Topic: Why do people think income tax is ok? - page 15. (Read 17878 times)

Wouldn't it better to fix the system though rather than destroy it completely? I think taxes are great, but only providing they're spent well and properly. That means no needless wars and other such bullshit.

I agree, but we do need services paid for by the tax.  However, having said that, the tax system is very unfair in the UK.

There is income tax, national insurance, then 80% tax fuel duty, cigarette duty, alcohol duty, council tax, VAT,  Stamp Duty, Inheritance Tax, capital Gains Tax, Flight Taxes, Road Tax, Insurance Tax, Interest rate tax, Business Rates, and many more.  Then there's inflation

After all this, you're left with hardly anything.

Really? Who will pay for the poor when they can't afford healthcare of insurance? Will you feed/home/clothe/help them?

And you'll only go to prison if you owe money in taxes. Simple solution: don't owe any taxes. But of course, you want to pay these taxes whilst taking everything they offer and simultaneously denouncing the government and all their 'sub-par' services they offer.

By all means, I'd love to - but I also don't want to go to prison for tax evasion.



You've lost me on this altogether... Classic statist FUD.

Why don't you not pay any taxes and just pay for the services you use. Put your money where your mouth and ideals are and report back. Let's see how much money you have left at the end of the month then.

And if we got rid of the government and the services they provide, then you'd be forced to pay top price for second rate services, because most people wouldn't be able to afford to pay for premium services. But I guess it'd be your choice to see your house burn down and your children die in the street, right?

Turns out he was indeed post counter trolling, as he's nowhere to be seen in this topic now. Oh well. I was raking the post count myself, but I was genuinely interested in this particular topic

But wouldn't that jungle belong to a government? I can go build myself a house, deep in a woods, but eventually someone will come, accuse me for using his land or chopping his wood, and present me a huge bill.


Would there be huge wars, if there would be no governments at all? I'm thinking - only some local border conflicts.

The issue with the football manager example is thus: the football manager doesn't force the football players to take advice from him (i.e., if one of the players truly and utterly doesn't believe in his plays, then he will simply quit, as opposed to being thrown in jail in the example of the citizen not following advice (i.e. law) from the state.)  Though I agree that there will always be leaders in this world, for this implies there are some people who are more intelligent or wise or skillful than others (which I believe to be entirely true), they must remain as leaders to be counted as leaders; once a supposed leader imposes himself onto his subjects, he then becomes a ruler.  Certainly societies will have leaders who recommend courses of actions, but if these people are truly fit for such advice, they will naturally accrue a following, rather than forcing people to follow as is the case now (after all, if it's good advice, it would be voluntary, assuming people have rational self-interest which I believe they do.)  As per my political philosophy: so long as it is voluntary.

Anyhow, on the matter of cooperative-competitive relationships: I have such a relationship with my best friend, he and I are writers.  We share advice on the ways we do things because we want to improve; however, we also compete to show one another that this or that can be done better.  It's a benign relationship at best, certainly not the typical view of competition, and there are certainly more writers in the marketplace than just he and I that we must compete against, but I'm a peaceful fellow myself so that's about all there is from me  We can scale this relationship between businesses: two businesses exist in a small area--let's say, within the same suburb--and each sell basics for everyday life, such as bathroom and kitchen supplies, basic groceries, medicine, etc.  They cooperate by agreeing not to impede upon each other's businesses; they won't burn each other's stores down, try to steal each other's customers, and won't make nasty untruthful snarks about the other.  However, they also compete: to gain business, they each must provide something better that the other doesn't, whilst ensuring they offer these as the lowest possible price.  If one tries to charge too much, the other undercuts them and gains business; if the other tries to sell an inferior product, the customers have an alternative to turn to.  If they both attempt it (i.e. price fixing), a third business sprouts up and everyone flocks to them.  They agree to compete and cooperate, just as athletes would in the Olympics; they do not attack each other so that they can get an advantage, they cooperate and compete; just as rival bands would (well, perhaps the milder ones), they do not smash each other's instruments or break the drummer's fingers, they instead compete and cooperate.

We don't always do it tho; you and I cooperate with our talks, but I'm not entirely sure we compete; perhaps if our political ideas differed and we were actively trying to accrue a following into either camp, we'd compete, but I'd rather we got along  Anyway, that's not to say that competition can't eventually disappear; if that business mentioned before did such a tremendous job that the other businesses could not compete at all, then that business becomes a monopoly, but of a different sort we're used to: this monopoly offers the greatest service for the lowest prices, and makes it impossible for others to compete, at least in the area (I doubt a corporation can keep this kind of service and price going universally, but that's just my take on it; it'd be wonderful if this were possible but I have my doubts.)

