lol
fuck your taxes!
Theft by any other name is still theft.
but the wealthy are ripping off everyone else by not submitting enough to you when it comes to taxes?
Why should any one, let alone the rich be forced to pay for your stuff? why do you feel entitled to some of their money when you did not work for it they did?
Oh dear Skeptic, You do realize that taxes pay for sewage management and treatment, roads, highways, bridges, stoplights ...
IMHO, taxation is only theft when the people do not have true representation in tax negotiations. So, yes, currently tax does feel like theft, what with the wealthy being able to afford to pay less or nothing - and be proud of it. That's what I don't get. How could one be proud to shirk one's civic duties? What duties, you may ask? They are subjective, but I'd hazard to guess that you would agree with me that it is people's duty to share public space and to try not to be an asshole. Yeah? Those are solid, base duties. NOT paying taxes that support the community as a whole, well, that's more of an asshole thing, yeah? I mean, to me, the REAL badass, is the individual that says, yeah, I'm on top of my game. So much so that I gladly pay taxes AND I participate in local governance to help keep taxation in line. Not the self-righteous jerk standing on the sideline playing armchair quarterback, doing little for his community other than littering empty beer cans wherever convenient and commenting "Yeah, screw the government!" The government is screwed - and we need to fix it or say goodbye to hot showers on demand.
It is interesting to me that people instantly go to "pay for your stuff" Hold on, everyone pays taxes, so it is not you paying for other people's stuff. You realize significant advantage from having paid taxes and utilized the public infrastructure. This whole idea that somehow there's a huge moocher class choosing to live off the fat of others is pretty much bullshyte. If you don't believe me, do a test for yourself. Spend a month on public assistance and you'll see it for the nightmare it really is - not some kick back easy street mooching, not at all.
//IMHO, taxation is only theft when the people do not have true representation in tax negotiations//
No it is not it's theft
It's theft even if it does not feel like theft, and you gladly pay taxes.
It has nothing to do with feelings or emotions.
If someone can force you to pay him and then he gives you what you want it is still theft.
Actually it's not only theft it's slavery
@wordsword It sounds like you would call every interaction theft! However, I see that you are not. I realize that we are required or forced to pay taxes, and I really wish our schools taught young adults why we pay taxes.
To be clear, you say that: "if you are forced to pay, it is theft." Technically, you are not forced in that you can expatriate.
Here's the thing.
People are born into this world where so many other humans have come before us, creating this world designed to accommodate more of us humans. (I'll be happy to expand on this if you would like to challenge it, but for the sake of brevity ...) Over hundreds of years, people worked out taxation as an imperfect solution - and then here come some of us noobs, really pretty fresh in the world and having NO experience of what it was like without all of this accommodation, and some of us go "Tax is theft and slavery."
Societies have tried all sorts of arrangements, you know
You see what I mean? It is a pretty smartass thing to say. Then again, our culture (USA) places high value on being tough, so I understand the rugged individualism and the strange need to present it. "I don't need civil services like the fire department! I can put out my OWN fires!
I get that we are in a really bad space right now what with our government no longer being of and for we the people. However, throwing the baby out with the bath water is very short sighted. Whether one likes it or not - we all benefit from working together, compromising and seeking consensus before majority. Governance in and of itself isn't wrong by default. Humans are social creatures and we do much better in groups.
Think back to the Dark Ages where 'might was right.' Boy that sucked! Someone who could kick your ass, could take everything of yours that she could carry! Sadly, now it is 'financial might is right' which is almost worse, because the violence is much more out of sight and not as easily pinned on the true perpetrator, with blame usually falling on the victims.
No I do not call everything theft. If I trade with someone that wants to trade with me it's not theft, If someone asks me something and I give it to them, it's not theft.
We are forced to go to school to learn the things they want us to learn.
The only thing I learned at school was obedience. That's THE thing you learn at school.
A few months back I still thought; Well at least I learned math, reading and writing, and although that's the case. Most of the words that where handed to me, to memorise, are totally the opposite of the real definition and that is for a reason.
School is nothing more than an indoctrination camp, from the state, for the state with state schooled teachers, that teach you what the state want you to know, cause if they didn't they wouldn't be teachers.
That with the '' so many people have come before us" that is true and that's all nice and I'm thankful of that and so, but they in their time where also noob's to the one's that came before them. That doesn't mean they did have to do everything like their forefathers. If they had done that, we still would be in the middle ages and have slave plantations or be building stupid pyramids and palaces.
