Is taxation voluntary?

[bucs90]

Everything is voluntary. Poor people dont pay income taxes. And they dont pay payroll taxes if they refuse to work. The only tax most poor people pay is the sales tax on their 40 oz, their pack cigarettes and their lottery tickets.

Always interesting to see which USMB-ers hate the poor. If your circumstances change, should we commence to hating on you, bucs?

Only if I decide to not work, collect entitlement, bitch about what is owed to me, etc, etc.

99% of poor people are only poor because of their own choices. And they remain that way because of their own choices. It's a hard, cold reality. From birth, they have the best opportunity in the WORLD to live a great live. Even in American lower class, they live better than 95% of the rest of the humans on Earth. They have nothing to complain about.

They are born with a free public education. They are born with ample food for survival. If they are born into the ghetto or trailor park, and are still there 50 years later, it's the fault of their life decisions..........not the fault of me and the other middle/upper class for not paying even more $$ to the gov't.

 

[bucs90]

There is actually a counter-argument to this, if you can bear to hear it. Most people agree we are best served by citizen legislators...men and women with jobs or businesses who put them on hold to serve a term or two as an elected official. An all-volunteer legislature forecloses this option to all but those who are wealthy enough to go without income for that time.

That's essentially what we get now. The worst of the worst rise to the top so why should we pay them?

Do you mean the poor and the middle class are inherently worse at governing than the wealthy? If so, that's amazingly foolish, Kevin.

I'd say the poor are worse at governing.

They are 99% likely to be poor because of their own decision making. If they can't govern their own circumstance well, how could they govern a city, state or nation?

 

[Madeline]

Everything is voluntary. Poor people dont pay income taxes. And they dont pay payroll taxes if they refuse to work. The only tax most poor people pay is the sales tax on their 40 oz, their pack cigarettes and their lottery tickets.

Always interesting to see which USMB-ers hate the poor. If your circumstances change, should we commence to hating on you, bucs?

Only if I decide to not work, collect entitlement, bitch about what is owed to me, etc, etc.

99% of poor people are only poor because of their own choices. And they remain that way because of their own choices. It's a hard, cold reality. From birth, they have the best opportunity in the WORLD to live a great live. Even in American lower class, they live better than 95% of the rest of the humans on Earth. They have nothing to complain about.

They are born with a free public education. They are born with ample food for survival. If they are born into the ghetto or trailor park, and are still there 50 years later, it's the fault of their life decisions..........not the fault of me and the other middle/upper class for not paying even more $$ to the gov't.

Setting aside your ignorant, self-serving and patently untrue assertions, so what? Let's assume A is born into a family too poor to feed him. At what age would you suggest we allow him to starve?

 

[Madeline]

That's essentially what we get now. The worst of the worst rise to the top so why should we pay them?

Do you mean the poor and the middle class are inherently worse at governing than the wealthy? If so, that's amazingly foolish, Kevin.

I'd say the poor are worse at governing.

They are 99% likely to be poor because of their own decision making. If they can't govern their own circumstance well, how could they govern a city, state or nation?

So, IYO Abraham Lincoln was a fuck up?

 

[boedicca]

Why are people who cannot afford to take care of their children having them in the first place?

 

[boedicca]

Do you mean the poor and the middle class are inherently worse at governing than the wealthy? If so, that's amazingly foolish, Kevin.

I'd say the poor are worse at governing.

They are 99% likely to be poor because of their own decision making. If they can't govern their own circumstance well, how could they govern a city, state or nation?

So, IYO Abraham Lincoln was a fuck up?

Of course not. He made something of himself via his own efforts, not government handouts.

 

[Madeline]

Why are people who cannot afford to take care of their children having them in the first place?

Dun ask me, boedicca. I favor requiring semi-permanent birth control for any fertile female on any form of government aid. ANY, even school loans.

 

[Madeline]

I'd say the poor are worse at governing.

They are 99% likely to be poor because of their own decision making. If they can't govern their own circumstance well, how could they govern a city, state or nation?

So, IYO Abraham Lincoln was a fuck up?

Of course not. He made something of himself via his own efforts, not government handouts.