I do agree somewhat with your assertion of Libertarians and Anarchists of America; I don't think people will naturally and voluntarily agree that certain individuals will be able to keep their stake of power over areas of land.  I think, without the use of force, this land will be much more divided and even among people (what good is land if nobody will agree to work on it?--what good is ownership if none agree to your owning it?), and places of work will not necessarily have an owner, but perhaps, as you mentioned, a leader, and people would then take a much more even cut of the profit, thereby squashing the class divide (mostly; that's not to say some people won't strike it rich with their products, i.e. Notch and Minecraft, but in general people will be much wealthier than before.)  

Yes - I realised pretty quickly that my "child in garage with matches" analogy might be taken this way. Perhaps my point might have been better made by asking, for example, wether you believe that a manager of a football team is needed in order for the success of the team ? Would you agree that a manager (a good manager that is) may be in a position (physically, intellectually, by virtue of experience etc) to direct the team in a way that the team might better achieve success - not least because the manager may have a vision that individual players in themselves may not have ?   Or do you think the individual players should be left to completely direct their own play/decisions and strategies ?

    Surely the important thing is that the manager be responsible,be capable, shows a duty of care, and is accountable for his actions (they are transparent) to the team he manages ? Of course, the manager can be none of these things if his interest lay elsewhere than in the betterment of the collective/team he has been granted responsibilty for managing - if, for example, he has his own interests at heart, or he is compromised by financial incentives from outside his club.

  I agree with a lot of what you say - but what I can't figure out about a lot of the anarchist/libertarian types on this forum (from the States ??) is how the private ownership of the natural wealth of a nation seems not to be seen as the overwhelmingly corrupt influence that it undoubtedly is on society - not least because that wealth distribution is so heavily skewed in favour of a very small minority.
 [it should not be forgot also that the US has the lowest rates of social mobility of any western advanced industrialised nation - meaning that if you were born without wealth, power and opportunity in the US you have less chance of seeing and/or achieving them on the basis of your own merit than anywhere else in the western world]

   I mean, if I were reading posts about employee managed businesses (such as this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Colliery) or land reform proposals (such as this http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/sep/17/eigg-housing-crisis-britain-answer) then I might be a little more amenable to the general flow.

  Sadly, for some, BTC seems to be something tantamount to a potential smash and grab.



   Yes, that sounds great - but how does this cooperative-competitive relationship actually manifest itself in the real world ?

 I might be odd - and its certainly not the American way (which is fine because I am British) - but the competition in my life has always been with myself. That is, I've always struggled/challenged and competed with myself in order to achieve - in some things I have been sucessful, whilst in others I have failed - such is life.
  However, in my relations with others I have always tried to co-operate as I have found this to be the most mutually beneficial and productive way forward.

  Hey, I may well, in my life, have been able to make a larger stash of wealth for myself if I had been a little more competitive in my relations to my fellow human beings - but do you know what ? - I'm happy with who I am  

In my belief, I don't think government should need to act as a parent to its child citizens; naturally if your children did something life-threatening, you'd stop them, but if the parents are so incapable that they need the guidance of government, they aren't fit to have children to begin with.  The relationship doesn't follow; if we truly do live in a society where the majority of people have the mental capacity of children who play with matches by petrol, and such a society where the people elected into office are these children, elected by the children, we still have the issues of the blind leading the blind; it follows, then, that you are no better off with or without government guidance, as your general population will be just as stupid as it was before (except in this case, they're stupid enough to let themselves be ruled and rallied into state-socialism or something akin.)

Anyway, if your rational self-interest (just as an example, as I'm sure you're a nice guy in reality ) is a detriment of another person's rational self-interest, that person isn't going to want to know you anymore; if the person was a grocer, for example, now you have to find another grocery store since you treated him poorly, and this is assuming he's the only one who cares about your action (which of course, life doesn't occur in a vacuum, so your consequence will actually be much more severe than this example will provide.)  If you continue to act in such a manner to everyone you know, nobody will want to know you anymore; eventually, after so much of this now irrational self-interest (since you're effectively cutting yourself off from the labor of other people, which is ultimately detrimental to your ability to participate in civilization), you become a threat to the general populace.  Society, then, becomes a distant concept to you, the mountain-man who had to live in the wild because nobody wanted to be around you.

