[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
“Taxation as theft” is funny. I guess it’s a good way to look at things as long as you don’t like cops on the streets, sewers, clean running water, fire departments, paved streets, traffic lights, highways, public schools, and a slew of other shit.
Fuckin loons.[/quote]
I am just soooo glad that it is that easy for you.
However, in the real world there is taxes vs fees, direct vs indirect taxes, flat vs progressive taxes and all have also ethical consequences.
So a progressive income tax for example is most definitely theft, especially if there are much milder alternatives. In fact it is closer to a form of servitude.
And hey, I do not like much of that shit and people like you make people like me pay for it.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
“Taxation as theft” is funny. I guess it’s a good way to look at things as long as you don’t like cops on the streets, sewers, clean running water, fire departments, paved streets, traffic lights, highways, public schools, and a slew of other shit.
[quote]orion wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
“Taxation as theft” is funny. I guess it’s a good way to look at things as long as you don’t like cops on the streets, sewers, clean running water, fire departments, paved streets, traffic lights, highways, public schools, and a slew of other shit.
Fuckin loons.
I am just soooo glad that it is that easy for you.
However, in the real world there is taxes vs fees, direct vs indirect taxes, flat vs progressive taxes and all have also ethical consequences.
So a progressive income tax for example is most definitely theft, especially if there are much milder alternatives. In fact it is closer to a form of servitude.
And hey, I do not like much of that shit and people like you make people like me pay for it.
[/quote]
I know how it goes. I’m not against progressive income tax, either. It may not be just, but it’s fair. I am not against the creed of “From each according to their ability.”
I know how it goes. I’m not against progressive income tax, either. It may not be just, but it’s fair. I am not against the creed of “From each according to their ability.”[/quote]
As I said somewhere else, such societies fail anyway. I know that “Atlas Shrugged” is awfully written but she nevertheless has a point. You cannot force people to be creative, or to work hard.
As an example, the US is flirting with socialized health care now. Well, doctors are already leaving Austria. They go to Germany, or England or Norway, someone I know plans on going to Australia.
Everywhere but here.
Because you can force someone at gunpoint to fork it over when he already has a family to support, but the next generation is free to go. And, when you forbid them to go they will not study medicine at all.
So yeah, punish em for working hard.
The Chinese and Indians will welcome your poor and downtrodden with open arms.
Oh, and also the clever and the rich and those who have to much pride to serve as beasts of burden…
I know how it goes. I’m not against progressive income tax, either. It may not be just, but it’s fair. I am not against the creed of “From each according to their ability.”
As I said somewhere else, such societies fail anyway. I know that “Atlas Shrugged” is awfully written but she nevertheless has a point. You cannot force people to be creative, or to work hard.
As an example, the US is flirting with socialized health care now. Well, doctors are already leaving Austria. They go to Germany, or England or Norway, someone I know plans on going to Australia.
Everywhere but here.
Because you can force someone at gunpoint to fork it over when he already has a family to support, but the next generation is free to go. And, when you forbid them to go they will not study medicine at all.
So yeah, punish em for working hard.
The Chinese and Indians will welcome your poor and downtrodden with open arms.
Oh, and also the clever and the rich and those who have to much pride to serve as beasts of burden…
I know how it goes. I’m not against progressive income tax, either. It may not be just, but it’s fair. I am not against the creed of “From each according to their ability.”
As I said somewhere else, such societies fail anyway. I know that “Atlas Shrugged” is awfully written but she nevertheless has a point. You cannot force people to be creative, or to work hard.
As an example, the US is flirting with socialized health care now. Well, doctors are already leaving Austria. They go to Germany, or England or Norway, someone I know plans on going to Australia.
Everywhere but here.
Because you can force someone at gunpoint to fork it over when he already has a family to support, but the next generation is free to go. And, when you forbid them to go they will not study medicine at all.
So yeah, punish em for working hard.
The Chinese and Indians will welcome your poor and downtrodden with open arms.
Oh, and also the clever and the rich and those who have to much pride to serve as beasts of burden…
Can we not have those things without having our property forcefully taken from us? I agree with you about the “slew of shit” we get from government whether we want it or not.[/quote]
If you consent to have something taken from you, it isn’t stealing.
Government is not untenable with natural rights - governments are instituted to protect them. But you are an atheist anarchist - you don’t believe in natural rights.
Spoken like a true 13 year old raging against the machine.
Paying taxes isn’t “taking orders from beloved government leaders” - it is a means of paying for public functions and projects.
I don’t like taxes. I especially don’t like high taxes. And the percentage I pay at the federal level should be less than the percentage I pay at the state level. Is the power of taxation abused? No question - and no tax policy should be used to “redistribute” income as a goal on its own.
But your - predictably - juvenile rant about taxes ignores that government exists, we want government to exist, and we have to pay for it.
The answer to Bad Government is not and has never been No Government. You aren’t some interesting, individualistic rebel because you are copy-and-paste Murray Rothbard addict - you are just an unserious dope who refuses to grow up.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
you don’t believe in natural rights.
