Subject:
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Re: Uhh, back to tax again ;-) (Was Re: Is space property?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 3 Jan 2001 17:51:30 GMT
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Viewed:
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403 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Paul Baulch writes:
> You (incorrectly ;-) ) call taxation "stealing" when the tax could only ever
> be considered "yours" because of:
>
> 1) Ownership laws made by a government who are legally entitled to your tax
> (regardless of what they do with it), therefore you are obviously _not_
> legally entitled to it.
I agree that I am sort-of legally _not_ entitled to those portions of my
personal property. There are some problems in the US with whether the income
tax is actually legal, but I suppose that's an issue for an other time. My
claims that taxation is theivery are not based on legality.
> 2) An amoral (yes that's right, _amoral_) free market which ignores human
> rights, which therefore grants you no moral entitlement to the money you
> earn but don't need! If that sounds strange it's because you are either
> confusing the moral entitlement with the legal one (in which case see 1), or
> you are mistakenly thinking that "a sense of fairness" keeps market prices
> reasonable when it's actually something else.
The market reflects the morality of the humans directing it. The market itself
is amoral, but we often make decisions to pay more for stuff because of moral
issues, and that is part of the market.
> In short, you have no legal or moral entitlement to the tax being taken from
> you, ergo it isn't stealing.
But, you've just made a claim that because the _market_ is amoral, that I have
no moral 'right' to my earned income. The problem is that you assume that
either a legal system or the market must be assigning the right to own
property. I don't think that's so. In fact, I don't think that the market
can assign rights at all. I'm not sure where that came from. I think the
right to own stuff comes from our agreement that we can own stuff. The problem
is that we don't agree and you're willing to take my stuff (and kill me if I
try to stop you) whether or not we agree.
So, I guess like all 'rights,' you only get what you take. So I'm demanding
the right to own stuff, though it's a pretty weak demand since I'm not willing
to put my life on the line to stop tax collection.
> > I have proven time and again that I willing to part with money voluntarily • to
> > support causes that I value even when there is no direct payoff for me.
>
> In the bigger scheme of things, so what! The population as a whole is
> nowhere near charitable enough to run a country, and the free market can't
> run the country because it ignores human rights. Oops! So we have the
> forcible redistribution of wealth, or.... - well, what other alternatives
> are there?!?
How do you know that the population in general wouldn't manage the country in
an atmosphere of non-coersion? Can you cite failed examples? And I'd still
say that a free market doesn't ignore human rights. There are groups of people
in the US banding together to buy forestland that timber companies want to
harvest, so that endangered species will have a place to thrive. They are
outcompeting big lumber (in small lots of land, I assume) in a fairly free
market.
I think that you could set up a place where everyone has the right to chose how
much they fund a government and what services that government will provide.
The primary purpose of government should be to prevent people from assaulting
others (in very general terms).
> > So for every $1.00 I make, $.375 goes to maintain the bureaucracy, $.065 • goes
> > to fund unethical stuff, $.0325 goes to silly stuff, and the final
> > three and a quarter cents actually helps people.
>
> Are you making wild exaggerations in an attempt to support your point? Do
> you have web link or something to a deeper analysis, or some data that
> actually backs these figures up? Like the announcement of the U.S. budget,
> where the government outlines what it's doing with your tax? That _does_
> happen in the U.S., right?
I was not making exagerations, though my facts might be off. Let's see...The
US government (just the federal government) will spend about $1,835,000,000,000
in 2001. That sum will be spent as follows. I have characterized my opinion
of the various programs in parentheses.
23% Social Security (silly and mildly unethical)
19% non-defense discretionary (it ranges wildly)
16% National Defense (good, silly, and unethical)
12% Medicare (silly)
11% interest on debt (a necessary evil that should be larger)
07% Medicaid (unethical)
06% means-tested entitlements (these range from good to unethical)
06% federal retirement, unemployment, and farm subsidies (unethical through
silly)
These numbers and more details can be found at
http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2001/guide02.html#Spending if you're
interested.
The numbers that I hear describing my total percentage of income that I pay in
taxes of various kinds are ~50% so that's what I used. These data don't
suggest an amount of the US revenue that is wasted (well, by waste I mean
eaten by the bureaucracy and waste both). I'm not finding any hits on that
right now, but I've heard numbers like 65-80%. I used 75% (3/4ths is easy to
work with) for my analysis above. The rest is basically in line with the
government numbers and my opinon.
> > It's not the giving up of funds to help others that's the problem. It's • the
> > armed thuggery that we all seem to accept like cows heading for
> > slaughter.
>
> The biggest mistake the government ever made was to give the mistaken
> impression that the money was ever yours to keep. Hmm, it should also force
> all citizens to view its budget announcements. Oh, and vote. Or would that
> be immoral? ;-)
This might be true. If I don't have the legal right to own stuff (and really I
don't, in any meaningful sense of the word own) then they shouldn't pretend
that I do. Because it just makes me eager for the colapse of our nation so
that something better can rise in its place.
I think that forcing citizens to view the budget (but not giving them the
option to change it) is not only immoral, but just mean-spirited. Forcing a
vote would be immoral. Unless participation in one (or more?) competing
governances was an option and some of the governances included a contractual
obligation to vote. Then it would just be your option.
The concept that government needs a monopoly on a given parcel of land is old
and corrupt. As with all things that I've seen, competition brings efficiency
and increased choice. Government taxation (or tithes) would be fine as long as
participation in that government were not obligatory.
I would point you to a short piece of fiction by Vernor Vinge called _The
Ungoverned_ if you're interested in how I think government should work. (and
almost anything else he's written is worth a read too!)
OT: is it possible to respond point by point without point scoring? I've tried
to answer genuinely, not rack up wins, but I still approached answering on a
point by point basis.
Chris
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