McPatrickClan said:
As an American, you choose, each day, to renew your citizenship.
Mmm, no, I don't think so. All I do is get up in the morning and go to work, with the knowledge that about half of what I earn will be extorted from me by one government or another, and that the half the government "graciously" lets me keep will be half as useful to me as it should be, because whoever I use it to buy goods or services from has to charge me twice as much as he'd otherwise have to because the government is extorting half of his income as well. That leaves me in control of the buying power of one-fourth of my productivity. If you like, I can argue that government regulations in one way or another make everything twice again as expensive as it ought to be, meaning that I receive direct benefit from about one eighth of my income, with the rest of it going to support the government.
I don't choose that; it is forced upon me, exactly as a robbery at the hands of a street mugger would be. In the same way that I cannot be said to have chosen to be robbed (even if I decided to walk down a street in a bad section of town), I cannot be said to have chosen to be taxed.
You partake in the American economy, contribute is some small way to American society, and basically, well, engage in life in our land of the free.
You state this as though it were a justification for taxation, although I can't yet see what it is about being a productive citizen that should justly condemn me to having my property stolen. Socialists will argue that individual ownership of property is a crime against society, because if you own a thing, that means that someone else can't; but you're not a socialist, are you?
But that doesn't mean the mere mention of a tax is wrong.
It's not the
mention of a tax that's wrong, it's the
existence of a tax that's wrong. If I choose of my own free will to surrender my liberty (property and money evaluate to kinds of liberty) for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all, that's my own choice, and that's okay. But if someone takes my liberty without my free and informed consent, then one of two things is happening.
The taking might be an initiation of force, in which case it's a violation of my rights.
If it's not a violation of my rights, then the only other possibility is that the liberty wasn't really mine to begin with--it belonged instead to the party that seized it.
The moral statement that the existence of taxes--particularly income taxes--make is that you have no real property rights at all: the government owns your income and is therefore authorized to decide how much of it you will be allowed to keep. Perhaps you don't have a problem living with that; some of us do.
I want an armed military doing a job I cannot do. I want interstate roads.
Sure. There's no problem with any of this. If you want such things, and you approve of the prices, you should be perfectly free to decide to pay for them. Forcing others who have made no such decision to pay for them as well, simply because you think they're good ideas--how is that morally different from forcing cigar smokers to pay for a new school or sewer line or traffic light simply because somebody thinks it's a good idea? Perhaps I don't think I need as much military defense as you think you need. Maybe I'm a homebody, and I don't use interstate highways. Do you have a reasonable justification for making me pay for what you use when I don't use it myself?
I want President Bush to have the financial resources to do as he sees fit.
Whooo-ie. I think I'll leave this one alone for now.
If there were no taxes, we might have to consider someone's financial status when we elect them to President.
Government is by its very nature grossly inefficient. Whatever the government can do with our tax money that's worth doing can be done much more innovatively, efficiently, and cheaply by the free market.
Of course, there are a lot of things the government does that simply
aren't worth doing. We can't unambiguously identify them, of course, because the only recourse available to us is political squabbling--which doesn't ever decide who is right, only who is strong. But if the functions of government were relegated to the free market, we'd have a completely objective measure of what wasn't worth doing: people would choose not to pay for it, and it wouldn't get done.
There are basic functions of the government: roads, armed forces, etc.
Are you arguing from the Constitution? The Constitution authorizes the government to provide only post roads--that is, facilities to promote delivering the mail. One could argue that that responsibility is largely outdated today, since mail delivery is not really a government function anymore, except formally. And the Constitution certainly doesn't authorize the sort of standing army we have today. A permanent Navy is mentioned; but insurrections and invasions were to be taken care of by the militia (that's you and me), and national armies were supposed to be temporary and need-based: Congress isn't allowed to provide funding for more than two years. The Framers specifically meant to prohibit the sort of meddling in world affairs that makes people mad enough at us to fly airplanes into buildings.
What other "basic functions" of government are there?
Why? Because we've always done it that way? (Actually, as a nation we haven't.
You have, and
I have, and so it seems dangerously natural to us.)
If you know another way, guys, please, send a letter to the White House.
As I'm sure you know, Washington isn't interested in another way, unless it involves taking even more liberty and wielding even more power.