I'm not an "American" and I'm not though and individualistic but I'm an individual
I don't put out my own fire. I'm willing to pay for people to do that for me.
The only thing I ask is not to force me to pay for people to do that for me.
I don't say this from a point of being all individualistic and self sufficient and so, I'm just asking, please let me be free to do the things that I see as good. To take my place in society to work together with people, to compromise and seeking consensus, if I think that is a good thing to do.
//Sadly, now it is 'financial might is right' which is almost worse, because the violence is much more out of sight and not as easily pinned on the true perpetrator, with blame usually falling on the victims.//
Government IS the violence used by the bankers and the multinationals.
If the people ask government to make rules for the bankers or multinationals to protect them from the bankers, the bankers or multinationals like that, they can easily meet the requirement but the small banks and company's can't and so they are bought up by the big ones or they disappear. Rinse repeat.
Government "protecting" your saving makes that they have to bail out bank's in the process maybe saving you from loss of money but on the other hand robbing you with taxation to save the criminal banks that should have gone bankrupt.
So that people would be more aware where they save their money or take a loan.
It's complicated if you look at it in big, like a whole country or the world, and that's what government wants you to see, how big and complex everything is. But life is not that complex. They only make it seem complex so that you think you need them (politicians that is)
It would be strange to think that you were born not capable of living your own live or with the capacity to make good decision. That is exactly what they teach you at school. It's the same as what they teached in the church hundred years ago, that you are a sinner and never can trust yourself to do good and that you must listen to and pay the people who tell you how you can become good.
Beautifully and succinctly put. Thank you
fathermayhem!
Whoops! I think and my beautiful succinct-ness was all used up with that one post, DOH! ;-)
Now property, on the other hand, is theft.
theft from who?
So it's OK for the local governance to take all "your" money because it isn't yours to begin with? I don't get this line of reasoning.
Government can not be fixed, government is not broken.
I don't know if the hot shower is an expression or saying. But if it's not, I rather have a neighbour ASKING me if I can help him build a shower for free or give or buy him food or whatever, than one that put's a GUN on my head. Government doesn't do anything, people do the things
Dude - I've spent a couple of years in the middle of nowhere setting up crappy infrastructure. It sucks.
I don't want to discuss the "property is theft" bit. I was mostly joking around and just wanted to post that punk song because it popped into my mind and I like it. I'm also joking about "setting up crappy infrastructure" in the sense that, it is hard work and hard to do well when it is one's first time. It was well worth it and I learned SO MUCH.
They don't take ALL of your money, yet, because they can take it from your (grand)children in the form of debt.
Now they take 80% , but where is the line, when do you call it slavery ? 85%, 90%, 99%, 100%?
And isn't bureaucracy is slavery as well?
How are you gonna stop the mechanism? By being a part of it? I don't wanna be a part of it.
If I may not steel from my neighbours under threat of force, to let them pay for what I think is good, I may not do the same thing as some government official.
No-one can say to me: “You may do, what you may not do as a human being, because I say so (because I voted for you) and it doesn't even matter how many say I can (voted for me).”
I'm always bound to the “law's” of mortals.
I can't command other people to do, or not do, anything that I want.
I'm not a god, or appointed by “god” as a king or queen.
And I can't be appointed as the “king” by “the majority”(with is today's substitute of the appointment by god)
I can not acquire the right to rule, the right to give rights and take rights! From whom would I have gotten such a right?
3
Government is working perfect, government is violence, divide and conquer, war, terrorism and what not.
I take a sidestep here: Government can get the money to point gun's at people at the other end of the world (terrorism) because they put a gun in your face, if you ever decided you do not want to pay for their war's (terrorism) Everything government initially does is violence. Think about it.
4
I don't have to build everything from scratch other people did/do that for me, and other people don't have to build a thing that I build for them or “rigged up for them” cause I did it for them without someone forcing me, just by trading. But you seem to think that without the violence of government people would do nothing That all would stop that people would stop doing things for themselves and the ones around them.
You say// uh oh, gopher ate my veggies while I was helping you build your shower ... //
You talk as if government is some magic entity that can protect society from reality. It can't, It never did and will never do that.
I often wonder how people think that government creates extra value, on top of what society creates, or that it makes society work, while all it does is destroy, enslave, and commit crime and the saddest thing of all, put's people up against each other.