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I am entitled to keep what I have earned. Taking my earnings is a moral wrong. There is no two ways about it. It is no more right to take a dollar from a man wh

by lutorm 16y ago

I am entitled to keep what I have earned. Taking my earnings is a moral wrong. There is no two ways about it. It is no more right to take a dollar from a man who has a hundred of them than it is to take a dollar from a man who has one. Just to be clear, you are stating your moral opinion. There is nothing inherent about these opinions. Just like my opinion that if you are rich you have likely benefited disproportionately from and made use of the structures of society that made it possible for you to get rich, and as such it's perfectly reasonable to ask you to contribute from your wealth to the upkeep of society is also just an opinion. And speaking of moral wrongs, what about the moral obligation to help people those who are less fortunate?

il 16y ago
I just want to point out that most of the taxes you pay in the US do not go to the upkeep of society you may benefit from (which we can define as schools, police, education, etc). Most of your tax money either goes to propping up a bloated military-industrial complex, maintaining bases overseas, counterterrorism ops, foreign aid to oppressive regimes, etc etc. If you're a pro-tax liberal you're probably against high defense spending, but you're perfectly happy to keep funding it with your tax dollars. Just food for thought. EDIT: If you want to quibble, the majority of discretionary spending is military(not counting Social Security/Medicare). Since that's where your income tax dollars go, it's a reasonable argument to make.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  These claims need citations. And remember, we don't just pay federal income taxes. We also pay state incomes tax (most states), sales tax (most states and locales), property tax, item taxes (like luxury taxes), FICA tax, etc... While I'm sure a LOT of money goes to the military, I'm not sure I believe it is most of it.
  - il 16y ago
    Maybe if more Americans knew how much we were spending on war they would be less inclined to support it. "Death and Taxes" is a well-known and clear infographic of government spending: http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/ http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/ It shows military and security spending as 63% of the 2011 budget(895 billion). The discussion here seems mostly about the income tax, so I'm focusing on that. I'm not morally opposed to paying taxes to live in a civilized society. I AM opposed to two thirds of my money being spent on instruments of death and building up the American war machine.
    - DannoHung 16y ago
      63% of the discretionary budget. If you look at non-discretionary spending as well, you'll see that it's like.. less than 20% of the money spent.
      - il 16y ago
        Right, all I was saying is that the majority of the _income tax_ you pay goes to military spending. I'm not counting FICA, as nobody is discussing raising or lower those taxes.
- lutorm 16y ago
  It's true that if I had grown up in the US and not in Sweden, I might be more tax-averse than I ended up being... There is a difference between what you get in practice for paying your taxes in the US and the principle of taxation in general. One of the things that amaze/frustrate me about the US taxes is that noone ever suggests that maybe the military budget could be cut by 50% or so...
  - nollidge 16y ago
    Oh, people suggest it often enough, but they're successfully shouted down afterward (which is probably why you haven't really heard of them).
- gvb 16y ago
  Statistics are only a google search away. At least make an attempt at a citation to support your assertion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY... (FY 2009 per the actual graphic, despite the file name)
- jbooth 16y ago
  "If you're a pro-tax liberal" Have you ever, once in your life, met someone who identified as a "pro-tax liberal"? Didn't think so.
  - il 16y ago
    I'm just drawing a distinction. I would describe myself as an anti tax liberal.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Eh, I think both of those are silly framings. Nobody likes paying taxes. I'm a "pro balanced budget" liberal, and that meant that throughout the Bush years I was saying "Hey, we're gonna have to pay for these tax cuts eventually", while simultaneously saying "Hey, let's cut defense and homeland security spending because at least 1/2 of it is BS that doesn't make us safer." Not like I love the idea of paying more taxes, or of quote "big government" - I just give basic arithmetic a lot of respect.
      - il 16y ago
        If nobody likes paying taxes then, why don't we as a society legislate ourselves lower taxes and cuts in defense spending? I believe there is a famous quote about that.
tomhoward 16y ago
To suggest that taxation equals help for those less fortunate and is therefore a moral obligation is a non-sequitur, particularly in this age of bailouts of banks and car companies. Even if it wasn't, no moral obligation is being satisfied when such "help" is forcibly extracted. Further, it can be convincingly argued that such forcible extraction and wasteful reallocation of wealth reduces many people's capacity and willingness to voluntarily help those less fortunate.
Gormo 16y ago
What are these structures of society that make it possible for people to succeed? Society isn't some uniform, monolithic thing that exists in own right, that we either choose to participate in or not. Society is the product of actual relationships among real people. They don't depend upon external institutions as a precondition of cooperating toward mutual benefit, but establish those institutions as a consequence of doing so. Everything we call 'society' is the result of people making the choice to interact with each other. From there, communities arise, customs emerge, and economies develop. But every tax, regulation, divisive political program, and every faction seeking to impose its narrow agenda on everyone at once just have the effect of raising the stakes of participating in society. They give people more to lose and more to fear in openly relating to others; people become less likely to form stable networks of trust and more likely to become isolated, disconnected, and paranoid. When we so stridently pursue policies intended to 'upkeep' an abstract, taken-for-granted concept of society, we risk undermining the basis on which real, actual societies function.
- lutorm 16y ago
  What are these structures of society that make it possible for people to succeed? How about enforcement of contracts, roads, and currency, to name the first three that came to mind? But every tax, regulation, divisive political program, and every faction seeking to impose its narrow agenda on everyone at once just have the effect of raising the stakes of participating in society. They give people more to lose and more to fear in openly relating to others; people become less likely to form stable networks of trust and more likely to become isolated, disconnected, and paranoid. I have no idea where you came up with this. It's empirically falsified just by looking at which of the populations of low-tax, laissez-faire America and high-tax, social democrat Western Europe is the most disconnected and paranoid...
  - Gormo 16y ago
    Roads and currency? I suppose we could get into a detailed conversation about how well decentralized, voluntary forms of organization could create and sustain these - I'd suggest that they could, and often do - but for the sake of argument, I'll concede the point. Roads are slabs of pavement in the ground; currency are tokens used as a means of exchange. These are pretty mundane things, hardly the wellspring of society, and I do hope you'd agree that roads, currency, and other similar goods are consequences of, and not prerequisites for, a well-functioning society. The question of contract enforcement is more interesting. I would entirely agree that law is a necessary mechanism, without which the few 'bad apples' in society would spoil the rest. But I think it's important to note that if breaches of contract - that is, failure of people to maintain their voluntary arrangements in good faith - were the general case rather than outliers, no amount of law could prevent society from failing. The judicial process is a tool we can use as a fallback solution to protect those arrangements we freely create with others. But it should be clearly distinguished from the regulatory mentality which seeks to prescriptively define those relationships in advance, and compel adherence to a set of prepackaged social models without specific regard to the preferences and expectations of the individuals in each case. The regulatory model designs the overarching system around the outlier failure conditions rather than permitting the flexibility that optimizes the general case. Law is appropriately the brake pedal, not the gas. I'd disagree with your perceptions of America as being particularly disconnected and paranoid - Americans are stereotypically confident and optimistic - although I think that individualism and cultural pluralism in America might often lead to more paranoia about social policies that seek universal solutions to complex problems. There may be a reason why the social democratic model seems to work most effectively in the cultures where 'Jante law' is most evident.

