Topic: Is taxation theft? - page 9. (Read 2382 times)

but even before those events of officiating it nationally in countries, people were taxed based on their income. even the story of robinhood shows how people living in the realms of the king were taxed. and had tax collectors, so taxation was a known thing even centuries ago

best quote i ever heard:
if empires were run by emperors
if kingdoms were run by kings
what are modern countries run by  

Maybe a better question would be: do higher taxes make your country better? Instead of taxing as much as they can, it should be optimized for most value for money.

It becomes a theft since they tax everything you buy. You already paid tax when you get your salary and then every time you buy something, you also get taxed on every item. The government intentionally wants people to be poor as they spend tax money on something that the people are not benefiting from.

But the government is not helping the inflation as well. There comes a time when people will not be paying anymore because they know the rich people evade tax while the poor can't.

i'm not saying it's theft, but at some points it's like theft. for example, i need to pay taxes for housing, which i don't even feel the benefit of since i don't qualify for it. and then, i need to pay taxes on income from cryptocurrency (it's automatically deducted when converting to local currency) which the government doesn't give me any protection if the platform goes bankrupt. how is this not theft?

others may say that the representatives in the legislative body have the right to issue such regulations since the people elected them, but from the beginning of my birth until now i have never voted for those legislators, so i don't feel that they "represent me" and issue these stupid tax regulations.

but don't get me wrong, i don't mind paying taxes as long as it has benefits for me directly, but when i don't receive any benefits from it and instead i am forced to pay just because a regulation states it, i think it's theft.

Robin Hood stole the tributes from tax collectors and returned it to the peasants who paid the taxes. Although it's a fiction, it indicates Robin Hood acted fairly by returning to the people what was rightfully theirs, as he wasn't stealing indiscriminately from English citizens. Moreover, the peasants didn't want to have anything to do with the local government anymore, because they moved themselves to the forest to live there freely from the Sheriff of Nottingham's law.

It means they stopped using any services the government could provide. So the government couldn't give a reason to force them paying abusive taxes anymore.

It's theft. Today everything is taxed, in a way we pay for breathing through some taxes. Maybe it would all be fine if all that money were used more wisely and if it contributed to the progress of the whole society and all institutions. But that does not happen, at least in my country, there are many examples of how large sums of money are extracted from the state through various projects.

Some taxes have to exist, that's for sure... and we should all pay them to make everyone better off, and future generations too. But it seems to me that in many countries in this world, the situation is similar to my country. The system has to change, I think it has to be much more transparent. What is happening now is a big scheme for money laundering, all politicians and those close to them are getting enormously rich at the expense of citizens.

Nutrition is No1, exercise/gym is No2, not the other way around (like most people would like to believe).

Carnivore/keto is probably the best for most people and it also seems to be popular among Bitcoiners.

Meat along with animal fat (the best is from ruminants, chicken/pork not so much), liver (it's tastier if you soak/marinate it in milk for some hours), no carbs (especially wheat/sugar), no seed oils.

I started reading Carnivore Aurelius (plenty of articles) back in 2017, long before the COVID craziness and it's probably the best investment I've made (along with Bitcoin). It paid off multiple times.

Most people argue about insulin price (if it should be regulated or not, how much should it cost), while a healthy organism will never need insulin injections (that's why I said it's best to take good care of yourself and avoid Big Pharma if possible).

Even diabetic patients can reverse diabetes with PKD (Paleo Keto Diet).

But if you were Big Pharma, would you want people to stop buying your product (insulin)?

It's akin to fiat/central banks vs BTC, but for food/health.

TL;DR: I want people to be healthy, but they need to work for it.

They should never expect the state or corporations to hand it to them on a silver plate, because it's just not going to happen (for obvious reasons).

If I take half of your income without your permission, I can use it to benefit everyone (maybe even give you a small portion of it to feel better), but it is still theft nonetheless. Why does it stop being theft when you get the illusion to choose which one takes your income?

I agree that these are the kind of services that cannot survive in a completely free market. Especially, national security. I can't even imagine what happens in the scenario that another nation attacks a free market reliant nation.

Have you been into public schools and hospitals? It's a chaos already. In my country, if you don't have the money to go on a private hospital and something crucial occurs to you, you're cooked.