Now: if you decide to then force your irrational self-interest on other people, as they no longer want to know you, then one of two proceeding actions will follow:

1. You become a ruler, provided you could amass the funds and manpower to do so
2. You become a prisoner for threatening the lives of innocent people

I think people are smart, however; they know what's good for them, we all know what's good for us, and the best relationship we could ever have with another human being is a cooperative-competitive one, as it is the most productive whilst being the path of least resistance; the most detrimental relationship, I think, is one acquired through violence, a coercive monopoly (i.e. uncooperative and non-competitive, or otherwise known as government services), as the people you're now assuming control over completely lose the will to live, and become incredibly under-productive, not to mention the sheer amount of energy required to keep them in your control (that is, in this case, ensuring taxation remains in effect to pay for the interest on debts which is then used to pay for these things.)  Nobody will view the serial killer as good if the state isn't around to punish them; we all agree that death is at the top of our lists as things we don't want to happen to us, this doesn't change.  And if you're too weak or ill to work, then it should be obvious that you will stop working, and hopefully you led a good life where people, friends or family or co-workers, will want to help you through it, or help you pass if that's the case.

Or are you referring to private police as protection in old age?  I hear Detroit's got something like this now with the failure of local government (assuming Somalia as well but I haven't studied them yet); what's more, they're actually peaceful police, if you can imagine.  It appears to me that the idea of the state owning certain businesses because the private sector doesn't want them is a myth; my understanding of business is, if people want something, they will be willing to pay for it, and it seems everyone wants to be protected, so it should follow that people would pay for a service of protection i.e. police, and follow that businesses would emerge to compete cooperatively for business.  As stated, people know what's good for them; they know what they want, it's just that they're fooled into thinking this or that is impossible or required for society to remain intact and such, irrational beliefs instilled in people before they could truly reason i.e. in primary school, or through religion, or through spankings and other such punishment.

No! You are trying to prove your point, and everybody's against you, so it's up to you to do the research.
I think you don't know much about the subject, but fortunately for you, I do. I know a place, a country, where there is no income tax, nor any capital gains tax, but you couldn't move there, and neither can I. Can you tell me why? If you know what you're talking about, you should have the answer.

I agree with all of that - but is management of any type unnecessary then (and under any circumstance), in your opinion ?

I know that William Blake said that if a fool were to persist in their foolishness they would become wise - but on that I'd have to disagree with him  .
  If my kids start playing with matches whilst in my garage right next to a tank of petrol I'm not going to stand by and watch.

 And what if my rational self interest should clash with that of someone elses rational self interest ? Who is to arbitrate ? What if my everyday life decisions are demarcated by illness - or by old age, or by any other form of under privilege/disadvantage ? Who then will intervene when the man whose everyday life decisions aren't so constrained as my own takes from me all I have and hold dear ?

We have been; the majority of everyday life decisions, short-term and long-term, is born from rational self-interest.  To imply we cannot self-govern is to imply we can make no decision of our own; if this is true, that none can self-govern, then we should not pretend that a government of elected officials who also cannot self-govern can manage to find the capacity to govern others, a far more difficult task, nor should we pretend that they make our every decision for us, for if they did, what need do we have for democracy?

We probably need to focus on the cost of government, not government taxation itself since we are now 100 years into this failed experiment.

If we could self-govern, we would have been doing so through the millenia. That being said, the cost of government has far exceeded the benefit in the United States and probably everywhere else. I will go out further on the limb and state that the value of my citizenship is depreciating as government gets bigger and more intrusive while continuing to fight endless wars.

Fathom that productive entrepreneurs must seek permission from regulators who produce virtually nothing.

It would have been a better system if production was not taxed at all and tax only consumption, but then Congress would really have to live within their means, something they have not been able to demonstrate.

Really? Ever heard of VAT, fuel duty, road tax, council tax? Not to mention the other taxes that ultimately get passed on through prices?

Taxes ultimately affect everyone, but they're justified to people like you by the second-rate services they pay for - services that have 'no free-market alternatives', so they tell us. All after deductions for the state's wars, debt, aid to friendly dictators, bank bailouts, and bureaucracy.

People should just pay for the services they choose - it works well.

