[potatolicious]

Honestly, the GP sounds like an antisocial anarchist, of the sociopathic variety. Just because he's made a good life for himself he is completely unable to empathize with the less fortunate, nor is he able to comprehend how significantly services provided by taxation have contributed to his presumptive success.

He is also unable to comprehend how the fabric of society functions. We all necessarily give up our freedom of total choice in exchange for the opportunity to live peaceably amongst one another. This is the fundamentals of democracy - that decisions are made jointly, and that whatever the decisions may be, people will abide by them (or challenge them in a structured, organized way).

[kaens]

To be frank, I think most of this tax-related drama would be solved if people had a much more direct say in what their taxes went to support.

I don't think that most people who view taxes as theft would view them that way if we were using our available resources and technology to allow them to accomplish what taxes should be accomplishing anyhow - whatever the people want them to.

At the moment taxes accomplish whatever the state, city, and federal governments want them to, with the people only having a (at best) second-hand say in what happens through a system of representative voting that has historically had a high rate of greedy, power-hungry liars being on the receiving end of the votes.

My ideal politics fall much closer to anarchism than not, but I don't think that taxes are always theft. However, at the moment I don't think that it's much of an error to compare the two.