If Taxes Are Theft, How Will the World run?

[mkpunk]

Originally Posted by Mircea

Exactly.

Constantly changing vague Orwellian terms that mean whatever they want it to mean in the moment is not good government. Those governments that employed that style, no longer exist.

Demand that they define those things like "living wage", "fair wage", "fair tax", "basic income", "universal healthcare" etc etc etc, objectively in no uncertain terms so that they can be quantified and qualified and everyone can replicate and duplicate the results and know exactly whether or not the programs are successes or total failures and they do nothing but dodge, deflect, and make 50 Million excuses why they should not have to objectively define those terms.

Write a business plan that says, "Success is whatever I say it is" and see how many investors and banks are lining up to hand out money.

Any tax that is not an Opportunity Cost is Fraud, and Fraud is Theft.

Income Redistribution is not an Opportunity Cost....

Mircea

Do you even know who is calling for fair taxation? HINT: It's not who you think.
Americans for Fair Taxation are the ones pushing for fair taxes founded by three Texas businessmen: Jack Trotter, Bob McNair, and Leo Linbeck, Jr. Sports fans would know McNair for owning the Houston Texans of the NFL and has a net worth of about 4.2 billion. Trotter and Linbeck are a pair of dead Houston businessmen. The proposal they want, not a flat tax but rather a 23% tax on new goods and services called the FairTax. It is both progressive on consumption (as the prebate gives the lowest income makers (as with everyone else) extra money each month) and regressive on icome (as the rich generally spend less like any other consumption based taxation.)

And people wonder why this proposal has basically died, it hurts the middle class (the majority of voters.)

[mkpunk]

Originally Posted by InformedConsent

You're the one who asserted: "the rich getting taxed at a 35% tax rate, somewhat evens out with local taxes and the gas tax."

Look at the chart I posted. It is indeed the top 1% who's paying a 35% effective federal tax rate.

Yes but they are 1%, a statistical outlier that would sway it if it was included with the top quartile, top quintile, top 10% or top 5% like I proposed. Statistically, you ignore outliers because the sway the data (except if you are Malcolm Gladwell or follows what he says because he wrote that we should look at them rather than discard them.) The point is, for a small percent (1% of the income makers compared to the whole is a small percent) it is nearly a universal truth that people don't pay 35% of their income in taxes.

[InformedConsent]

Originally Posted by mkpunk

Yes but they are 1%

You're the one who complained about them and said "the rich getting taxed at a 35% tax rate, somewhat evens out with local taxes and the gas tax." I showed that it clearly doesn't.

[Gungnir]

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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.

Again there are eligibility requirements for living and working abroad. Most people do not meet those requirements. While you can look for work abroad while in college it's probably futile unless there is a familial connection, the same applies to intercompany transfers, there is no right to immigrate, it's entirely at the discretion of the country that someone is trying to emigrate to.

No it's nothing like a rental agreement, unless you have no choice in where you rent, little say in the amount of rent paid, rent is determined by your income, and the rent can be changed at any time for any reason by any amount.

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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.

You ignored the adjustment I made to the analogy, where the restaurant will give you what it has, you don't get a choice. This makes the rest of your discussion irrelevant.

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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

If I could pick, no, but I cannot. Thus if someone robs me while I'm at the ATM to pay for food for his kids, or robs me at the ATM to by a some rock to get stoned, it's not really relevant to the fact I'm being robbed at the ATM. If the guy asks me politely I might just give him $20 for his kids, hell if I feel benevolent I might give him $20 for some rock too.

However if he's caught he's getting prosecuted for robbery regardless, and the only difference could be during sentencing, the crime occurred, the sentence might be mitigated if he was stealing to feed his kids.

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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

Sure, I have strawmen, you don't. Whatever.

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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.

No same exact thing one costs $200k, yours cost $250k because your income is 25% higher than your neighbor. No difference in the market price whatsoever.

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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.)

There's always been social mobility, in fact taxes were initially levied to reduce it. Taxes came into being (and tariffs, excise charges, etc.) because the merchant classes started to compete with the nobility. Marcus Licinius Crassus family were plebs (a couple of generations before the famous Crassus) he was triumvir of Rome with Pompeius Magnus, and Gaius Julius Caesar. That's from 2000 years ago, and an example of extreme social mobility from pleb to about as close to emperor as you could get in a state that at that time did not have emperors.

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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.

At least it's open and we understand the costs and benefits.

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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.

Ok so what about legal non-immigrants and immigrants who pay medicare and social security currently, but cannot remain within the terms of their visa, and gain access to medicare and social security, nor ever will?

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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."

So the problem is that democratically people may determine they don't want to pay for it? Why is this an issue? If they choose not to fund it, they get no benefit of it. Their money, their choice, and 100% democratic.

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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.

Would be a good start to just know the actual expenditures of critical government functions without any obfuscation or smoke and mirrors.

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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.

Again, why is this an issue. Shouldn't people who derive the most benefit from something, be paying more for it than someone who derives less or no benefit?

Suppose your neighbor (who's needy and a pain apparently) wants to buy a car, but can't afford the one he wants(after the cost of the construction work he's just had), he comes to you and says he needs you to fund 10% of the price, and you make 25% more income than him anyway. You ask what do you get from that. He says he'll run you to the repair shop and back if your cars are in the shop (which is kind of something you'd expect someone to do anyway). Would you fund his car buying enterprise?

Originally Posted by mkpunk

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.

So what's your point. I already said I don't have any kids (that I know of). You accused me of hypocrisy by taking from education, when I never did, and the benefits of the taxes my parents paid, grand parents paid, and I have paid towards public education have been realized by others than me or my dependents (and in my experience those benefits are of seriously questionable value).

[john620]

The world would run by people paying for the services they use and want. If you have kids and want to send them to school you pay for it. If you want electricity or garbage collection or water and sewer service you pay for it. Right off the bat with competition prices for all these things would be knocked down versus the monopolies that exist with government forced services.