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>If local taxes were done at a uniform rate statewide, would it helps In general, Americans hate taxes because they hate the idea that "their" money might go t

>If local taxes were done at a uniform rate statewide, would it helps In general, Americans hate taxes because they hate the idea that "their" money might go to someone undeserving.

mc32 5y ago
It, in fact, is their money. There was a time in American history when income taxes were not a thing and still we got along. It’s not a bad thing to pool money for common causes, but to claim it isn’t their or our money is kind of odd.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  It's only their money because the economic system assigns it to them. If the economic system was different then it wouldn't be theirs.
  - mc32 5y ago
    That's like saying it's only their house because we allow them to own a house. Or, those are their children because we allow them to keep their children and not assign them to the state. It's as if in lawless lands with tribal warfare suddenly people don't earn a living.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      Children are a bit different because they are actually created by the parents (and the personal relationship is of course super-important for the child's development). But generic economic resources: yes. Ownership of pretty much anything including houses relies on social acceptance of the rules of private property ownership and market value. And that social acceptance can be conditional on things like taxes to fund social goods. If you don't want to play by the democratically determined rules, then you shouldn't expect the state to defend your property.
      - mc32 5y ago
        I think that property-children is on a continuum. When you have raiding parties and tribal warfare, children were taken as slaves. From that PoV then children are in the same basket where they are protected by the norms of society, same as property. Saying you only own your money or house because we allow you to is like saying the only reason you don't get raped or killed is because we have a structure of laws against it. Yes?
    - jes5199 5y ago
      yes true. property, especially real estate, is a legal construct created by the state. In older eras this was more explicit, property existed “at the pleasure of the Queen” or whatever. Now we rely on a nebulous social consensus reinforced by the courts and legislature. Money is only a token within this game - it has no reality other than the rules. The rules are whatever society decides they are. There is not a “real” ownership that the rules are interfering with.
      - mc32 5y ago
        But that's true for any rights. The right to feel safe, the right to safety and not be harmed, raped or killed. Without society, sure, real-estate, personal safety are out the window and we could expect expropriation, rape and death.
      - frockington1 5y ago
        In the US property is also governed by ones rights to defend your property. We have castle doctrine for a reason
        defaultname 5y ago
        You have "Castle doctrine" because it was deemed politically beneficial to a politician at some point. That same politician that would happily turn your neighborhood into a strip mall through eminent domain if that was beneficial for them. You have banks literally foreclosing on the wrong homes, or through simple errors, making people homeless in the process, and those same politicians are "so sad". If you're in a Western nation and you "make" money, it is very much a partnership with the state, and your ability to "make" money would very likely disappear without the state. For someone to go on about "their" money has no correlation with actual reality, and I'd encourage them to ply their trade in Somalia. I'm sure the income tax rates are great.
        mc32 5y ago
        This is kind of circular reasoning. You might as well say you are only alive because the state lets you live. It's my life as much as money is my money. Yes, they can be taken away.
- minikites 5y ago
  The first US income tax was in 1861, I find it hard to believe "we got along" when we held a significant portion of the population as literal slaves.
  - mc32 5y ago
    That's very true for the south. Yet, the north still got on and did even better than the south. Never the less, you can go to any other place which didn't have slaves and they still got on without income taxes. And, if you go to parts of the middle east where slavery exists today, income taxes have not prevented it, so it's beside the point.
- titzer 5y ago
  It's your money like it's your water and your oxygen. Build some big tanks on your "property" and put machine gun nests around it to defend it. Everything in modern society is part of a social contract that includes thousands of people working to keep it from devolving into anarchist chaos of violence and subjugation.
  - mc32 5y ago
    That's understood. But I have as much right to my money as I have a right not to be raped. Society provides for all this in our social contract. We can choose to include income taxes in that, but we don't have to. We didn't have them initially as a republic.
    - titzer 5y ago