by lutorm 16y ago

il 16y ago

I just want to point out that most of the taxes you pay in the US do not go to the upkeep of society you may benefit from (which we can define as schools, police, education, etc). Most of your tax money either goes to propping up a bloated military-industrial complex, maintaining bases overseas, counterterrorism ops, foreign aid to oppressive regimes, etc etc. If you're a pro-tax liberal you're probably against high defense spending, but you're perfectly happy to keep funding it with your tax dollars. Just food for thought. EDIT: If you want to quibble, the majority of discretionary spending is military(not counting Social Security/Medicare). Since that's where your income tax dollars go, it's a reasonable argument to make.

kenjackson 16y ago
These claims need citations. And remember, we don't just pay federal income taxes. We also pay state incomes tax (most states), sales tax (most states and locales), property tax, item taxes (like luxury taxes), FICA tax, etc... While I'm sure a LOT of money goes to the military, I'm not sure I believe it is most of it.
- il 16y ago
  Maybe if more Americans knew how much we were spending on war they would be less inclined to support it. "Death and Taxes" is a well-known and clear infographic of government spending: http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/ http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/ It shows military and security spending as 63% of the 2011 budget(895 billion). The discussion here seems mostly about the income tax, so I'm focusing on that. I'm not morally opposed to paying taxes to live in a civilized society. I AM opposed to two thirds of my money being spent on instruments of death and building up the American war machine.
  - DannoHung 16y ago
    63% of the discretionary budget. If you look at non-discretionary spending as well, you'll see that it's like.. less than 20% of the money spent.
    - il 16y ago
      Right, all I was saying is that the majority of the _income tax_ you pay goes to military spending. I'm not counting FICA, as nobody is discussing raising or lower those taxes.
lutorm 16y ago
It's true that if I had grown up in the US and not in Sweden, I might be more tax-averse than I ended up being... There is a difference between what you get in practice for paying your taxes in the US and the principle of taxation in general. One of the things that amaze/frustrate me about the US taxes is that noone ever suggests that maybe the military budget could be cut by 50% or so...
- nollidge 16y ago
  Oh, people suggest it often enough, but they're successfully shouted down afterward (which is probably why you haven't really heard of them).
gvb 16y ago
Statistics are only a google search away. At least make an attempt at a citation to support your assertion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY... (FY 2009 per the actual graphic, despite the file name)
jbooth 16y ago
"If you're a pro-tax liberal" Have you ever, once in your life, met someone who identified as a "pro-tax liberal"? Didn't think so.
- il 16y ago
  I'm just drawing a distinction. I would describe myself as an anti tax liberal.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Eh, I think both of those are silly framings. Nobody likes paying taxes. I'm a "pro balanced budget" liberal, and that meant that throughout the Bush years I was saying "Hey, we're gonna have to pay for these tax cuts eventually", while simultaneously saying "Hey, let's cut defense and homeland security spending because at least 1/2 of it is BS that doesn't make us safer." Not like I love the idea of paying more taxes, or of quote "big government" - I just give basic arithmetic a lot of respect.
    - il 16y ago
      If nobody likes paying taxes then, why don't we as a society legislate ourselves lower taxes and cuts in defense spending? I believe there is a famous quote about that.

