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Locknuts on 12 March 2017
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WolfpackN64 said:
Locknuts said:

Taxation is punishment. It's a gangster shakedown. If you don't pay eventually people with guns are going to come to your house and take you away. If you resist them you could very easily be shot or killed. To me that's quite a punishment - your money or your life. Now that's what I call involuntary.

Also, there are many ways of making money legitimately out there. It's not like there is one factory owner in the whole of the USA and if you don't take 5c an hour to buy your family a bag of wheat every month you are going to starve to death. People actually compete for good workers. If you're good with money, live in a country like the US and work hard, it would be almost impossible to be poor.

The problem is not that some people are rich, it's that some people are poor. But the solution is not to steal from the rich and give it to the poor.

That's a very strange way to look at taxation. We all pay for the roads, schools, and services we all use. That's why we have taxation. If no one pays his taxes, you have no state and you have anarchy.

Taxing the rich more isn't theft. There is a point when people just have enough means, the only right thing to do is distribute the surplusses to where they can be used to make sure everyone can lead a good life. There is a real problem when some people think they can never have enough and sink ever deeper in the mortal sin that is greed.

It's an honest way to look at taxation. Specifically federal income tax. 

An income is required to sustain life in today's societies. If you are taking someone's income without their permission then you are stealing their labour from them and if you take it to it's logical conclusion (police intervention by court order) then you are stealing at gunpoint.

So the question needs to be asked: 'What is worth stealing from somebody at gunpoint?'

'Roads, schools and services'? I don't think so.

Military and police? - Maybe.

If you want the rich to pay for roads and public health then they should be funded by state Goods and Services taxes. These are paid primarily by the rich because GST should not be applied to anything required to sustain life (drinking water, food staples etc) so poor people don't pay them nearly as much as the rich. But anything else is taxed at say 10 - 15% (it's 10% in Australia but we also have federal income tax). Also, unlike federal income tax, a fancy accountant can't get you out of paying GST as it's charged at the point of purchase and we are moving away from paying with cash, so everything can be tracked. 

There are ways to make the rich pay their fair share without stealing it - via incentives and tapping into their egos and ultra competitive spirits. Tax their new iphones, Ferraris etc.