How is Robbing Someone With a Government Morally Superior to Robbing Them With a Gun?

A credible threat of violence.

You've failed at explaining why something that is evil at the individual level suddenly become virtuous at the federal level. Your just saying that you believe the world would be a worse place if this form of violence didn't exist.

 

The government is not robbing anyone. If you don't want to pay taxes, don't use our infrastructure and economy to make money. Simple as that.

 

Not having social security would cause that. They would still have 401K at work, and private IRA's. Social Security is not the only retirement program. It's just the only one paid for by taxes.

I would be more concerned with law enforcement. We can not allow private law enforcement. It would defeat the purpose of law enforcement, and private police would be very corrupt, only helping if there is profit in it. You forget to pay your bill, they let your family get raped and murdered.
Road usage would also be an issue. We can not simply prohibit people from travel. It's a constitutional right. Therefore, we would need to bill people, either monthly, or yearly, for use of essential public utilities and infrastructure. They would have to pay out of pocket, instead of paying taxes out of their paychecks.

 

I don't have the choice not to pay taxes or do I?
Well the income tax is voluntary

 

cough... ahem... progressive taxation... grkk... harumph...

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so it's either starve, go homeless, or pay up?

I think that answers the OPs question quite succinctly. There is no difference.

 

If you want to take part in society, but refuse to pay your part in essential costs of that society, you are the one who is a thief. You steal from the taxpayers.

Either pay your fair share, or stop using public roads, schools, and other programs.

 

Who is to say what is my part? Besides there is no law saying that most US citizens need pay income tax. I don't want government roads or schools. The less government the better to a point. What we need is as little as possible

 

If you drive on public roads. you must help pay for them.

If you send your kids to public schools, or attend a public college, you must help pay for them.

Anytime you use a program or infrastructure that is paid for by taxes, it is your responsilbility to pay taxes to help cover the costs. You refuse to pay for them, you should not be allowed to use them. The disabled are the only ones who should get a free ride.

 

Wake me when the poor can pay for their share of the government. How we do this is simple. We look at government expenses and divide by population. Whatever that number amounts to, we all pay the same thing. If you can't pay, you get shipped off to some work farm in the yukon where your job is to melt the snow using body heat.

You sure you still want to go with "pay your fair share"?

 

Yea, if you don't want to contribute to society and just want to take and whine, then starve and be homeless. The rest of us will pay our taxes and be mature adults.

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You have a choice not to try to make money using our infrastructure. If you make that choice, you pay taxes. Don't try to be a freeloader.

 

Exactly! Your idea is either starve or pay the piper.

So really, don't complain when you are asked to pay for the air you breath, since that is so clean and pure thanks to all the money spent on saving the environment. Don't drink the water since there's so much money spent on making sure the water is drinkable.

That's your idea drawn to its logical conclusion.

 

Nah, my idea is if you want to take advantage of our infrastructure you pay for it. If you don't want to, you don't take advantage of it. Don't be a freeloader.

 

I make assumptions, you make assumptions based on each other's posts. However, your assumptions are wrong.

It is my experience that MANY (not all) conservatives think that they are the only productive and hard working ones in society, whereas all Democrats must be lazy freeloaders who are after the successful's money. That's where the taxation is theft meme comes from. However, this assumption comes from the extrapolation of the own belief that people's actions are ONLY driven by money. SO, they can't imagine that someone else may actually advocate for policies that, at first glance, hurt their own pocket book, but in the overall picture benefit society as a whole and makes the world a better place to live in.

That's why I don't mind to pay taxes, even though I am in the top 20% of earners and the top 10% of wealth and have never received a single welfare/unemployment payment from the government, because I don't want my children to grow up into a world, in which it is "everyone for themselves and screw the rest".

So, thank you very much for your character analysis, but you are totally wrong.

 

Well, study after study has shown that Americans are woefully unprepared for retirement. Her is one that shows that the average near-retirement person has only $12,000 saved in retirement accounts:

http://www.nirsonline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=768&Itemid=48

Of course, if one would eliminate SS, this number would probably go up, but not to the extent needed to sustain a 20 year retirement, and that's what's needed in today's demographic environment. It is just very clear that people in the 20s and 30s are, on average, incapable of thinking that they, too, eventually will have to stop working and rely on their savings. Usually, that realization sets in later in life, when it is too late for compounding to result in adequate retirement savings.

In a way, SS is there for people to protect them from themselves (hello Gruber), but I don't mind that.

 

Yes, you can always live without making an "income". Produce your own food, bicycle, home school etc. In a way, that's the life the Amish live. Isn't that the dream of the self-reliant types?

I'd be surprised, though, if there are lots of people who haven't grown up Amish trying to emulate that lifestyle, but they'd rather whine about taxes instead of taking action and change their life to avoid them.

 

Okay, so with respect to federal taxes, we're talking federal infrastructure. And that would be interstate highways? Any other federal infrastructure that one might choose to make use of? So my choice is save keep 30% of my income by sticking to state and local roads? Okay, I'll take that deal.

 

I've heard the explanation that since the government owns all the land it can make paying taxes a condition for remaining on "its" land.

 

There's your first mistaken assumption. I'm not a conservative.

It really doesn't, not for the millions of people who aren't conservative and, yet, see taxation as theft. I can't speak for the OP.

For someone who doesn't care for being analyzed, you certainly are eager to analyze everyone else will all sorts of false assumptions.

 

See signature.

 

That makes me chuckle. Most folks on PF barely seem to understand libertarisnism, and make many of the false assumption Quantum Nerd makes.

I have to wonder why though.

 

And if you are one of those welfare lazeabouts drinking all that clean city water, sleeping in parks that are maintained by taxes, breathing all that soot-free air that the EPA spends so much tax money to keep clean, etc. etc. etc...

then you're talking to them. They are freeloading off of the people who do pay taxes. I told you that's where your logic takes you, and you are not disagreeing with me.

 

It's embarrassing how much these people complain about taxes. My favorite is how their complaints are based on a very very miniscule amount of the taxes we pay, like Presidents vacations, food stamps and actual welfare, things like Solyndra, etc. I would rather have my taxes go to investing in future technologies than fighting wars. Apparently spending $2 trillion on building a democracy in Iraq with their "tax dollars" is perfectly fine, but trying to better the country's future by investing in education, technology, and infrastructure is "robbery". Conservatives are an embarrassment to this country.

 

People who have nothing and get help from the Government are not who I am talking about. I honestly couldn't care less that some food stamp degenerate is getting couple hundred a month for food. I'm not some evil monster like conservatives that only care about themselves... or undeveloped cells in a woman's body. Once you are born though, you're on your own.

 

Yeah, I know you want to exclude certain groups, but you can't. Either be consistent, or lose the argument.

 

One more point of consistency, you have to understand that the republican party is in turmoil now because of stuff like that. You have the tea partiers like Cruz and Rand that are against that, and you have the RINOs that are.

Find somebody that just loves Boehner and Mcconell (if you can) and complain to them about that. There is a civil war happening in the GOP, which means the democrats could easily win the next election, except for a small matter of all of them being the same corporate shills that democrats complain about.