[dctoedt]

> 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]"

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Hour-Prophets-Markets-Frac...

[1] https://youtu.be/htX2usfqMEs?t=51

[AnimalMuppet]

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.

[dctoedt]

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