay whether it is the homeless or children. Who would front the 2000 bill for them.

Originally Posted by Gungnir

Those are two specific services and costs that cannot be in reality denied are required we can argue if they're sufficient or insufficient but not that they're required.

Glad we agree there and have some common ground.

Originally Posted by Gungnir

We can then discuss everything else and the annual cost for that service, and give people the option to not pay certain fees, if they're not using that service. The blind cannot drive, why should they directly pay for road construction? Indirectly they pay for transportation by the fares they pay, or delivery charges levied that are partly used to pay any fees levied against those transportation or delivery companies.

Good argument but unless a blind person buys gas, they don't typically pay for road construction, the same as those that don't own cars because they bike, walk, get rides or use mass transit. A passenger unless they pay for a taxi whether it is traditional or Uber style don't pay those. Blind people fall in that category. Of course this is unless you are Miss Daisy paying gas for her driver Morgan Freeman.

Originally Posted by Gungnir

If you want to provide welfare, you can get it discussed and accepted as a line item bill (if congress and senate approve), or alternatively there could just be a "poor bucket" where you can donate $X to the "poor" for welfare, WIC, etc. etc. etc. Once again big benefit is we will know the personal cost of welfare programs.

And what if people don't. It's not like people wont need welfare sometime in their life. Before 2008 people thought that long-term unemployment only happens to losers, well some of them got slapped in the face with cold realities and became "takers" and "overconsumers" even though up until that point perhaps they actually "underconsumed."

Originally Posted by Gungnir

It would need a restructuring of how funding is achieved, but more transparency, visibility and accountability. When you're paying say $500 to support low income families, and you do the math that says they're receiving $160B per year for those families, and low income families are not receiving support, then you can legitimately ask "where's my $500/year going?", but can't do that with an average 20% federal income tax since you don't know where any of your 20% income is going really.

Every single program can be itemized and billed, with determinations on what is optional, and what is not.

We should be more transparent especially on taxes, more common ground. I do think that maybe we could rather than show a dollar amount par-say, show percentage of taxes going towards say food stamps. We can say 2% of taxes go there and you should be able to convert 2% into dollars fairly easily. Just multiply .02 to your taxes.

Originally Posted by Gungnir

That's at federal level, at state they can figure it all out for themselves.

I'd argue it should be both. The problem with state taxes is another thing altogether as another poster posted in a chart, even if we go towards a federal flat tax, the lower income makers and middle class would actually pay more in taxes as they pay a higher proportion in local and state taxes.

Originally Posted by Gungnir

Traditional insurance has requirements for access to the benefits of the insurance, SS and Medicare are no different the requirements are just different, but insurance requirements for benefits vary according to the insurance and terms, if you house falls down you may not have benefits from your homeowners policy, because it excludes earthquakes during one of which your house fell down, but would be covered in Earthquake insurance.

Fair point

I never benefited from public school, I was privately educated (at a school, not home) from age 5 until 12 then received a private scholarship for high school, and college graduating when I was 20. Post Grad studies were paid for by me while working (and one part time fun degree too).

The public never paid for my education, they may have paid for the education of those who educated me, but I'm pretty sure their parents and grandparents paid taxes too, as mine did, however my parents paid taxes for education that neither I nor my sister ever took advantage of. So in fact I'm an example of underconsumption on education, I have no kids (but have paid taxes that fund education), and I never received any public education, nor will my non-existent kids (and I think given I'm at about the half way point of the journey, there aren't going to be any).

In 2009, it was reported that only 10% of students (about 5.5 million) are in private school so you are small minority which is made up mostly by Catholic schools. Proportion of U.S. Students in Private Schools is 10 Percent and Declining*|*Jack Jennings Part of this is due to charter schools. From 2001 to 2009, 800K students left private schools while 1.1 million more students enrolled into charter schools from 1999 to 2008. Fewer Students Attend Private Schools - US News

Now I am not sure if you have children or not but do you and if you do they goto private or public schools including charter schools? If they don't goto private schools, do you think you shouldn't pay local taxes directly going to your kid's public school? I realize in some cases you paid more, my parents paid part of Carle Place's School District even though I never stepped foot in one of their schools (I went to East Meadow School District schools) because of where my hometown was. However I think to an extent that is a weird zoning law because my hometown was paying to a lot of different departments ran by neighboring towns.

