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No surprise that in both Great Britain and the US, the income tax was first instituted during a time of war. Only during a war, with the demands it places on t

No surprise that in both Great Britain and the US, the income tax was first instituted during a time of war. Only during a war, with the demands it places on the public conscience to make sacrifices, would the population acquiesce to an institution so contrary to natural rights and so pernicious to liberty.

cozzyd 9y ago
Which countries don't have income tax?
- charlesdm 9y ago
  Small countries, mostly tax havens. Investment income is not classified as income in most jurisdictions.. so doesn't really matter.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  I think every major economy has an income tax. There's quite a bit of syncronization between political systems, because political and cultural trends tend to transcend borders. There are quite a few countries which do not have global income reporting requirements. Singapore is probably the most notable example. Some European countries absolve non-domicile residents of the requirement to report global income in exchange for a flat annual fee, like 100,000 EUR. So it is possible to live a life without being forced to surrender your natural rights like your wealth and your privacy, but it's expensive.
zorpner 9y ago
There's got to be a better term than "reverse virtue signaling" to describe how the use of specific terminology (outside of a legal setting) like "pernicious", "females", or "virtue signaling" instantly means that someone can be safely dismissed.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  This is called ad hominem. No matter how tempting it is, it's better to refrain from it. Focusing on superficial and peripheral qualities like use of particular words, instead of the claim being made, is fundamentally anti-intellectual.
  - wtallis 9y ago
    There's nothing anti-intellectual about questioning your phrasing. You're just pissed that anyone is calling attention to your rhetorical tactics, because that blunts their effect. And without the flowery language, your comment has almost no substance. Stripping your comment of its rhetorical content to get at the logical meat of the argument is required in order to have an honest intellectual discussion.
    - CryptoPunk 9y ago
      It's not merely questioning phrasing. It's saying that use of a certain set of words, including "pernicious" and "female", is an indicator of holding beliefs that are so wrong that the comment warrants total dismissal. >>You're just pissed that anyone is calling attention to your rhetorical tactics, But using a word like "female" is not a rhetorical tactic.. You're imparting motives without any evidence beyond broad paranoid generalizations. It might be part of a rhetorical tactic in some particular instance, but I can't assume it indicates that based on the use of the word alone. That would be ridiculous and anti-intellectual. It's Orwellian to effectively blacklist a particular set of words as wrongthink, and it is disingenuous to claim that the use of these words is a "rhetorical tactic", or that calling for comments containing these words to be ignored is merely "questioning the phrasing".
      - wtallis 9y ago
        Considering that your comment at issue didn't actually contain a gratuitous use of "female", you perhaps shouldn't focus too much of your argument on that bit and instead defend yourself only in regards to what you're actually being accused of. You've repeatedly used the term "natural right" without defining what you mean by that, and without explaining why income taxes are a particularly egregious infringement on those rights. All you've done vaguely state that income taxes infringe on a category of rights that by their very name can only be infringed unjustly. "Pernicious" is not a word that anyone uses conversationally today. It's archaic. (According to Google Ngram, usage of "pernicious" peaked around the time of the American Revolution.) A phrase like "pernicious to liberty" is the kind of thing you write when you want to give the impression that you're quoting a famous scholar from a few centuries ago. It does nothing to explain how income taxes are exceptionally harmful to liberty compared to other means of funding a government. This is not to say that you cannot use the word "pernicious", but your use of it is remarkable. In reality, you're borrowing language from what seems to be a contemporary anti-tax crackpot. All you did was use uncommon language to repeatedly assert that income taxes are bad. You said nothing to actually support that assertion or provide any more detail. There was nothing superficial or peripheral about your word choice; it was clearly the most carefully thought out aspect of your comment. There's no content in your comment to have a meaningful discussion about except the rhetorical tactics and allusions. And to cap it off, your first response to criticism was an incorrect usage of the term ad hominem.
- jnbiche 9y ago
  Does "pernicious" have some kind of political connotation now?
  - ericd 9y ago
    Seriously, this is ridiculous.
  - wtallis 9y ago
    The word "pernicious" is very rare outside of a medical context, but the top Google result for "pernicious to liberty" is an anti-income tax screed.
    - CryptoPunk 9y ago
      >>the top Google result for "pernicious to liberty" is an anti-income tax screed. That's hardly surprising. You chose a search term that was very likely going to get hits with anti-tax types. If you simply searched "pernicious" you would find it being used in many, ideologically diverse, contexts. Your real problem is with the position espoused (that the income tax is anti-liberty). The use of the term "pernicious" is incidental to that. EDIT: The top results I'm getting for "pernicious to liberty" aren't even dominated by tax-related articles: https://www.google.com/search?q="pernicious+to+liberty" https://www.google.com/search?q="pernicious+to+liberty"
asfasgasg 9y ago
Most new taxes come about at times when the locality creating them is under financial stress. Wars are financially stressful. Thus you'd expect that any given new modality of taxation would be created, with some relatively high probability, in proximity to a war.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  Financial stress is not exactly the condition correlating with the creation of new taxes. A tax does not relieve financial stress in any general way. If it did, we would constantly raise taxes. What a tax does is enforce a collective use of financial resources. The demand for such enforced collectivism increases when a threat emerges that can only be adequately dealt with using such collective action. A foreign nation, engaged in organized violence, aka war, against a nation, is the most extreme example of a situation where enforcing collective action provides a benefit to the majority, and thus that's when people are most likely to sacrifice their liberty and accept a new tax.

