Are forced taxes theft.

taxes are the cost of living in a society. For Christians the bible repeatedly commands them to pay them (which upset Jesus's Jewish followers who had to pay forced taxes in a way modern Americans could never comprehend).

 

The mafia, a criminal organization, are strong. The state, another criminal organization, is also strong. They both are a technical difficulty to deal with.

 

People you elected to office or not did, simply put you vote then the person is to represent the people and meet needs and for this they need taxes and income from that. Now if you opted not to vote then you accept by inaction the result.

 

What if one doesn't wish to live 'in a society'? What if one simply wants to live on his own homestead?

 

Then occupy one and defend it.

 

You're never going to get 100% agreement on taxes, so what you're talking about is user fees, not taxation. And that's simply not workable on a large scale. Especially because people are really, really bad at evaluating their need for indirect or abstract things.

For instance, I work from home, and don't really need a car. Why should I pay for roads? Answer: I indirectly benefit from roads in lots of ways, even if I rarely use them myself.

We all benefit from having an educated, literate populace, even if you don't have kids.

That food-stamp tax you pay almost certainly benefits you both directly and indirectly. #1, it's there in case you ever need it. #2, access to food stamps may be why someone else who impacts your life -- a gardener, a dental assistant, whomever -- is able to be where they are and do what they do.

Taxation could be theft if you lived in a dictatorship and the money lined the dictator's pocket, but we live in a democracy where we have a say -- both direct and indirect -- in how much we pay in taxes, and what it is used for. So it's not theft.

See above. Not only is what you are proposing unworkable, it is untrue.

 

Defend it from violent people. Got it.

 

If there were a practical way to cut yourself off from every tax-funded service, you'd have a shot. But there isn't. Simply by living in the United States, you are benefiting from the protection of its military. You are breathing its clean air and drinking its clean water. You are protected by its system of laws. If something serious happened to you, you would be taken to one of its hospitals, even if you didn't want to be.

Similarly, there's no practical way to cut the rest of society off from YOU. What you do in your homestead impacts those around you. If you don't take care of your house or land, it reduces the property values of your neighbors. Taken to an extreme, it could pose a health hazard to them. If you violate pollution or noise restrictions, you are negatively affecting those around you.

That is why we have laws and taxes in the first place: it is not possible to live completely apart, so we have rules to make it possible to live together, and taxes to provide services and enforcement of those rules.

If you find that too restrictive, then you need to find a place that better matches your preferences. There are plenty of lawless places in the world, where there is little or no government to contend with. Feel free to move there.

 

As long as you don't live with other people around you, then you can. Otherwise you can not. Taxes in one form or another have existed in virtually all societies.

 

What if one never asked for any of that? Why should one pay for something one never asked for?

 

Why is that?

 

Because no one will allow you to and because you have impact on others. So they make you pay a tax to address this. Economist call this the issue of the commons or free riders or carry over effect.

 

As I've now said repeatedly, you give your consent by choosing to live where you live. If you find the rules too restrictive, either push to change them or move elsewhere.

I mean, I guess we could set things up so that when you turn 18, the sheriff shows up at your door and says "sign this paper consenting to our laws and taxes or leave town by midnight." But that seems a little unnecessary, since you give your implied consent by not leaving town the day you turn 18.

 

Wait a minute. The definition of theft still stands. You are taking from some to give to others without their agreement BY FORCE. That is THEFT! If you give it a cute name and some bizzare rationalization doesn't change what it is. You can put a cute dress and lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. So if someone breaks into your home and steals your stuff, it is just a tax, right?

Just admit taxes are theft, be it legal or illegal. And that is the way they should be looked at, as theft. That way you don't end up with our current system of over 50% taxes on the middle class. You have to think, at what point to theft by taxes add up to crime by taxes.

Again, just admit that taxes are theft. Damn the justification, just admit that taxes are government driven theft. The sheriff of Nottingham is NOT dead.

All taxes should be voluntary.

 

I am the Don in charge of this neighborhood. If you don't want your knees broken you either pay me my vig or you get the hell out of my neighborhood.

Sounds so damn ethical. You've almost convinced me of the ethics of you position.

Well, maybe not.

 

Then blame your parents for making you....The rules were here before you.

It's not theft cause you agree to pay them.

 

You start with a false premise, because as I've now said repeatedly, there IS agreement: you agreed to the rules when you decided to live where you live.

This is a completely separate question from the philosophical point of whether taxes is theft.

And you're wrong. The total tax burden on the middle class is more like 27%. Nobody, not even the top 1%, pays 50% of their income in taxes:
https://www.ctj.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2015/

Current taxation levels, by the way, are at or near a 60-year low. So spare me the "overtaxed" argument.

 

Theft is either socially determined or determined by god. Since society, and god, does not consider taxes to be theft they are not.

 

You are once again making bad-faith arguments.

You complained that you never consented to being taxed. I explained that you consented by choosing to live where you live. You said that was a bizarre rationalization. So I created a scenario where you are asked for your explicit consent, by way of demonstrating that it is functionally the same thing as implied consent. And you call that gangsterism.

So I'm not sure what you want. You appear to want to be a free-rider, benefiting from the rules and taxes around you without having to either pay taxes or obey the rules. I'm not sure why you think that is an ethical position. It certainly isn't logical or workable.

 

It depends on exactly to what purposes those taxes are put it is quite one thing to make something that benefits all of us, a road, a police station or an army al benefit us all. Taking money from x and giving it to b is a transaction that simply penalizes x and places the government in an unfair alliance with b. It is the epitome of injustice, whether it is taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor or taking the poor mans house and giving it to the rich to build a shopping mall.

 

People disagree what is unfair. I think the maldistributed income levels in the US are unfair not taxes.

 

You amount to a very nice puppet of all the politicians.

 

How is it maldistributed?

 

One cannot be said to agree to anything simply because one was born in a given location. You are in essence arguing that everyone born in the US is the government's slave. A notion that rational freedom loving people should reject out of hand.

 

Slaves are not free...so that is an incorrect analogy.