"Prevention is better than the cure". Exercising is game changer as well when you make it priority, but I'm finding it difficult to keep up with a diet. What kind of diet would you recommend? (Any link appreciated)

Heh, when you start paying, it stops being voluntary action, doesn't it?  

Like that: It's theft. If a law tells you that anyone who feels as a woman is a woman, then it doesn't mean that a man who feels like a woman is a woman.

Actually, prison is the most basic and realistic example!  

Good point.

Lawyers/courts will be replaced by AI. ChatGPT can memorize all available laws in a few minutes, while a lawyer has to study for many years.

Post services can be offered 2 times cheaper by private companies (smart lockers) compared to state services.

Education is shifting towards e-learning and AI soon enough.

Healthcare will be automated with much greater efficiency.

I can continue, but you probably get the drift.

Even the police won't exist in the future, because they'll have cameras and drones everywhere (quite dystopic, but that's for another discussion).

I can’t really decide. Part of me says “fuck all taxes” but then It is impossible to have an infrastructure, healthcare, security, education etc if the gov don’t collect taxes. There are some stuff which the private sector can’t really do well. The government has to offer an alternative at least and they can only do that if they collect taxes.

No tax means no government and I hate governments but somehow we still need them.

For some reason I can’t say “the private sector should handle everything and governments shouldn’t be offering any services”

Post services
Education
Firefighters
Healthcare
Security (police/army)
Juridical Service
Infrastructure (water, electricity, roads…)

Private companies already offer these services but they can be costly. Especially the healthcare and lawyers.

What if you are in legal trouble and you don’t have money? The state has to provide you a lawyer. They can’t say “go to prison you poor fool”

The state pays that lawyer from the taxes they collect… that’s the most basic and realistic example that explains why we still need to pay taxes probably

Kind of. The highest levels of welfare and prosperity have been achieved with a mixture of free enterprise and trade and state intervention. What happens is that the supporters of one or the other always pull for their side. Personally, between having more freedom and having more state, I prefer the former, but I would not call minimum taxes theft. When they keep growing and growing, to be used mostly for political spending, they are theft, in my opinion.

We're live in a country who have laws and regulations, how you can say it's theft?

We shouldn't forget with patriots who defend our country and president who work for the country, we're gifted generation, we don't have to fight with other people just to defend our country.

If you think taxation is a theft, why didn't you choose to move to tax heaven country, create your own country or live in no man's land?

If you pay more taxes than you are willing to, then yes, it's theft. When I was poor, I didn't mind paying taxes and was happy that rich people paid higher taxes for the sake of equality. But as my income gradually increased --I'm not saying that I'm rich, just less poor-- paying taxes no longer felt like a voluntary action. Every time I pay my taxes, it feels like getting my testicles electrocuted.

FTFY

Income tax and sales tax/VAT didn't exist 100+ years ago. Look it up.

Commies are very honest about their intentions:



Most taxes in the West were imposed during the Great Depression (and who caused that? your beloved bankers).

What kind of "horror" exactly?

The fact that you have billions of transistors in the palm of your hand?

Free market is the best way to reduce prices, as long as it's not manipulated by gov cronies (like the electricity market for example).

Nice Marxist speech!

First of all, why don't you open a sandwich shop yourself if it's so "profitable"? Then you can hire me and pay me a high wage. Will you do it?

Second, why do you think the worker that assembles iPhones in Foxconn "deserves" to get paid as much as the iPhone inventor (Steve Jobs)?

Without Steve Jobs, the Foxconn worker would have no job.

But in a globalized world of 8 billion people and open borders it's laughably easy to find cheap workers...

Most leftists want open borders though, despite the fact it destroys their wages (Marx had said something about that).

You assume that the only way to fund all this infrastructure is via taxes, but your assumption is dead wrong.

How many people here know the roots of the word "sponsor"?

It comes from the Ancient Greek word «σπoνδή».

In Ancient Greece rich people donated money to fund theaters and other public activities. Why? Because they loved good fame.

Now let's see some recent examples of this analogy (donations from rich people):

https://www.naftemporiki.gr/business/1447267/oikonomiki-voitheia-10-000-eyro-stoys-syggeneis-thymaton-sta-tempi-apo-to-filanthropiko-idryma-stelios-chatziioannoy/
https://www.cnn.gr/ellada/story/363086/idryma-stelios-xatziioannou-stis-560-000-to-poso-tis-doreas-stis-oikogeneies-ton-thymaton-sta-tempi

And also let's see how compulsory taxation looks like:

https://www.cnn.gr/oikonomia/chrima/story/353525/anakoinothikan-oi-apozimioseis-gia-tous-syggeneis-ton-thymaton-sta-tempi

Free pensions, easy access to become a civil servant, debt cancellation (Biden style ), all paid with taxpayer money.