Well, I suppose the meals (under tender) would be cheaper - thats largely because the meals are crap   Turkey Twizzlers anyone  

   And if you were just looking at the cost of providing the service then the private firm has clear advantages - not least because the staff they employ are low paid zero hours contract workers with no sick pay, pension, holidays or any other rights of employment.
   The dinner ladies that were previously employed by the local authority were respected contributors to the school and given full employment rights - as a result they were (at least from memory) happy and productive in their work. Yes, the cost would have been greater to the taxpayer than the service provided by the private frim. But how on earth could it compete ? - it reminds me of a psychopathic girlfriend I used to have the misfortune to know - she always had the advantage over me - why ? - because she cared less, and the power in a relationship always resides with those that care less.
        Likewise with the private catering firm - it cares less - its raison d'etre is not the provision of nutritious meals to the nations children (though it might say this in its Articles of Association) but profit.


Now we have a nation of employees on terrible terms of employment and with job insecurity - and I'm not just talking about caterers. The sad part is that a lot of them accept the crap that the schools now provide at meal times - why ? - because its cheap and they can't afford any better. Sad but true.
   Now whats the cost, to the nation as a whole, of the competitive tendering ?

   All this just so that Thatcher could reduce the rate of tax for those earning over £100k a year  

    
    Economics is a social science isn't it - its concerned with the welfare of human beings and how best to maintain that welfare given limited resources ? Or is it about allocating and distributing scarce resources most cost efficiently via the free market - thereby faciltating the obscene situation where 85 people own as much as 3.5 billion of the worlds population (who don't have 2 bits to scratch their arse with between them) ?

     I don't mind paying income tax at all per se - and neither do I object to Government where it might try to represent the interests of the 3.5 billion - instead of the 85 that it does currently.
  

The poor pay little-to-nothing in taxes and that's who will get shafted the most here, but even the people who pay minimal tax would be bankrupt and completely destitute if they had to start paying for the roads and the bins and healthcare and medication and police etc. Good luck finding charities to help people who have nothing especially with no state to support them.

Show me a respected economic theory that states a command economy is more efficient than a free market. Better yet, show me a real world example.

As for how people will pay - well, not paying a quarter of their wage in tax would be a start...


And what will happen to these people when the state realises its inevitable bankruptcy?

How so, bro? I find it ironic that the only people who usually peddle this big bad government / taxes are bad have little-to-no understanding of economics or the cost of the services they provide. They are more efficient, yes. I also don't know how you expect people to afford or have the time to pay for all these services that they may or may not use.


And when there isn't enough charity these people just what exactly? They die... freeze/starve/bleed to death etc. And you can buy clothes with your state benefits. You can't buy them with nothing. Charities currently struggle to feed and clothe the poor as it is, never mind once all their benefits have been taken away and there's hundreds of thousands more out on the streets and freezing and starving and bleeding all over the place.

You're arguing against economics there bro... Are you saying that central planning is more efficient in general? Or is there something special about those services which means a free market can't deliver?


Which is the key point. We can debate quality, but these meals were never free. Just like the NHS isn't free today. Somebody is paying, even if it isn't you.

As an aside, I also think competitive tendering is a farce and doesn't constitute a free market. The government buying services on our behalf is no better than them providing it - the consumer must have choice.



Well you'd think food and clothes would be their first priority, but nobody is asking the government to nationalise these services...

These people would need to rely on charity, as they do now, but that charity would be voluntary rather than coercive.

No, I don't believe it would either.

I could cite a thousand reasons why - but I'll just mention School meals in the UK.

"If there was ever a ‘golden age’ of school meals, it began with the 1944 Education Act, which made it compulsory for local authorities to provide school meals, free of charge to poorer children and at no more than the cost of the raw ingredients to the rest. The aim, as declared in a government circular in 1955, was a lunch ‘suitable in all respects as the main meal of the day’. Free school milk was also provided from 1946 to all schoolchildren."

Certainly, when I was growing up in the seventies, I have to say that the school meals were superb - provided and subsidised by the Local Education Authority (ultimately by the taxpayer of course) - and if you played for the school sports teams (football in my case) you got to drink as much milk as you could manage after a match 

"In 1980, Margaret Thatcher - now prime minister - started to run down the school-meals service. Nutritional standards were scrapped and local authorities were now only obliged to provide meals to poorer children. Free school milk was abolished altogether. Competitive tendering meant that many school meals were ‘contracted out’ from local authorities to private contractors and the number of children eligible for free meals was further reduced by the Social Security Act 1986."

Thatcher, it should be noted, was a big fan of Hayek apparently (though I couldn't say wether the respect was mutual or not)

End result of competitive tendering was that nourishing meals that provided all a child needed as a main meal of the day were superseded by a "bums on seats" ethos - and this :-