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I believe things are so much better now thanks to technological and social improvements which are orthogonal to, and not caused by, taxation. Your argument see

by sneak 3y ago

I believe things are so much better now thanks to technological and social improvements which are orthogonal to, and not caused by, taxation. Your argument seems to be like the pirates and global warming one; correlation is not causation. A steelman argument might be that tax-funded schools and mandated public education caused these things, but ultimately the root cause there would be greater access to education, not the taxes used to fund them. Improving educational outcomes is not dependent on taxes; we use laws to force people to buy automobile insurance and the same could be done with children’s education without the state in the payment loop. Indeed, private schools are routinely better for educational outcomes than the ones funded by taxes. By this logic (that taxation is the basis for the progress in society) one should see greater technological and social advances and quality of life with increased taxation and more centralized standardization, but we don’t. Instead we got a forever drone war and the military-industrial complex. For every GPS or space shuttle or NIST, there is also an Iraq or Vietnam or Afghanistan.

autoexec 3y ago
It doesn't matter how advanced police cars and police training have become over the years if poor people don't have access to their protection. Without taxes, the poor would still get nothing and the rich would still get as much technologically advanced protection as they can afford. Schools have computers today, but even if they'd had chromebooks in the early 1900s, schools would still have been for the elite and the poor would still have been mostly uneducated. Increased taxation absolutely leads to greater technological and social advances and quality of life but only to the extent that those taxes are spent well and only up to a certain point. There's a point of diminishing returns for everything after all. The nice thing about taxes is that we're supposed to be able to have some say in how they're spent, in order to make sure that spending is reasonable. It's a failure of our democracy that we don't have a better handle on massive wastes of spending (like Vietnam or Afghanistan), but not a failure of the very concept of taxation. Taxes are amazing, but the lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability is a real problem. Thankfully it's also one we have the power to fix (and if we don't, we'll need to accept that we have a very different form of government than we tell ourselves we've got)
- sneak 3y ago
  Even with perfect control over allocation, I still disagree with the philosophical concept of taxation because it is done nonconsensually under threat of force. There is no use of tax money that justifies institutionalized armed robbery, it is morally indefensible to violate consent using the threat of violence. You could tax everyone only $1 and use it exclusively for neonatal care and it would still be morally repugnant. If taxes truly represent the will of the people, and people truly believe they are good, they would pay them even if not placed at gunpoint. “There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to buy something he does not want simply because you think it would be good for him.” —Heinlein It seems to me that most of your arguments bring up wealth inequality. At that point, why bother with income taxes? Wouldn’t a simple wealth tax on assets over some threshold address the inequality more directly? If wealth redistribution is the goal, why should non-wealthy people pay any taxes?
  - lawlessone 3y ago
    >You could tax everyone only $1 and use it exclusively for neonatal care and it would still be morally repugnant. I have to hand it too you for at least admitting your views there. >If taxes truly represent the will of the people, and people truly believe they are good, they would pay them even if not placed at gunpoint. People aren't like that though. If they were , we wouldn't have car clamps. I don't think you can argue a tax paying for neonatal care is repugnant and at that same time argue people will pay for what is good.
    - sneak 3y ago
      The difference is one of consent, which is what my example was constructed to illustrate. One is under threat, the other is voluntary.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    I'd argue that collectively we do consent to taxation because we want the massive benefits it gets us. Naturally not everyone in the country agrees with the vast majority of the people, but those that don't still reap the benefits and are free to try to come up with equal or better alternatives or to convince the rest of the nation to give up interstate highways, public schools, police protection for everybody, or publicly funded science. If folks like you who don't want taxes ever manages to come up with something better I, and every one else, will be more than happy to keep all of our money to ourselves and still enjoy all of the benefits we get from taxation today. Until then, you've got a hard sell. I just wish that there were places still unclaimed by any government where people who wanted no part in our tax funded society could go to fend for themselves as truly free people. I'd love to see what you guys manage to come up with. There's lots of room in space, but we'll probably need a lot more time and tax money to get there.

by sneak 3y ago

autoexec 3y ago

It doesn't matter how advanced police cars and police training have become over the years if poor people don't have access to their protection. Without taxes, the poor would still get nothing and the rich would still get as much technologically advanced protection as they can afford. Schools have computers today, but even if they'd had chromebooks in the early 1900s, schools would still have been for the elite and the poor would still have been mostly uneducated. Increased taxation absolutely leads to greater technological and social advances and quality of life but only to the extent that those taxes are spent well and only up to a certain point. There's a point of diminishing returns for everything after all. The nice thing about taxes is that we're supposed to be able to have some say in how they're spent, in order to make sure that spending is reasonable. It's a failure of our democracy that we don't have a better handle on massive wastes of spending (like Vietnam or Afghanistan), but not a failure of the very concept of taxation. Taxes are amazing, but the lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability is a real problem. Thankfully it's also one we have the power to fix (and if we don't, we'll need to accept that we have a very different form of government than we tell ourselves we've got)

sneak 3y ago
Even with perfect control over allocation, I still disagree with the philosophical concept of taxation because it is done nonconsensually under threat of force. There is no use of tax money that justifies institutionalized armed robbery, it is morally indefensible to violate consent using the threat of violence. You could tax everyone only $1 and use it exclusively for neonatal care and it would still be morally repugnant. If taxes truly represent the will of the people, and people truly believe they are good, they would pay them even if not placed at gunpoint. “There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to buy something he does not want simply because you think it would be good for him.” —Heinlein It seems to me that most of your arguments bring up wealth inequality. At that point, why bother with income taxes? Wouldn’t a simple wealth tax on assets over some threshold address the inequality more directly? If wealth redistribution is the goal, why should non-wealthy people pay any taxes?
- lawlessone 3y ago
  >You could tax everyone only $1 and use it exclusively for neonatal care and it would still be morally repugnant. I have to hand it too you for at least admitting your views there. >If taxes truly represent the will of the people, and people truly believe they are good, they would pay them even if not placed at gunpoint. People aren't like that though. If they were , we wouldn't have car clamps. I don't think you can argue a tax paying for neonatal care is repugnant and at that same time argue people will pay for what is good.
  - sneak 3y ago
    The difference is one of consent, which is what my example was constructed to illustrate. One is under threat, the other is voluntary.
- autoexec 3y ago
  I'd argue that collectively we do consent to taxation because we want the massive benefits it gets us. Naturally not everyone in the country agrees with the vast majority of the people, but those that don't still reap the benefits and are free to try to come up with equal or better alternatives or to convince the rest of the nation to give up interstate highways, public schools, police protection for everybody, or publicly funded science. If folks like you who don't want taxes ever manages to come up with something better I, and every one else, will be more than happy to keep all of our money to ourselves and still enjoy all of the benefits we get from taxation today. Until then, you've got a hard sell. I just wish that there were places still unclaimed by any government where people who wanted no part in our tax funded society could go to fend for themselves as truly free people. I'd love to see what you guys manage to come up with. There's lots of room in space, but we'll probably need a lot more time and tax money to get there.