Topic: Why do people think income tax is ok? - page 8. (Read 17853 times)

I don't think they are wrong. I just think in a lot of cases that money is misused and that it could be used a lot better. Without it your country would fail and it wouldn't exist. I like living more in a civilized world than a wild west if you ask me. 

It's all about the right balance. Your annoyance should be more on how the money is spent. The powerful people who get breaks.

ha ha ha you dummy! just because the republic and the constitution the income tax is iligal doesn't mean your rules don't wand and demand you stupid surf will not pay and deman you pay and you will pay. so stop compaining an pay or else!

lol

Do you know what the income tax is used for? Roads, Police, and Fire Services don't get a penny from the income tax... It must be nice to believe that there's a useful purpose behind it other than feeding an over-encumbered insanely wasteful Federal Government and paying interest to the Federal Reserve for the privilege of using their private currency.

Taxes are definitely not wrong, perhaps the discussion should be focused on what the tax money is spent on thought..

The people do not think about that because they are disarmed. The short answer: because of fear to end in prison or fear of death. That's why 2nd Amendment exists in America. To protect the people from their own government when it becomes despotic.

If you base your argument around one part of a whole set of changes, then it's going to be imbalanced. Well spotted. 

Until 100% of the bottom 90% get 100% tax refunds, the test will never begin.

The only concrete difference the article gives to distinguish rights from entitlements is that entitlements require forcible interference with the freedoms of others, whereas rights presumably do not. However, I would argue that all rights interfere with the freedoms of others by definition. Your right to liberty is nothing more and nothing less than the restriction of your neighbour's freedom to imprison you. All rights are necessarily identical to the restriction of the freedom of all other human beings to infringe them. What the article seems to mean is that entitlements are those rights which do not merely infringe freedoms, but which infringe those rights that the author considers most important.


This seems to be the chief source of our disagreement - I do not believe that rights are innate. I would argue that slaves did not have an innate right to freedom, but that by blood, swear and tears those rights were valiantly won. Further, I believe the are more rights yet to win, including the right to a basic quality of life. Since you believe that the only rights that ought to be respected are those which are bestowed by a (judeochristian?) deity, can you point to the place in holy scripture where the rights are set out?


In which case, I apologise for insinuating that you are motivated by selfishness.

I actually agree with a lot of this. I am all for private enterprise as an enabler. For example I strongly support the site Kiva.org, that lets people finance microloans to small businesses around the world.

I don't however agree with removing income-tax funded government systems. The institutions we have now have been fought for with blood, sweat and tears by generations. (e.g. the welfare state in the UK post WW1). They are valuable and necessary to ensure a fair society.

I'm friends with somebody who is disabled. I met him because we both worked at the same place.

In one sense you are correct: I am 100% sure that he values his ability to make his own way and work as a capable employee of the company.

In another sense I think you do not see how much "dependent members of society" *need* help. He has an apartment that is provided by the government at a reduced rate, with all of the extra accessibility to support his disability (he's in a wheelchair). I am almost certain that without help from the state, even with his decent job's salary he would not be able to afford the apartment.

Without the "safety net" -- which in millions of cases is not a complete safety net, but a helping hand to ensure people have a decent standard of living because DESPITE the fact they can work, they still cannot afford that standard of living -- he would not have this opportunity.

You talk a lot about how we shouldn't be able to impose our beliefs on others. But we have this system in place *right now*. If you had your way, you would *take this away* from my friend. Are you OK with this?

why? the alternative is that no-one is allowed to possess more money than anyone else. I'm not sure anyone advocates that idea these days


Let's put it to the test. The income tax is the biggest part of tax revenue for most governments.


It's not about creating policies targeted at specific groups, it's a case of removing the rules that create excessive barriers to everybody doing what they want to get along in the world.


The amount of rules applying to all types of businesses are over-zealous, and they're used now to enable favouritism more than they are to protect the rights of everybody.

So, create a new culture. Remove the barriers to entry in enterprise. Educate people in a way that sparks their imagination and develops their reasoning skills. Learning factual information is pretty boring without allowing people the chance to use the facts in different contexts. And that's how kids at school learn today, for the overwhelming amount of time (no wonder so many dislike it).

This cultural change should create a virtuous circle, where everyone gradually becomes more capable of paying for themselves. People become empowered to run their own lives (instead of being paid to let their potential to do so deteriorate). Income tax would increase initially, and could be gradually rate-reduced to compensate for the more independent & successful society. This increases the motivation to become a part of the economy, instead of a passive recipient from it.

