4 ms·

All taxes are theft of the private property of free citizens.

akadien 14y ago
I definitely agree with respect to income, estate, and property taxes. Consumption-based taxes are fairer than so-called "progressive" tax schemes implemented to fund world wars and military expansion. Ref. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/is-the-estate-tax-doomed/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/is-the-estat...
- harshreality 14y ago
  Property tax encourages those who aren't using a property to sell it. Real Estate ownership is already tracked (you can argue it shouldn't be, but that would upend the real estate system). And unlike cash sitting in a bank account, it's already fairly common to tax real estate. If someone wants to keep 5 houses and leave 4 of them empty at any given time, as a status symbol, shouldn't they be taxed punitively? Real estate is not an unlimited resource. Occupation of any sort would disqualify the taxation; this could be verified easily in most cases by data from utility companies. Pure libertarians tend to argue that rational individuals will not let assets go unused. I think rationality as a model for human behavior has been thoroughly debunked. And if they don't let their real estate go unused, if they invest, lend, rent their property to others, taxes under the described system wouldn't apply. Some of these arguments can be applied to hoarding other assets (like cash), but it would be an uphill battle to tax cash (not cash inflows -- as in the income tax -- but static cash). One place to start might be cash held by public corporations, which have no privacy interest.
  - akadien 14y ago
    > If someone wants to keep 5 houses and leave 4 of them empty at any given time, as a status symbol, shouldn't they be taxed punitively? No.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
yyqux 14y ago
So taxes are morally equivalent to stealing? I think taxes are ok, so stealing must be ok too. I'll be over at your house to take your stuff in a jiffy!
- theorique 14y ago
  That wasn't the moral lesson I was aiming for ...

I definitely agree with respect to income, estate, and property taxes. Consumption-based taxes are fairer than so-called "progressive" tax schemes implemented to fund world wars and military expansion. Ref. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/is-the-estate-tax-doomed/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/is-the-estat...

harshreality 14y ago
Property tax encourages those who aren't using a property to sell it. Real Estate ownership is already tracked (you can argue it shouldn't be, but that would upend the real estate system). And unlike cash sitting in a bank account, it's already fairly common to tax real estate. If someone wants to keep 5 houses and leave 4 of them empty at any given time, as a status symbol, shouldn't they be taxed punitively? Real estate is not an unlimited resource. Occupation of any sort would disqualify the taxation; this could be verified easily in most cases by data from utility companies. Pure libertarians tend to argue that rational individuals will not let assets go unused. I think rationality as a model for human behavior has been thoroughly debunked. And if they don't let their real estate go unused, if they invest, lend, rent their property to others, taxes under the described system wouldn't apply. Some of these arguments can be applied to hoarding other assets (like cash), but it would be an uphill battle to tax cash (not cash inflows -- as in the income tax -- but static cash). One place to start might be cash held by public corporations, which have no privacy interest.
- akadien 14y ago
  > If someone wants to keep 5 houses and leave 4 of them empty at any given time, as a status symbol, shouldn't they be taxed punitively? No.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

yyqux 14y ago

So taxes are morally equivalent to stealing? I think taxes are ok, so stealing must be ok too. I'll be over at your house to take your stuff in a jiffy!

theorique 14y ago
That wasn't the moral lesson I was aiming for ...