      We can "choose to include them" until we discover that it is unviable to fund the necessary services and find out society is completely dysfunctional without them. As expat returning to the US after 7 years, it's clear that US is headed in the wrong direction because it has made decades of poor choices, particularly w.r.t. taxation and long-term investments, and is sliding rapidly into dysfunction. And the confusion that has led to those poor choices seems pretty well-summarized in your first comment.
      - mc32 5y ago
        I'm not against taxes. There are things that can only be executed as a group. What I am against is the notion that it's not mine. That by default it belongs to the government and it's only out of the goodness of their heart they allow me to keep some. It's the other way around. We form a government and we decide what we want to contribute to it with taxes. We decide we need a school, a road, engage in war, etc., and we contribute to those efforts via tax contributions. I don't want to contribute to never ending wars, I don't want to contribute to subsidizing companies that export jobs, etc. I want money to train inner city kids, rural kids, not some reconstruction in some place that has much less immediate effect on us.
nicoburns 5y ago
It's just a theory, but I'm somewhat convinced that half the reason Americans hate taxes is because of how inconvenient and in your face they are in the US: IRS requires you to fill in a complex form with no help and punishes you if you get it wrong, and sales tax is not part of the advertised price of goods. I reckon if you got rid of that then people would care about taxes a lot less.
- minikites 5y ago
  Absolutely, and it's set up this way on purpose by people who believe that filing taxes should be as painful and difficult as possible so people associate the idea of taxes with the artificially difficult process. It doesn't have to be this way, the rest of us are just held hostage by anti-tax zealots.
  - snakeboy 5y ago
    Same principle as Cookie Banners. Wanting basic browsing privacy is being associated with an annoying, artificially difficult process.
  - flavius29663 5y ago
    You seriously think that people want less taxes just because they are difficult to file? Don't you think that paying 10-40 percentage points more (like in Europe) of your wage each month has something to do with it? The typical educated European makes 30k a year. 40-45% in taxes right off the bat. That makes the take home to be around 18k. Sales tax is around 20% throughout Europe. That takes it from 18k to 16k. Gas is double the price solely because of taxes Property tax can increase the housing cost by 10% Automobile property taxes are outrageous compared to the US. New vehicle registration tax can reach 150% in Denmark (if the car costs 30k, pay 45k to the state), but are pretty high everywhere. In Romania, to register a 10 year old car with a 2.4 liter engine you have to pay 6000 euros. In a country with the average wage 1000 a month. I find it so amusing that people think taxes are just an inconvenience. By the way, if you want to pay more, you can just donate your money to charities: you have a higher impact than giving it to government, much better directed at what you care about, very easy to do. Donate 10-20% of your raw income to an ngo, then talk about doing that for everyone, compulsory.
atmartins 5y ago
Maybe a lot of people are struggling to get by? "Their money" represents the ability to pay for food and housing so I'm not sure it's only about wanting others to suffer, as you imply. I think it's at least partially about their own sense of security.
- pwinnski 5y ago
  A government that provides nothing to support feelings of security in exchange for the taxes they collect is... not a good government.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
>the idea that "their" money might go to someone undeserving. I'm also pretty miffed at how much money has been wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq. The federal government gives heaps of money to other nations to spend on frivolous projects while our own infrastructure decays. My frustration at taxes and spending goes beyond the trope of Americans not liking the idea of giving money to the poor.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Foreign aid is tiny, like less than one percent of the budget. Foreign wars are definitely huge, however.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    I want to clarify that I am okay with foreign aid and disaster relief. The "foreign aid" that acts like soft bribes are the kind I really detest.
Karsteski 5y ago
Is that really the general consensus? If anything, so much of taxation goes to waste on bureaucracy and inane or downright criminal nonsense in the US. I live in Canada, and I basically consider it to be theft that my taxes that are taken from me forcefully go to places such as giant corporations, and military applications that I do not want to happen. OTOH, I think that taxation is important, and I'm happy that my taxes go to health services, something that Canada does relatively well, even though I don't necessarily benefit in the same way compared to people less fortunate than I am. Same for social services, for example. My point is that I don't think such feelings can be boiled down to "my money is going to people who don't deserve it". It's a complex topic and complex feelings which should be treated as such

