Strange how democratic societies have taxation while dictatorships have shake downs and bribery payments to local officials.
I rather appreciate paying a regular, well known, fees instead of having to hand out bribes left and right to get things done.
Arbitrary bribes to keep government running is insanely inefficient. Taxes are a much more efficient system that lets civil servants get paid (a transparent wage!) and let's me get things done in my day to day.
> Taxation is theft, coerced by the threat of violence.
s/theft/the price paid for civil society
The "taxation is theft" view is the narrowest sort of tunnel vision:
- Monetarist Milton Friedman is worshiped by many libertarians — but it was recently said that Friedman celebrated drivers while taking roads for granted [0].
- Now-senator Elizabeth Warren summed it up nicely in her famous 2011 living-room campaign talk [1]. Transcript: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God bless; keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along. [Applause]"
As if the trucks to move the goods didn't pay taxes for using the roads (or at least on diesel), and the property taxes on the factory didn't pay for schools, police, and firefighters.
Yes, and the taxes paid by the trucks are factored into the price that the factory owner pays; I understand all that.
Elizabeth Warren's point was that the folks who perpetually agitate for tax cuts — and especially the taxation-is-theft crowd — are forgetting (or intentionally ignoring) what they get in return as part of the social contract; it's as though they think that the Public-Goods Fairy will somehow magically provide all those things that they benefit from.
Actually no, they don't believe in the Public-Goods Fairy; it's worse than that: They believe that they're entitled to the profits from their activities while the public should bear the resulting costs, including but not limited to negative externalities such as pollution, addiction, and the like.
And oh, yeah, when they f*** things up — as with the practices that led to the Great Recession, and countless other examples — they lobby to have the taxpayer to bail them out and make sure they get their bonuses.
So if you want to talk about "theft," then that particular modus operandi — privatize the profits, socialize the costs — might be a better candidate
So if it is theft and we stop taxing people, wouldn't it require either your government to fall under its own weight giving rise to anarchy until someone strong arms or new government, or you go full socialist and the government owns nearly all business and can thus pay for itself out of business profits which is just taxes in another form?
It's not really a counterargument to say that bad things might happen if we call taxation theft. Taxation either is or is not theft on it's own merits, potential consequences of that determination don't change it.
It's also not correct to say that our choices are either to call taxation not-theft or descend into anarchy or socialism. I think taxation is theft because it's people with guns forcing me to pay money or else they'll send me to prison. I wouldn't pay that money if they didn't threaten me, so, seems pretty theft-like to me.
That said, I also realize there is a necessity for the government to be funded somehow. That means we need to balance the immorality of taking money that people don't want to give with the necessity of funding the government.
Thinking about things this way inclines you to certain perspectives about what the government should and shouldn't be doing. Anything that the government does should be worth stealing money from citizens to fund doing.
> That means we need to balance the immorality of taking money that people don't want to give with the necessity of funding the government.
> Thinking about things this way inclines you to certain perspectives about what the government should and shouldn't be doing.
One of the more depressing books I've read recently was by an economist who made the case (fairly convincingly) that a society with a broad middle class is not the natural state of things, and while societies have inertia industrial ones trend towards the sort of rich/poor gap seen in the industrial revolution, absent large-scale government intervention in the market.
The book didn't particularly explore this, but the political implications of that thesis if correct seemed bleak. Getting the government to do anything effectively is an unreliable process, but, aside from enjoying a lower standard of living, the pre-WWII countries weren't politically stable (and that was when peoples' expectations were much lower).
Taxation being theft seems to mostly be a question of how you define theft (does it include legality, process, etc) but there are obvious parallels in any case. Although I suppose private property (beyond what one can defend themselves) also exists by state force.
I agree that taxation being theft depends on how you define theft (and how you define taxation) but that's true of any statement that says X is a type of Y.
If the Mafia had a complex set of rules and procedures governing how they stole from you, I don't think you'd shy away from calling their activities theft. I feel the same way about the government. I don't like them. I didn't vote for them. I don't agree that they should take my money and I don't like what they spend it on. That they have laws I had no part in creating, am not aware of, and don't understand, on top of judges and lawyers I don't agree with doesn't alter the fundamental action taking place - people with guns forcing me to give them money by ultimately threats of violence.
Calling taxation theft is not really a legal statement. It's a moral statement intended to make people think about taxation. Observing that the thieves don't consider it theft according to their laws is accurate, and that would be meaningful in some contexts, but that's not the moral statement being made.
There are a small (but rather vocal) number of people in Western societies who believe that the amazing benefits and privileges they enjoy are in fact something they're entitled to due to their natural wonderfulness. They are therefore horrified to discover, when they grow older (if not up) that these things have to be paid for.
Some are so traumatised by this realisation that they reject the concept entirely and decide that their pampered lives are the natural state of the world. This obviously means that anyone insisting on payment is an extortionist.