cozzyd 9y ago

Which countries don't have income tax?

charlesdm 9y ago
Small countries, mostly tax havens. Investment income is not classified as income in most jurisdictions.. so doesn't really matter.
CryptoPunk 9y ago
I think every major economy has an income tax. There's quite a bit of syncronization between political systems, because political and cultural trends tend to transcend borders. There are quite a few countries which do not have global income reporting requirements. Singapore is probably the most notable example. Some European countries absolve non-domicile residents of the requirement to report global income in exchange for a flat annual fee, like 100,000 EUR. So it is possible to live a life without being forced to surrender your natural rights like your wealth and your privacy, but it's expensive.

zorpner 9y ago

There's got to be a better term than "reverse virtue signaling" to describe how the use of specific terminology (outside of a legal setting) like "pernicious", "females", or "virtue signaling" instantly means that someone can be safely dismissed.

CryptoPunk 9y ago
This is called ad hominem. No matter how tempting it is, it's better to refrain from it. Focusing on superficial and peripheral qualities like use of particular words, instead of the claim being made, is fundamentally anti-intellectual.
- wtallis 9y ago
  There's nothing anti-intellectual about questioning your phrasing. You're just pissed that anyone is calling attention to your rhetorical tactics, because that blunts their effect. And without the flowery language, your comment has almost no substance. Stripping your comment of its rhetorical content to get at the logical meat of the argument is required in order to have an honest intellectual discussion.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    It's not merely questioning phrasing. It's saying that use of a certain set of words, including "pernicious" and "female", is an indicator of holding beliefs that are so wrong that the comment warrants total dismissal. >>You're just pissed that anyone is calling attention to your rhetorical tactics, But using a word like "female" is not a rhetorical tactic.. You're imparting motives without any evidence beyond broad paranoid generalizations. It might be part of a rhetorical tactic in some particular instance, but I can't assume it indicates that based on the use of the word alone. That would be ridiculous and anti-intellectual. It's Orwellian to effectively blacklist a particular set of words as wrongthink, and it is disingenuous to claim that the use of these words is a "rhetorical tactic", or that calling for comments containing these words to be ignored is merely "questioning the phrasing".
    - wtallis 9y ago
      Considering that your comment at issue didn't actually contain a gratuitous use of "female", you perhaps shouldn't focus too much of your argument on that bit and instead defend yourself only in regards to what you're actually being accused of. You've repeatedly used the term "natural right" without defining what you mean by that, and without explaining why income taxes are a particularly egregious infringement on those rights. All you've done vaguely state that income taxes infringe on a category of rights that by their very name can only be infringed unjustly. "Pernicious" is not a word that anyone uses conversationally today. It's archaic. (According to Google Ngram, usage of "pernicious" peaked around the time of the American Revolution.) A phrase like "pernicious to liberty" is the kind of thing you write when you want to give the impression that you're quoting a famous scholar from a few centuries ago. It does nothing to explain how income taxes are exceptionally harmful to liberty compared to other means of funding a government. This is not to say that you cannot use the word "pernicious", but your use of it is remarkable. In reality, you're borrowing language from what seems to be a contemporary anti-tax crackpot. All you did was use uncommon language to repeatedly assert that income taxes are bad. You said nothing to actually support that assertion or provide any more detail. There was nothing superficial or peripheral about your word choice; it was clearly the most carefully thought out aspect of your comment. There's no content in your comment to have a meaningful discussion about except the rhetorical tactics and allusions. And to cap it off, your first response to criticism was an incorrect usage of the term ad hominem.
jnbiche 9y ago
Does "pernicious" have some kind of political connotation now?
- ericd 9y ago
  Seriously, this is ridiculous.
- wtallis 9y ago
  The word "pernicious" is very rare outside of a medical context, but the top Google result for "pernicious to liberty" is an anti-income tax screed.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    >>the top Google result for "pernicious to liberty" is an anti-income tax screed. That's hardly surprising. You chose a search term that was very likely going to get hits with anti-tax types. If you simply searched "pernicious" you would find it being used in many, ideologically diverse, contexts. Your real problem is with the position espoused (that the income tax is anti-liberty). The use of the term "pernicious" is incidental to that. EDIT: The top results I'm getting for "pernicious to liberty" aren't even dominated by tax-related articles: https://www.google.com/search?q="pernicious+to+liberty" https://www.google.com/search?q="pernicious+to+liberty"

asfasgasg 9y ago

Most new taxes come about at times when the locality creating them is under financial stress. Wars are financially stressful. Thus you'd expect that any given new modality of taxation would be created, with some relatively high probability, in proximity to a war.

CryptoPunk 9y ago
Financial stress is not exactly the condition correlating with the creation of new taxes. A tax does not relieve financial stress in any general way. If it did, we would constantly raise taxes. What a tax does is enforce a collective use of financial resources. The demand for such enforced collectivism increases when a threat emerges that can only be adequately dealt with using such collective action. A foreign nation, engaged in organized violence, aka war, against a nation, is the most extreme example of a situation where enforcing collective action provides a benefit to the majority, and thus that's when people are most likely to sacrifice their liberty and accept a new tax.