[monkeywrenching]

Originally Posted by bUU

Let's exempt food currently SNAP-eligible, exempt shelter and some home repair services, exempt electricity (up to a certain limit per month per account, indexed to the local area), exempt public transportation, exempt education, exempt healthcare, exempt clothing (up to a certain limit per article, indexed to the local area and the article), and increase the percentage to leave the system revenue neutral, and we have may a deal.

sure thing, I could go along with most of those exemptions, but keep the sales tax between 12%-15%. cut all departments by 50% and get rid of the chaff.

[EddieB.Good]

Originally Posted by petch751

LOL, is it fair that the person making 125K worked to get an education and go up the ladder have to pay more because he put forth more effort. Or do we just reward people who are too lazy to better themselves?

Why do you use salary as the definition for "better themselves?"

[mkpunk]

Originally Posted by petch751

FAIR TAX: Everyone ... "EVERYONE" pays 10% PERIOD

That maybe "a fair tax," but it isn't THE Fair Tax. The Fair Tax is a proposal for a 23% sales tax on all new goods or services with a $230 "prebate" that is still regressive as while it is a negative tax for the lowest income earners, it encourages saving and hurts those that cannot because they live pay-check to-paycheck or rent rather than buy existing houses. THE Fair Tax was what I was referring to not "a fair tax" I refered to in my post. I hope this calirfis things.

[bUU]

Originally Posted by T0103E

I'm not understanding how the NAP isn't a principle.

Of course it is a principle - it is a partisan principle, a corruption of universal principle, specifically to support preferences that you happen to hold, directly in contradiction to other principles, which are the actual universal principles of issue. It isn't surprising that you seek to impose your own personal preferences on your understanding of what is actually universal and grounded in a consistent systems of values that abides the most universal of ethics, reciprocity. That's really where your claptrap falls down: The changes you want to make (because they're changes, rather than anything that already is) are changes you wouldn't make if you were in a different situation, despite your claims to the contrary. And without grounding in reciprocity your changes don't have the legitimacy of the contrary principles that currently prevail and have been the reflection of society's progress over the last three hundred and fifty years.

You are advocating for regression to barbarism. Admit at least that much.

Originally Posted by T0103E

The initiation of the use of force is immoral.

False. Even the most well-regarded foundation for non-violence says you're wrong:

Ahimsa Paramo Dharma
Dharma himsa tathaiva cha

It means that even violence in the interest of protecting society from those who would otherwise refuse to abide the order of society is moral and a responsibility. You have perverted ethics to rationalize immoral self-centered callous disregard for others.

Originally Posted by T0103E

So do you believe that people have the right to act on their beliefs and values, as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others?

People have the inviolable right to act on their beliefs and values within the context of their physical BODY.

The expectation that all in society shall abide by society's rules instead of ratifying the anarchic practice of antisocial self-centeredness is completely compatible with that.

Originally Posted by T0103E

Because I believe in self-ownership, I believe you have the right to support what you want to support and to choose not to support something you think is destructive or immoral.

Within your own body - correct. If something society decides is so offensive to you that you cannot abide it, you should have no concern about it being inflicted on your body, but your expectation that your dereliction of duty to society would be rewarded and not punished is puerile.

A fundamental tenet of principled, non-violent protest is the understanding that you shall and should suffer society's sanction for violating the law. What makes the protest principled is that willingness in the context of hoping that the infliction of the sanction will highlight some perceived injustice in the law and that that will in turn drive society itself to change the law. You don't get to change the law unilaterally but through your sacrifice you may (or may not) motivate society to change it, but the decision about whether the law is right or wrong is society's - not yours.

Originally Posted by T0103E

What do you mean by shared dominion? I think each individual has sovereignty over themselves (or should).

That was covered in the previous paragraph. This paragraph was about family and larger groups. And this really gets to the crux of the issue why your perspective fails: Your "me me me" approach is only internally consistent within the context of your own physical BODY. Within your family, by contrast, if both partners in a marriage act in contrary directions on the "sovereignty" you have asserted here, your perspective leads to unresolvable inconsistency. The only internally consistent application of that kind of "sovereignty" is that which people exert over their own physical BODY. Once the context of the matter goes beyond the skin, shared dominion is the only internally consistent principle.