>If local taxes were done at a uniform rate statewide, would it helps In general, Americans hate taxes because they hate the idea that "their" money might go to someone undeserving.

mc32 5y ago

It, in fact, is their money. There was a time in American history when income taxes were not a thing and still we got along. It’s not a bad thing to pool money for common causes, but to claim it isn’t their or our money is kind of odd.

nicoburns 5y ago
It's only their money because the economic system assigns it to them. If the economic system was different then it wouldn't be theirs.
- mc32 5y ago
  That's like saying it's only their house because we allow them to own a house. Or, those are their children because we allow them to keep their children and not assign them to the state. It's as if in lawless lands with tribal warfare suddenly people don't earn a living.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Children are a bit different because they are actually created by the parents (and the personal relationship is of course super-important for the child's development). But generic economic resources: yes. Ownership of pretty much anything including houses relies on social acceptance of the rules of private property ownership and market value. And that social acceptance can be conditional on things like taxes to fund social goods. If you don't want to play by the democratically determined rules, then you shouldn't expect the state to defend your property.
    - mc32 5y ago
      I think that property-children is on a continuum. When you have raiding parties and tribal warfare, children were taken as slaves. From that PoV then children are in the same basket where they are protected by the norms of society, same as property. Saying you only own your money or house because we allow you to is like saying the only reason you don't get raped or killed is because we have a structure of laws against it. Yes?
  - jes5199 5y ago
    yes true. property, especially real estate, is a legal construct created by the state. In older eras this was more explicit, property existed “at the pleasure of the Queen” or whatever. Now we rely on a nebulous social consensus reinforced by the courts and legislature. Money is only a token within this game - it has no reality other than the rules. The rules are whatever society decides they are. There is not a “real” ownership that the rules are interfering with.
    - mc32 5y ago
      But that's true for any rights. The right to feel safe, the right to safety and not be harmed, raped or killed. Without society, sure, real-estate, personal safety are out the window and we could expect expropriation, rape and death.
    - frockington1 5y ago
      In the US property is also governed by ones rights to defend your property. We have castle doctrine for a reason
      - defaultname 5y ago
        You have "Castle doctrine" because it was deemed politically beneficial to a politician at some point. That same politician that would happily turn your neighborhood into a strip mall through eminent domain if that was beneficial for them. You have banks literally foreclosing on the wrong homes, or through simple errors, making people homeless in the process, and those same politicians are "so sad". If you're in a Western nation and you "make" money, it is very much a partnership with the state, and your ability to "make" money would very likely disappear without the state. For someone to go on about "their" money has no correlation with actual reality, and I'd encourage them to ply their trade in Somalia. I'm sure the income tax rates are great.
        mc32 5y ago
        This is kind of circular reasoning. You might as well say you are only alive because the state lets you live. It's my life as much as money is my money. Yes, they can be taken away.
minikites 5y ago
The first US income tax was in 1861, I find it hard to believe "we got along" when we held a significant portion of the population as literal slaves.
- mc32 5y ago
  That's very true for the south. Yet, the north still got on and did even better than the south. Never the less, you can go to any other place which didn't have slaves and they still got on without income taxes. And, if you go to parts of the middle east where slavery exists today, income taxes have not prevented it, so it's beside the point.
titzer 5y ago
It's your money like it's your water and your oxygen. Build some big tanks on your "property" and put machine gun nests around it to defend it. Everything in modern society is part of a social contract that includes thousands of people working to keep it from devolving into anarchist chaos of violence and subjugation.
- mc32 5y ago
  That's understood. But I have as much right to my money as I have a right not to be raped. Society provides for all this in our social contract. We can choose to include income taxes in that, but we don't have to. We didn't have them initially as a republic.
  - titzer 5y ago
    We can "choose to include them" until we discover that it is unviable to fund the necessary services and find out society is completely dysfunctional without them. As expat returning to the US after 7 years, it's clear that US is headed in the wrong direction because it has made decades of poor choices, particularly w.r.t. taxation and long-term investments, and is sliding rapidly into dysfunction. And the confusion that has led to those poor choices seems pretty well-summarized in your first comment.
    - mc32 5y ago
      I'm not against taxes. There are things that can only be executed as a group. What I am against is the notion that it's not mine. That by default it belongs to the government and it's only out of the goodness of their heart they allow me to keep some. It's the other way around. We form a government and we decide what we want to contribute to it with taxes. We decide we need a school, a road, engage in war, etc., and we contribute to those efforts via tax contributions. I don't want to contribute to never ending wars, I don't want to contribute to subsidizing companies that export jobs, etc. I want money to train inner city kids, rural kids, not some reconstruction in some place that has much less immediate effect on us.

