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My government uses my taxes to buy goods and services in the local market. Is that defrauding or just the nature of providing government? This article is on som
by wjnc 8y ago
My government uses my taxes to buy goods and services in the local market. Is that defrauding or just the nature of providing government? This article is on somewhat loose economic grounds, I fear. People paid taxes, albeit to the coloniser, some people could sell their goods at market prices. Things we still find pretty reasonable. On top of that compounding at 5% for 250 yrs is not a good way to create current dollars. That's a compound factor of 200k. Five dollars of taxes in the early periods equals one million dollars in their narrative.
- pickdenis 8y agoWhen the government buys things with tax money, the things are supposed to be used for the benefit of people who paid the taxes. It doesn't seem like the Company even pretended that this was the case.
- kolbe 8y agoMost tax dollars in most countries are not spent on goods and services for the benefit of the people who paid them.
- pickdenis 8y agoBut there's at least a pretense that it (goods purchased with tax money) will be, right? Forget about what actually happens for a moment and consider that the tax-collecting colonists didn't even seem to bother with such a pretense. The way I understand it, they just bought the goods, turned around, and sold them again (which does not align with any notion of "providing government"). Of course, I know very little about economics or history, but I just wanted to point out what I thought was a logical inconsistency in the root comment.
- kolbe 8y agoI disagree. The pretense makes it worse. I think there's something far more comforting about the honesty of a government just stealing my money and owning up to it. Don't waste time and distort my perception of the world with that bullshit.
- gumby 8y agoI doubt that's actually true, especially in the 21st century.
- iguy 8y ago> ... tax money ... used for the benefit of people who paid the taxes This is a surprising recent notion. The Mughals sure didn't conquer territory to tax it for the peasant's benefit -- the entire purpose of conquering land was to extract taxes from these peasants, for yourself & your army.
- notahacker 8y agoYep. This is also a weakness of the original article, with its "If India had been able to invest its own tax revenues and foreign exchange earnings in development" which seems to rather ignore the fundamental reason the East India Company was able to take over the subcontinent in the first place is that the various Indian empires and fiefdoms had ploughed rather more into conflict and ceremony than exploiting India's headstart in areas like steel working. Indian economist Amartya Sen is fond of pointing out that although India has no shortage of hungry people, it hasn't had a famine since the departure of the British. But he's also keen to point out that the significant difference is that the average Indian person now gets to vote governments in and out of power. This wasn't the case under the British, but it also wasn't the case when Shah Jahan dedicated more tax revenue to monumental architecture and unsuccessfully attempting to conquer Qandahar than resolving the Deccan Famine.
- InGodsName 8y agoI don't understand this comment. If tax money of the tax payers of India is used to buy good/services for the tax payers of Britain. How is it not defrauding?
- BeetleB 8y agoI think you don't understand taxes. My tax money is used to buy goods/services for people in other states. Not only is that not considered fraud, it is a fundamental reason taxes exist.
- whoisninja 8y agoit is defrauding and if you consider the atrocities, shady unethical ways to enslave mass population, the Bengal famine of 1943 - you should be shocked the so called "sir" winston churchill was after all a mass murderer in a sense. of course it is about power and exercising power, India should have fought back harder to protect itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/winston-churchill-genocide-dictator-shashi-tharoor-melbourne-writers-festival-a7936141.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/winst...
- gumby 8y agoWell, a representative government taxing its own people to provide services (e.g. manage externalities) is not theft, wild-eyed libertarian rants notwithstanding. Showing up unasked and extract taxes to fund projects in your own interest, only some of which are even of use to locals, is unambiguously theft.