[joaogfarias]

Taxes are theft (always). Many people share it explicitly. 99.99% of the people believe it somehow. But when you take it to its final conclusions, specially after touching something in particular, most people get super defensive and try every time of logical contortions to find somewhere when coercively removing property is ethically valid.

[cassianoleal]

> Many people share it explicitly. 99.99% of the people believe it somehow.

I think this is mostly a US-centric thing. In Europe taxes tend to be much higher and people mostly acknowledge that they are a necessary evil and when used appropriately they are good. How do you fund good roads, public illumination, universal healthcare, publicly-funded schooling, etc without everybody chipping in?

Sure, there are many discussions about how much people pay, about tax evading, about whether the systems in place are the fairest, etc. but in general from my experience (and personal opinion) they're not seen as theft.

[autarchprinceps]

Can't say anything about statistics, but I don't mind paying taxes, if the result is a better working society, or one at all, given whatever some people think the world would look like without nations at all. I would just like it, if I had more influence or at least transparency at what they are used for. Like what if you had to pay x amount of taxes a year, but everyone got to choose for what branches/areas at least and kind of "vote" a bit that way. If a program is unpopular, it wouldn't receive its funding, if you think something is underfunded, you can reallocate at least your money, but unlike purely optional donations, greed doesn't stop you, because you need to pay anyway. I heard that in Australia they print the percentage of your taxes going to what general category on your tax return. Kind of a neat idea, and probably not that hard to do, since it really is just dividing your final tax value by the official percentages. Not like ones taxes actually get used differently from another person, but it makes for good visibility of what should be already tracked and published information.

[MattPalmer1086]

I see taxes simply as the price of civilization. I would obviously prefer to have more wealth, but not at the price of having to create and defend everything myself!

[falcolas]

It’s my opinion that your wealth would not increase without taxes, because you’d have to explicitly pay for (and pay more for) a lot more things. Road use, security, medicine, bribes, food, etc.

[gisborne]

This is true, but it’s not the only truth that matters.

Public goods can be _very_ efficient, even if inefficient in their delivery. I would have trouble believing that an educated citizenry is not a good thing, for example.

So although taxes are evil, they can be outweighed by a _much_ greater good.

But, also, wasted public spending is a great tragedy.

From this, I arrive at a left-Libertarian point of view: we should limit what the government does as well as we can to those things that are clearly better than the evil of the taxes involved, while it is still I think true that social welfare is compatible with this view.