tomhoward 16y ago

To suggest that taxation equals help for those less fortunate and is therefore a moral obligation is a non-sequitur, particularly in this age of bailouts of banks and car companies. Even if it wasn't, no moral obligation is being satisfied when such "help" is forcibly extracted. Further, it can be convincingly argued that such forcible extraction and wasteful reallocation of wealth reduces many people's capacity and willingness to voluntarily help those less fortunate.

Gormo 16y ago

What are these structures of society that make it possible for people to succeed? Society isn't some uniform, monolithic thing that exists in own right, that we either choose to participate in or not. Society is the product of actual relationships among real people. They don't depend upon external institutions as a precondition of cooperating toward mutual benefit, but establish those institutions as a consequence of doing so. Everything we call 'society' is the result of people making the choice to interact with each other. From there, communities arise, customs emerge, and economies develop. But every tax, regulation, divisive political program, and every faction seeking to impose its narrow agenda on everyone at once just have the effect of raising the stakes of participating in society. They give people more to lose and more to fear in openly relating to others; people become less likely to form stable networks of trust and more likely to become isolated, disconnected, and paranoid. When we so stridently pursue policies intended to 'upkeep' an abstract, taken-for-granted concept of society, we risk undermining the basis on which real, actual societies function.

lutorm 16y ago
What are these structures of society that make it possible for people to succeed? How about enforcement of contracts, roads, and currency, to name the first three that came to mind? But every tax, regulation, divisive political program, and every faction seeking to impose its narrow agenda on everyone at once just have the effect of raising the stakes of participating in society. They give people more to lose and more to fear in openly relating to others; people become less likely to form stable networks of trust and more likely to become isolated, disconnected, and paranoid. I have no idea where you came up with this. It's empirically falsified just by looking at which of the populations of low-tax, laissez-faire America and high-tax, social democrat Western Europe is the most disconnected and paranoid...
- Gormo 16y ago
  Roads and currency? I suppose we could get into a detailed conversation about how well decentralized, voluntary forms of organization could create and sustain these - I'd suggest that they could, and often do - but for the sake of argument, I'll concede the point. Roads are slabs of pavement in the ground; currency are tokens used as a means of exchange. These are pretty mundane things, hardly the wellspring of society, and I do hope you'd agree that roads, currency, and other similar goods are consequences of, and not prerequisites for, a well-functioning society. The question of contract enforcement is more interesting. I would entirely agree that law is a necessary mechanism, without which the few 'bad apples' in society would spoil the rest. But I think it's important to note that if breaches of contract - that is, failure of people to maintain their voluntary arrangements in good faith - were the general case rather than outliers, no amount of law could prevent society from failing. The judicial process is a tool we can use as a fallback solution to protect those arrangements we freely create with others. But it should be clearly distinguished from the regulatory mentality which seeks to prescriptively define those relationships in advance, and compel adherence to a set of prepackaged social models without specific regard to the preferences and expectations of the individuals in each case. The regulatory model designs the overarching system around the outlier failure conditions rather than permitting the flexibility that optimizes the general case. Law is appropriately the brake pedal, not the gas. I'd disagree with your perceptions of America as being particularly disconnected and paranoid - Americans are stereotypically confident and optimistic - although I think that individualism and cultural pluralism in America might often lead to more paranoia about social policies that seek universal solutions to complex problems. There may be a reason why the social democratic model seems to work most effectively in the cultures where 'Jante law' is most evident.