Which one of the 2 ways do you prefer? The Ancient Greek way or the... Soviet way?

If you think compulsory taxation is the only "fair" way to eliminate "inequality", let me put it this way:

Would you enjoy it if the state confiscated women to offer them to incels, or perhaps to solve the demographics issue in the West? (more babies born via compulsory sex aka rape)

Well, guess what? Compulsory taxes are a form of financial rape.

Donations/optional taxes are like consensual sex.

Leftists need to make up their minds for once:

If sexual rape is not OK, then why is financial rape OK?

Consent is key, always. And as I said, there are ways to fund social welfare in a consensual manner.

But if you want lazy rats to get pensions or salaries (in the public sector) they do not deserve, then I'm afraid donations won't be enough.

I also have a Bitcoin-related example:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoiner-donates-500k-assange-freedom
https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/06/25/julian-assanges-family-is-raising-funds-for-him-with-bitcoin/

How would you feel if the state confiscated 8 BTC from a whale to help Julian Assange? Would it be "OK"?

The result would be literally the same, but lack of consent makes a hell of a difference.

That's what happens in the US and if you take good care of your health (most people don't), then chances are you will never need Big Pharma services.

But no, you're just a cog in the machine and you don't have time to do research about how a proper diet can prevent tons of diseases (heart attacks, obesity, diabetes etc). Am I right?

You want to eat Doritos and McDonalds and then you want "free" (tax-funded) healthcare to get well.

How about NOT getting sick in the first place? Just visit a supermarket and tell me what kind of food most (overweight) people buy.

Believe it or not, we would need way less hospitals with proper lifestyle choices. We don't need to squander tons of taxes to cure Dorito-addicted people.

We need more personal accountability and less nanny state that treats adults like babies.

The average working man doesn't know how to make good use of their money, unlike corporations.

Just because someone is hard working, doesn't mean he's smart. Just look at no-coiners for example. Inflation is a form of hidden tax and they literally don't care to do something about it.

It's not cool to deliberately misinform people:

https://www.quora.com/Did-the-Soviet-Union-have-a-tax-system-If-yes-then-how-did-it-differ-from-the-ones-in-capitalist-countries
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/59ud3i/did_the_soviet_union_have_a_tax_system_if_yes/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnover_tax_in_the_Soviet_Union

Everyone living in this world is paying taxes directly and indirectly. Can you ensure that everyone knows the indirect taxes they pay for every purchase, including small groceries to any luxury item? So let's just assume someone in the metro stole a wallet from someone and due to the crowd the victim is not aware of his lost wallet but it's still considered as theft.

Laws are not passed with everyone's consent, when the government has a majority they can do whatever they want and the remaining should accept it whether they consent to it or not. Taxes are not imposed on only who voted for the winning party, it became common to everyone.

Yeah, I have similar views toward democracy as well specially since majority of the people who vote are sheeple voting for whoever gives them the craziest promises and then we all end up with thieves in office
The best example is the Biden vs Trump s**tshow in America ...

That's called Robin Hood.

Most public goods cannot be funded in an alternative way than taxes.
I'm talking about public goods like national security(your country having and army and intelligence), law enforcement(police and court system), etc. Infrastructure projects like roads and streets can be partially funded with a Toll system and/or vignettes, but that's more like an exception to the rule. The educational system and the healthcare system can be privatized, but most countries stay away from such right wing policies.
Everyone hates when the government is taking money from them, but what would your country look like, if there aren't any roads and highways and there's no army, police and courts, no schools and hospitals? It would look like total chaos.

I don't believe taxation is theft. When used for public welfare, it benefits everyone.

Taxation is not an illegal thing so it is not a theft and very far from being theft.
All taxes withdrawn from an individual is notified before it is taking it can only be a theft when not notified at all any increase in tax collecting must also be notified.
But we are still in this planet if the government wants to gain from tax collection they go through individual business owners where as the tax they issue on that business will yield them what they want and it is not still a theft because both parties had an agreement on how much your business will pay before the establishment or operation.