one thing i like about being an american is that i'm free. free to do basically whatever i please as long as it does not harm others.
that means i am free to move anywhere i please where i feel taxes are more reasonable. or i can stay here and petition the government for a better tax rate.
taxes are inevitable, you pay them one way (officially through the government) or another way (hidden costs, negative externalities, etc).
that our tax money is sometimes spent ineptly, and other times justly, is something we both agree on. you may try to equate taxes to robbery, but no one ever forced you to sign a W2 and the 16th amendment makes the constitutionality of taxation clear. you can work to get rid of that amendment, that is your right, but even if you did you would still get taxed in one way or the other. state, federal, local (such as the cost to register your car goes up, gas taxes go up etc), and many other non-official ways to make up the difference.
so we probably both agree that taxes are not "robbery" so much as a cost-benefit decision. we both disagree on some areas where we should send those dollars, and we both agree on other areas where we should send our dollars.
crying that 'taxation is theft' is a total mooch attitude. no matter what society you live in, there is a cost associated with the benefit. if you don't want the benefits of a certain society, don't pay the cost. but if you want to enjoy the benefits of the most prosperous, free nation on earth, be prepared to help foot the cost.
you are free to disagree with me on how taxes are spent and where, but to argue that taxation is theft is complete bullshit unless you are amish. and since this is an online exchange and you are in california, i am left to assume that you are not.
youre right, and wrong both. In a gloriously clever way, the government has redefined the constitution, and re-framed the debate as "how youre gonna pay" rather than WHO you pay.
Taxes are inevitable, and paying them is important to fund the govt.'s programs and functions. as designed, the feds would draft a budget, and submit the bill for the budget to the member states, and the states would then lay and collect the taxes on THEIR members to pay the bill. This ensured the states could keep the federal powers in check, since the federal govt had a constituency of 13 to 50 members, reducing the fed's power to squeeze the people from their lofty seat of power. the people would be squeezed by the state they lived in, where their individual votes have much more power, rather than being one of millions, now hundreds of millions.
before the 16th was passed? ratified? no, it was "declared in effect" by the secretary of the treasury, property and income taxes were the province of states, and the feds had only the power to lay and collect duties on imports and exports, stamps on goods, and billing the states for budgets based on their population as a percentage of the whole. (apportionment) this gave the states power over their creation in washington, but now, washington controls the states, forcing them to submit to regulation and fiat or face the loss of funding, their OWN funding, taken by the feds, to be re-assigned at their pleasure.
Making the states subservient has placed we, the people, at the mercy of the wasteful and foolish spending in washington, and since the mandarins in washington are not responsible to us, they are fearless in their stupidity.
paying taxes is unavoidable, but we are paying the bill for the fed's extortion over the states, and paying the bill for the states' mismanagement. since the feds are now mommy, and mommy has a bottomless purse, why not build high speed rail systems, and art installations that nobody wants, by the sides of freeways in disrepair because maintaining roads is mommy's job now.
the states have lost their power over the feds, and the feds are now the power over us, AND the states. the servant is now the master, and we are all just becoming serfs who elect their figurehead every four years.
That we must pay is obvious, WHO we pay and how much is what has been stolen by the 16th amendment's declaration of effect by the treasury secretary, not the congress and the states' ratification.
