6 ms·
It always amazes me how these people are always ready to extract money out of other people's pockets by force, essentially, to finance their equality and povert
by snitko 13y ago
It always amazes me how these people are always ready to extract money out of other people's pockets by force, essentially, to finance their equality and poverty elimination ideas. Why at least one of them wouldn't just commit to making a billion dollar himself by building some useful business and then give it all away to prove his point? Why does it always have to be somebody else, who's paying?
- pdog 13y agoA billion dollars is about $20 for each of the 46 million Americans that live in poverty.
- snitko 13y agoGreat, convince others to help, don't just tax them. If you can't convince a person that you're right about helping those people, and decide to simply impose an additional tax, then you're coercing them and treating your fellow citizens as objects to be milked, not as individuals to be convinced. But anyway, if you have THAT many people living in poverty and you want to just give them money, there's something wrong with either your assessment of what poverty is or with the solution you propose. The point is not to give money. Money are irrelevant. If you give money, you don't create wealth, you redistribute it. The point is to help all those people create value and, thus, wealth.
- Raphmedia 13y agoI grew up in a family that was receiving money from the government (Québec, Canada). My mother was very sick, you see? Thanks to that money, she saved enough to sent me and my brother to school. Now, I make decent money. I pay lots of taxes. Every paycheck, I pay in tax what we would receive for a month when I was a kid. Trust me from firsthand experience. You want to give money to poor people. Why? Because this money is used to send the kids to school. To put food on the table. To slowly get some education. Do you really believe that people will only buy drugs with the money you give them? That they will gamble it away? Bullshit. Go out, meet some people.
- snitko 13y agoI trust you. My point is not that we shouldn't help poor people. My point is that it should be done voluntarily, not through taxation. Your example, btw, is not very ordinary. I find it hard to believe that 46 million people in the US (a number mentioned above) need the same amount of help you and your mother needed. I grew up in a family and we didn't have our own apartment for quite some time (we lived in a single room) and at some point we had to really scratch money to afford something to eat. I didn't and don't complain and I don't believe we should've forced anyone to help us (because this is what taxation is: you ask government to extract money from other people).
- astrange 13y agoAnd if you couldn't have afforded something to eat, or didn't have a room, or had to go in the hospital? Would you be proud to not complain about being homeless?
- snitko 13y agoSo what you're saying is that if I have to go to a hospital and can't afford it, it's okay for me to go and rob other people?
- consonants 13y agoTell me again how taxation is theft.
- snitko 13y agoLook, I respect and acknowledge your right to have an opinion that taxes are not theft. Would you respect the opinion of your fellow citizens, who, like me, believe taxes are theft? Because if you do acknowledge their right to think so, then it becomes obvious, that you are also prepared to ignore such an opinion, still willing to collect taxes from them. So essentially, you're like an abusive dad saying to his daughter "oh, sweetie, you can marry anyone you want", but later demanding from her she married a young man of his choice - for her own good, of course. I realize it's kind of a big stretch for people to see taxes as theft, but it's important to start seeing violence involved in this process. You can't just deny things by arguments such as "that's they way a civilized society works".
- mkr-hn 13y agoBill Gates is doing almost exactly that. But even with his wealth, he can only make it stretch far enough to matter in areas of extreme poverty. The situation in the US and most developed countries is big enough to need collective action.
- snitko 13y agoConvince people to help voluntarily by donating, without any fear of consequences if they decide not to pay. If you can't convince them, then you're forcing them to agree with you and pay, basically acting like a bully.
- mkr-hn 13y agoI don't know about Russia, but in the US we have a system where we vote for people who mostly agree with us to represent us in the state and federal government, then try and nudge whoever wins toward our viewpoint on specific legislation. My neighbor and I can both call Paul Broun to encourage him to support our different views. Sometimes it means markets are deregulated to the point of self-destruction, but it also means we get things like the ACA. It's an imperfect system, but it tends to move in what I consider a good direction. I happen to prefer a civilization that tries to keep the lowest of its members from falling too far, and a system that taxes with representation is the best way I know to do that.
- snitko 13y agoIt's not the question of how things are in Russia vs how they are in the US. It's a matter of principle. If you happen to not convince your neighbor and your candidate wins, then your neighbor is paying for what you believe is right. Is it fair? Yes if you all agreed on that in advance and are doing it voluntarily. The problem with this argument is that it falls apart if you remove penalties for those who don't pay. If tomorrow people learned the IRS is no more, it's pretty obvious that 90%, if not more, would stop paying. So it becomes pretty obvious, that taxes are extracted by the threat force.
- 13y ago