This is no different to the way culture worked in the very early human societies, the difference being that we have powerful new tools to assist us these days. If you want to create new technological tools that support our current way of life, go ahead. But I think they're as well defined as they'll ever be, and that decentralisation is the direction we're going in from now on.

The problem is not everyone has the same right to choose. The idea of empowering everyone to live as independently as they can is great, but unless you're rich or pretty well off, that's going to backfire. The amount you'd spare by not having an income tax in most cases wouldn't be enough to pay for education, healthcare, and so on.

So, how would you propose those in need actually get the right to choose?

The idea of giving people more responsibility is quite popular, so it's not just me and the others here. Why not empower the socially dependent in society to be able to live in a way with the minimum of help? This is a very common thing you hear from people with physical disabilities; they value the freedom to be able to live as independent a life as they can.
 
I'd like to see the focus being on improving everyone's ability to choose, and giving them free choice. That atmosphere would be more inspiring, more conducive to the kind of freer-thinking that produces innovative ideas.

Choice is the fundamental bedrock of imagination. Restriction and regularising inhibit by nature. Why are some people so against the right to choose?

You have listed semi-authoritarian societies with established income tax regimes.  Is that really your ideal?

But you live within a society, the choice isn't yours alone. Further, those who would benefit most from some form of social safety-net as you put it, are usually those who have the most difficulty making their needs heard.

The social safety-net people in this thread don't seem to be able to cope with incoming ideas, just outputting their ideas.


I like my way.

You like yours.

I say you can choose yours, if you let me choose mine. Tolerant.

You say my way won't work. And that it's morally wrong. No-one should be allowed to choose this way. Pretty intolerant.


Let's prove it. Not gas about it.

(hint: the societies in the world today with the most libertarian rules don't end up all bad: Switzerland, Singapore, Russia, Hong Kong)

+1

You're american I take it? A couple of points:


You really believe there is a creator, and that's where your rights come from? That no matter how human society changes, whether anyone knows about the rights or not, whether anyone upholds them or not, a sin is committed every time one of them is infringed? What has your creator done recently to defend your rights? I also note that the right to amass as much property as you can and become fabulously wealthy is not included (or not important enough to be mentioned anyway), whereas the right to life is listed first.


I know you weren't necessarily arguing the opposite, but thanks for agreeing that government of some kind is needed to secure rights. I would argue that when the document refers to "the governed" and "the People" it is quite clearly referring to the majority, not the unanimity. It certainly cannot mean that every citizen has the right to "alter or to abolish" the government, because that would preclude the government having any power whatsoever, just or otherwise, and the document clearly opines that it should have power.

Even if it did declare a right to unlimited property or establish the ability of every citizen to remake the government as they see fit, the Declaration of Independence is just a letter, written by ordinary men. It does not bestow any rights on anyone, in any meaningful sense. When you quote it you are merely saying "this is what these guys thought, and I agree", which is fine but it doesn't hold any authority. In contrast, the Constitution of your country was written and unanimously ratified by the elected representatives of the first states to be united, and each subsequent state to join has also ratified it by majority. This mandate is what gives it authority, not some diktat by a creator. Surprisingly enough, that document contains the following:


This is just an exercise in semantics, if you have the right to unlimited property then that's what you're entitled to. If you're entitled to life, then you have the right to it. What is the difference, in your opinion, between a right and an entitlement?


Quite right, but people disagree on what constitutes failure. Your main grievance seems to be "they take bits of my property and use them in ways that don't directly benefit me!" whereas my chief critique of your government would probably be "they allow millions of their citizens to live in poverty while surrounded by fabulous wealth, and they are a bit too fond of bombing Pakistani weddings."

The individualist in me really resonates with this. I try to live by a variant of this principle: "Let other people do what they want as long as they aren't hurting others". But the humanist in me says that we are all part of a community, a society. We aren't just a bunch of homo sapiens who happen to be close enough to trade -- we're interdependent. I really do think there are many problems with our current governments, but I just cannot see how we could live in a civilised state without some governing body to hold it all together: to enforce the social contract.

I should really read up on this stuff more, though. Maybe libertarian/anarchist theories hold more weight than I give them. One thing I think we can all agree on is the status quo needs to change.