Originally Posted by T0103E

I don't accept (2).

And within your own skin you have sovereignty to issue that edict. Outside your skin it isn't up to you. And if you don't like society's determination, which is what I've listed (in this case, the determination of the world society - America's determination is even further from your perspective that the world's determination) you either have to accept that you're not going to like the way things are going to be, or go and hide somewhere where this reality won't affect you. You do not have a right to expect the world to array itself to your personal preferences.

Originally Posted by T0103E

I don't think a person should ever be deprived of their property, assuming it is rightfully theirs. Even if a law (which is just politician scribbles) says it's okay, I don't agree.

Marriage contracts, rules, laws and standards aren't just political scribbles. They are the only means by which an internally consistent system can be defined beyond the context of a person's physical body. Just doing whatever you want in whatever context you want to do it is not internally consistent when there is more than one person in the context.

Originally Posted by T0103E

If you assume the people in government own everything within their borders, I'd agree.

That is childish silliness: The insinuation that the people in government are the actors rather than government acting on behalf of the society as a whole is ridiculous. If you aren't willing to discuss the matter maturely then admit that and I can get back to something more important.

Originally Posted by T0103E

I don't believe they have a legitimate right to anything they didn't personally create or earn, so there is no obligation to pay them "rent".

Society owns itself, including its government, its land, its monetary system, its commercial marketplace, its labor marketplace, etc. These things are all furnished for your use by society in accordance with its terms and conditions, which you can either accept or choose to refrain from engaging with. The deed on your land is issued traceable back to the implicit land grant the state claimed from its establishment, and ownership of the land then transferred to individual owners by the state according to the states' terms and conditions, which you do not have the right to unilaterally change. One of those terms and conditions is the obligation to abide by the state's authority, to assess property tax for example. The monetary system is similarly offered for your use subject to terms and conditions. You don't get to set up shop in the commercial or labor marketplace that society established and maintains within abiding by the terms and conditions society set forth. And so on. You are claiming a form of ownership over things that never exists. The only thing you own without conditions is your physical BODY - i.e., self-ownership. There was never anything else you obtained that didn't carry with it when you obtained it legitimate terms and conditions that you shall comply with, and there is no right, natural or granted, that grant you specifically the right to unilaterally change any of those terms and conditions.

Originally Posted by T0103E

The social contract is not a valid argument.

You mean it effectively debunks your nonsense and therefore they only way you can engage in a conversation is reject it by fiat that you do not have.

[bUU]

Originally Posted by monkeywrenching

sure thing, I could go along with most of those exemptions, but keep the sales tax between 12%-15%. cut all departments by 50% and get rid of the chaff.

Any good manager will tell you that that's a foolish ordering. You get rid of the chaff first, and then that naturally reduces the cost. Your way just leads to additional debt. How would you like it if your boss stopped paying you a few weeks before he fired you?

The reality is that there is much less chaff than you think, and that why it is doubly important to keep your perspective honest by forcing you to identify what you consider chaff, first, then subjecting your identification to analysis and ratification by society as a whole through due process where everyone has a voice through their representatives, and then only if ratified would the expense be considered chaff and eliminated.

[Old Gringo]

Since the premise is false, the question is nonsensical.

[monkeywrenching]

Originally Posted by bUU

Any good manager will tell you that that's a foolish ordering. You get rid of the chaff first, and then that naturally reduces the cost. Your way just leads to additional debt. How would you like it if your boss stopped paying you a few weeks before he fired you?

The reality is that there is much less chaff than you think, and that why it is doubly important to keep your perspective honest by forcing you to identify what you consider chaff, first, then subjecting your identification to analysis and ratification by society as a whole through due process where everyone has a voice through their representatives, and then only if ratified would the expense be considered chaff and eliminated.

fire 50% of every department and change the tax system to a sales tax of 12%-15%, as long as the IRS is banned and the 16th Amendment is repealed.


there is more chaff than you think. take for instance the department of education. the USA got along just fine without it until carter made another useless department. now it is just blows 60 billion a year and teaches nobody at all.
more departments that are chaff, homeland security and the TSA. also get rid of all departments extra abilities that they think they have. the batf comes to mind, they are a tax agency, start treating them as such and get rid of their ability to go out and carry out swat style raids.