nicoburns 5y ago

It's just a theory, but I'm somewhat convinced that half the reason Americans hate taxes is because of how inconvenient and in your face they are in the US: IRS requires you to fill in a complex form with no help and punishes you if you get it wrong, and sales tax is not part of the advertised price of goods. I reckon if you got rid of that then people would care about taxes a lot less.

minikites 5y ago
Absolutely, and it's set up this way on purpose by people who believe that filing taxes should be as painful and difficult as possible so people associate the idea of taxes with the artificially difficult process. It doesn't have to be this way, the rest of us are just held hostage by anti-tax zealots.
- snakeboy 5y ago
  Same principle as Cookie Banners. Wanting basic browsing privacy is being associated with an annoying, artificially difficult process.
- flavius29663 5y ago
  You seriously think that people want less taxes just because they are difficult to file? Don't you think that paying 10-40 percentage points more (like in Europe) of your wage each month has something to do with it? The typical educated European makes 30k a year. 40-45% in taxes right off the bat. That makes the take home to be around 18k. Sales tax is around 20% throughout Europe. That takes it from 18k to 16k. Gas is double the price solely because of taxes Property tax can increase the housing cost by 10% Automobile property taxes are outrageous compared to the US. New vehicle registration tax can reach 150% in Denmark (if the car costs 30k, pay 45k to the state), but are pretty high everywhere. In Romania, to register a 10 year old car with a 2.4 liter engine you have to pay 6000 euros. In a country with the average wage 1000 a month. I find it so amusing that people think taxes are just an inconvenience. By the way, if you want to pay more, you can just donate your money to charities: you have a higher impact than giving it to government, much better directed at what you care about, very easy to do. Donate 10-20% of your raw income to an ngo, then talk about doing that for everyone, compulsory.

atmartins 5y ago

Maybe a lot of people are struggling to get by? "Their money" represents the ability to pay for food and housing so I'm not sure it's only about wanting others to suffer, as you imply. I think it's at least partially about their own sense of security.

pwinnski 5y ago
A government that provides nothing to support feelings of security in exchange for the taxes they collect is... not a good government.

BitwiseFool 5y ago

>the idea that "their" money might go to someone undeserving. I'm also pretty miffed at how much money has been wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq. The federal government gives heaps of money to other nations to spend on frivolous projects while our own infrastructure decays. My frustration at taxes and spending goes beyond the trope of Americans not liking the idea of giving money to the poor.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago
Foreign aid is tiny, like less than one percent of the budget. Foreign wars are definitely huge, however.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  I want to clarify that I am okay with foreign aid and disaster relief. The "foreign aid" that acts like soft bribes are the kind I really detest.

Karsteski 5y ago

Is that really the general consensus? If anything, so much of taxation goes to waste on bureaucracy and inane or downright criminal nonsense in the US. I live in Canada, and I basically consider it to be theft that my taxes that are taken from me forcefully go to places such as giant corporations, and military applications that I do not want to happen. OTOH, I think that taxation is important, and I'm happy that my taxes go to health services, something that Canada does relatively well, even though I don't necessarily benefit in the same way compared to people less fortunate than I am. Same for social services, for example. My point is that I don't think such feelings can be boiled down to "my money is going to people who don't deserve it". It's a complex topic and complex feelings which should be treated as such