[/quote]
I believe my life is my own and not yours or anyone else’s.
Neither god nor the state are necessary to maintain the rights to one’s life but rather an ability and willingness to stand up to people like you and defend them.
As an example, the US is flirting with socialized health care now. Well, doctors are already leaving Austria. They go to Germany, or England or Norway, someone I know plans on going to Australia.
[/quote]
I’m not going to argue with you about taxes, you austrians may vote as you please, but about those young doctors leaving Austria. Are you positive that young doctors are leaving Austria specifically because of taxes? Or is just that they don’t want to move to some measly little alpendorf?
As an example, the US is flirting with socialized health care now. Well, doctors are already leaving Austria. They go to Germany, or England or Norway, someone I know plans on going to Australia.
I’m not going to argue with you about taxes, you austrians may vote as you please, but about those young doctors leaving Austria. Are you positive that young doctors are leaving Austria specifically because of taxes? Or is just that they don’t want to move to some measly little alpendorf?[/quote]
I do not know exactly what picture of Austria you have in your mind, but we tend not to build modern medical facilities in the midst of mountains.
No, it is because of bureaucracy, constant government meddling and low wages.
In Germany he earns more, with better hours and he can finish his specialization sooner and the German doctors flee to the UK, Denmark and Norway.
If I want to see a doctor via the public health service I wait for weeks, if I pay in cash I can do that in two hours.
I do not know exactly what picture of Austria you have in your mind, but we tend not to build modern medical facilities in the midst of mountains.[/quote]
I have travelled through Austria twice by train at night. That’s my picture of Austria. Oh, and then there was Die Schwarzwaldklinik, the series. It was called the Mountain Hospital in finnish.
Why does everyone flee tho Norway? Have the norwegians ceased to work altogether?
I do not know exactly what picture of Austria you have in your mind, but we tend not to build modern medical facilities in the midst of mountains.
I have travelled through Austria twice by train at night. That’s my picture of Austria. Oh, and then there was Die Schwarzwaldklinik, the series. It was called the Mountain Hospital in finnish.
No, it is because of bureaucracy, constant government meddling and low wages.
In Germany he earns more, with better hours and he can finish his specialization sooner and the German doctors flee to the UK, Denmark and Norway.
If I want to see a doctor via the public health service I wait for weeks, if I pay in cash I can do that in two hours.
Why does everyone flee tho Norway? Have the norwegians ceased to work altogether?[/quote]
Because until recently they had extremely low unemployment numbers and are desperately seeking qualified people.
Government is not untenable with natural rights - governments are instituted to protect them.
[/quote]
Governments do not, in any way, serve that function. They institute arbitrary laws that often times make little sense, in order to keep you in line and take your money. Whether it be forceful or by a subdued, indoctrinated population that waves flags and sings Lee Greenwood songs.
So a robber who uses a gun and forces someone’s property from them is not stealing since the person being robbed from must consent or possibly die?[/quote]
Coercion isn’t consent. A robber has no right to your property - contractual, natural, or otherwise.
Correct - you believe it. By your own lights, no one is is obligated to believe it if they don’t want to.
Horseshit - come April 15th, you’ll be paying the taxes on the “fuckloads of money” you boast about.
If you were made of the same principles of which you profess, you wouldn’t consent to pay a thin dime to the government and would go out in a blaze of glory “defendin’ muh natural rights from the gummint”.
No, instead we’ll get a timely filing of the appropriate tax form by Lifticus, followed shortly by some mind-numbing jeremiad channeling your newest favorite coffeehouse anrachist - with the hyopcrisy completely lost on you.
Fact is, in your bizarre world - which Mankind thankfully rejected years ago - there would be no rule except the rule of naked power and talk of “rights” would get nothing but chortles from the man with biggest whip. And, in such a world, you’d be the first one eaten.
Governments do not, in any way, serve that function. They institute arbitrary laws that often times make little sense, in order to keep you in line and take your money. Whether it be forceful or by a subdued, indoctrinated population that waves flags and sings Lee Greenwood songs. [/quote]
Nonsense - governments protect natural rights because otherwise, there is little systematic way to recognize and enforce rights. Rights are obligations you owe other men whether you want to be obligated or not. Without a government, your ability to enforce your rights is only as good as your ability to measure up against the other guy denying them - which, predictably, makes for a pretty disordered and awful existence predicated on little more than violence and gangsterism.
Moreover, “governments” make all kinds of bad laws, but the test isn’t which option is “perfect”, the test is which option is “better than the rest”. A “government” which sputters and disappoints is far better than anarchic stupidity, which reduces men to brutes in the fields and, ironically, the very worst form of mob rule.
Some form of government and some level of taxation are both just and necessary. Somewhere between providing for the common defense and levying taxes for the provision of the general welfare as understood in principle by our founders and today, we crossed into territory that was clearly not intended and is destructive. What Reagan called we the people working for the government instead of the other way around.
That doesn’t change the fact that some form of government and some level of taxation are both just and necessary.