10 ms·
> That is money being stolen from the treasury. Actually, that is money being stolen by the treasury from the business owner.
by alt_f4 7y ago
> That is money being stolen from the treasury.
Actually, that is money being stolen by the treasury from the business owner.
- chowells 7y agoNo. Taxes are not theft. Taxes are payment for services. Failure to pay is theft.
- hollerith 7y agoThere is a big difference between the things your comment calls services and, e.g., Netflix's streaming service: namely, it is relatively easy to cancel Netflix's streaming service, and after I cancel, I no longer have to pay.
- ladon86 7y agoYou can cancel your USA membership too - just renounce your citizenship and move to a service you find more appealing. Then you no longer have to pay.
- hollerith 7y agoHence the relatively easy in the comment you are replying to.
- save_ferris 7y agoHow do you propose basic services you use every day (i.e. infrastructure) are paid for if not through taxes?
- hollerith 7y agoI never suggested eliminating taxes.
- alt_f4 7y agopay as you go, like tolls
- save_ferris 7y agoHow would that work for something like the Hanford nuclear contamination zone[0], which threatens the water supply for millions of Americans? The cost to clean up the contamination has run into the billions, and yet there's no apparent private incentive to clean up this mess. If the market doesn't present a solution, are those millions of Americans just screwed? How would you effectively pay for services that maintain the community behind the scenes, i.e. police and fire department? Swipe a card every time they show up? How would we pay for the military without taxes? Just sell contracts to private security firms? How do we hold those firms accountable when they commit war crimes, as we recently saw from a former Blackwater contractor[1]? But then how do we pay for the justice system to hold those accountable if not through tax revenue? Make it so only those who can pay can participate? 0: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hanford-cost-20161216-story.html https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hanford-cost-20161216-s... 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/politics/blackwater-nicholas-slatten.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/politics/blackwater-ni...
- alt_f4 7y agoRe. the nuclear thing: so you're saying you need govt funding to solve a problem created by the govt? Also, you are overestimating my desire to pay for foreign military adventures. Your point about the police is actually great: the quality of customer service is so bad, racist and ineffective, that if they were a private enterprise, they'd have gone bankrupt. Generally, I'm not saying the govt should have no role in things, I'm just in favor of reducing its current involvement by about 80%, along with the productivity it robs from workers and business.
- clarkmoody 7y agoNot so fast. You not only have to pay a fee to renounce, but your leaving is contingent upon approval by the state. So, no, you can't "just leave" if you don't like it.
- clarkmoody 7y agoYour use or non-use of public services has no bearing on the amount you must pay in income tax. Failure to pay taxes is illegal, not theft. Theft is stealing the property of another. If income is the product of your physical labor, and the state owns your productive output (making tax avoidance theft, as you propose) then you are a slave.