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We did not have income taxes - or any other individual taxes - for the first 100+ years, and yet we managed not to bottom out. As for Ayn Rand, she was echoing
by stevenalowe 7y ago
We did not have income taxes - or any other individual taxes - for the first 100+ years, and yet we managed not to bottom out. As for Ayn Rand, she was echoing John Locke, among many many others throughout history. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_as_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_as_theft
- dctoedt 7y agoYou put your finger on it when you said we didn't have individual taxes. People still paid the taxes indirectly because those taxes (tariffs, customs duties, fees, etc.) were built into the price of the goods and services they bought. You can argue that those were somehow "voluntary" taxes because people had the choice not to buy the goods or services, but that argument breaks down when you talk about essentials (however one defines that), so that you're indirectly paying the tax whether you like it or not.
- stevenalowe 7y agointeresting - what "essential" was covered by tariffs in the early days?
- dctoedt 7y agoYour Wikipedia cite brought back memories of undergraduate poli-sci. But the notion that government rests on the consent of the governed is at best a pious aspiration — or, in the case of the American Declaration of Independence, a polemic — because as the American Revolution itself demonstrated, government rests on the acquiescence of the governed. The brute fact is that there will always be government — and there will always be taxation, because human nature is such that some people won't pay voluntarily if they think they can get away with not doing so (hence my mention above of the free-rider problem).
- stevenalowe 7y agoso the solution to the free-rider problem is...force. ergo, theft. QED