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I have always believed that if you are forced to pay taxes then you must be given the right to vote. I thought it was incredulous that at 16 I was required to p

by ejs 18y ago

I have always believed that if you are forced to pay taxes then you must be given the right to vote. I thought it was incredulous that at 16 I was required to pay taxes yet unable to vote or influence where my money would go.

tocomment 18y ago
I was mad that at 16 I could legally work but couldn't legally enter into contracts. This prevented me from having a bank account in my own name. I was old enough to work, but not old enough to own the money I earned. (At least not in non-cash form.) I also couldn't spend my own earned money on any products requiring a contract be signed. So old enough to work, but not old enough to spend or save the proceeds.
bokonist 18y ago
You pay rent to your landlord, should you have the right to tell the landlord how to spend it? What is a government but a very big landlord?
- azanar 18y ago
  Your assertion hinges on the assumption that the government exists autonomously, apart from the people it represents. If my landlord claimed to represent me and my interests with the money I gave him, I would expect to have a say in how he spent it. This is the charter of any non-totalitarian government, and specifically that of all of the modern democracies.
  - bokonist 18y ago
    You are confusing ownership with being a customer. Customers pay rent/taxes. Owners exercise control. The charter of modern democracies promise equal ownership based on birth or residency, not on whether or not you pay rent. Or rather, the preamble states the goal of equal ownership. The fine print in the thousands of pages of legal code give actual ownership to an oligarchy of the civil service, congressional committees, and organized factions. You may like to get an ownership share based on paying rent, but you have no legal or moral claim to it, just as you have no legal or moral claim on controlling your landlords' spending. BTW, you are also confusing totalitarian with authoritarian. Authoritarians deals with the management structure of a government, totalitarian with the scope of its activities. The US government in 1800 was non-authoritarian, non-totalitarian. Stalin was authoritarian and totalitarian. USG in 2009 is non-authoritarian, totalitarian. Louis the XIV was authoritarian, non-totalitarian.
- anamax 18y ago
  I've yet to run into a landlord who could force me to join the army, throw me in jail, take money from me, etc. The only thing that landlords can do is evict me for failing to pay an agreed upon amount of money, and I even get to refuse to deal with specific landlords if I don't like the deal.
  - bokonist 18y ago
    You can renounce your citizenship and leave the country, and you are no longer subject to the draft nor U.S. taxes.
    - barry-cotter 18y ago
      The US IRS claims a right on your income for ten years after you renounce citizenship, which given the hoops you have to jump through to renounce US citizenship is a bit rich.
      - bokonist 18y ago
        In that case, we are serfs, not tenants. Sucks for us.
azanar 18y ago
I think your argument could go even deeper than that. If you are compelled to do anything by the State, I think you should argue quite effectively that the State should be compelled to take you and your concerns into account. Anything else creeps toward autocracy, at least against a particular group. This provides you are of sufficiently sophisticated mental function to know what concerns you and why. When such sophistication develops is an incredibly hard question; thus far, we have punted, and have decided to use physical ages. This may be the least oppressive way to handle this dilemma, but the cynic in me wonders if we do this only because it is only optimal in a very short-term and fuzzy cost/benefit analysis.
JacobAldridge 18y ago
"No taxation without representation." I have vague recollections of a Tea Party thrown to discuss that one... I agree with the principle of Scott's article (let's have a discussion and see if anything better shows up). Greater discussion may lead to better solutions like using taxation as the measure rather than a civics test.

by ejs 18y ago

tocomment 18y ago

I was mad that at 16 I could legally work but couldn't legally enter into contracts. This prevented me from having a bank account in my own name. I was old enough to work, but not old enough to own the money I earned. (At least not in non-cash form.) I also couldn't spend my own earned money on any products requiring a contract be signed. So old enough to work, but not old enough to spend or save the proceeds.

bokonist 18y ago

You pay rent to your landlord, should you have the right to tell the landlord how to spend it? What is a government but a very big landlord?

azanar 18y ago
Your assertion hinges on the assumption that the government exists autonomously, apart from the people it represents. If my landlord claimed to represent me and my interests with the money I gave him, I would expect to have a say in how he spent it. This is the charter of any non-totalitarian government, and specifically that of all of the modern democracies.
- bokonist 18y ago
  You are confusing ownership with being a customer. Customers pay rent/taxes. Owners exercise control. The charter of modern democracies promise equal ownership based on birth or residency, not on whether or not you pay rent. Or rather, the preamble states the goal of equal ownership. The fine print in the thousands of pages of legal code give actual ownership to an oligarchy of the civil service, congressional committees, and organized factions. You may like to get an ownership share based on paying rent, but you have no legal or moral claim to it, just as you have no legal or moral claim on controlling your landlords' spending. BTW, you are also confusing totalitarian with authoritarian. Authoritarians deals with the management structure of a government, totalitarian with the scope of its activities. The US government in 1800 was non-authoritarian, non-totalitarian. Stalin was authoritarian and totalitarian. USG in 2009 is non-authoritarian, totalitarian. Louis the XIV was authoritarian, non-totalitarian.
anamax 18y ago
I've yet to run into a landlord who could force me to join the army, throw me in jail, take money from me, etc. The only thing that landlords can do is evict me for failing to pay an agreed upon amount of money, and I even get to refuse to deal with specific landlords if I don't like the deal.
- bokonist 18y ago
  You can renounce your citizenship and leave the country, and you are no longer subject to the draft nor U.S. taxes.
  - barry-cotter 18y ago
    The US IRS claims a right on your income for ten years after you renounce citizenship, which given the hoops you have to jump through to renounce US citizenship is a bit rich.
    - bokonist 18y ago
      In that case, we are serfs, not tenants. Sucks for us.

azanar 18y ago

I think your argument could go even deeper than that. If you are compelled to do anything by the State, I think you should argue quite effectively that the State should be compelled to take you and your concerns into account. Anything else creeps toward autocracy, at least against a particular group. This provides you are of sufficiently sophisticated mental function to know what concerns you and why. When such sophistication develops is an incredibly hard question; thus far, we have punted, and have decided to use physical ages. This may be the least oppressive way to handle this dilemma, but the cynic in me wonders if we do this only because it is only optimal in a very short-term and fuzzy cost/benefit analysis.

JacobAldridge 18y ago

"No taxation without representation." I have vague recollections of a Tea Party thrown to discuss that one... I agree with the principle of Scott's article (let's have a discussion and see if anything better shows up). Greater discussion may lead to better solutions like using taxation as the measure rather than a civics test.