He "made something of himself" as a lawyer, boedicca. That's a profession the government has to underwrite or else it does not exist. Truth is, none of us -- NONE of us -- is 100% responsible for our own lives, successful or not.

But talent can be found in every income strata, and excluding the poor from any profession would just be stupid.

 

[boedicca]

Why are people who cannot afford to take care of their children having them in the first place?

Dun ask me, boedicca. I favor requiring semi-permanent birth control for any fertile female on any form of government aid. ANY, even school loans.

And I favor not having the transfer payment system in the first place that would require this form of Eugenics.

 

[boedicca]

So, IYO Abraham Lincoln was a fuck up?

Of course not. He made something of himself via his own efforts, not government handouts.

He "made something of himself" as a lawyer, boedicca. That's a profession the government has to underwrite or else it does not exist. Truth is, none of us -- NONE of us -- is 100% responsible for our own lives, successful or not.

But talent can be found in every income strata, and excluding the poor from any profession would just be stupid.

And neither is the government responsible for 100% of our lives, successful or not.

Your problem is that you do not have a concept of a proper, limited role of government.

All taxes are not created equal. The ones which are used to fuel transfer payment Ponzi Schemes are immoral.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

There is actually a counter-argument to this, if you can bear to hear it. Most people agree we are best served by citizen legislators...men and women with jobs or businesses who put them on hold to serve a term or two as an elected official. An all-volunteer legislature forecloses this option to all but those who are wealthy enough to go without income for that time.

That's essentially what we get now. The worst of the worst rise to the top so why should we pay them?

Do you mean the poor and the middle class are inherently worse at governing than the wealthy? If so, that's amazingly foolish, Kevin.

No, we only really get the wealthy anyways, and whether poor or rich it's generally one type of person who seeks political office and that's those who lust after power.

 

[Madeline]

Why are people who cannot afford to take care of their children having them in the first place?

Dun ask me, boedicca. I favor requiring semi-permanent birth control for any fertile female on any form of government aid. ANY, even school loans.

And I favor not having the transfer payment system in the first place that would require this form of Eugenics.

Whoa, I did not say I supported eugenics, boedicca. I'm radical, not evil.

As for doing away with social programs, let's hear it. No more student loans? No food assistance? No medical care? No housing assistance?

Just how far do you go in thinking that a safety net for the poor is a bad thing?

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Do you mean the poor and the middle class are inherently worse at governing than the wealthy? If so, that's amazingly foolish, Kevin.

I'd say the poor are worse at governing.

They are 99% likely to be poor because of their own decision making. If they can't govern their own circumstance well, how could they govern a city, state or nation?

So, IYO Abraham Lincoln was a fuck up?

Abraham Lincoln was a rich trial lawyer who represented most of the big railroads in the country.

 

[Greenbeard]

Why are people who cannot afford to take care of their children having them in the first place?

And I favor not having the transfer payment system in the first place that would require this form of Eugenics.

So you don't think the poor should breed but you're distancing yourself from eugenics.

 

[boedicca]

Dun ask me, boedicca. I favor requiring semi-permanent birth control for any fertile female on any form of government aid. ANY, even school loans.

And I favor not having the transfer payment system in the first place that would require this form of Eugenics.

Whoa, I did not say I supported eugenics, boedicca. I'm radical, not evil.

As for doing away with social programs, let's hear it. No more student loans? No food assistance? No medical care? No housing assistance?

Just how far do you go in thinking that a safety net for the poor is a bad thing?

The Government forcibly sterilizing poor people is classic Eugenics.

No more student loans? Oh my god, yes. Students are graduating with obscene levels of debt for no value degrees which will enslave them for the rest of their lives. This travesty has received a great deal of press coverage lately. I suggest you read up on it.

Private charity can and does a far better job serving local communities than do the wasteful and self-serving centralized government structures. It's telling that Gates and Buffett are leaving their wealth to charitable trusts and not subjecting it to the estate tax.

As to the safety net - at this point it is no longer a net, it's a leash.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

My opinion is that taxation is not voluntary because for something to be voluntary you have to be able to choose not to do it. Since you cannot choose not to pay taxes without being thrown in prison it is clearly not voluntary. loosecannon is of the opinion that because you sign a paper prior to employment that allows the government a portion of your income that you're consenting to being taxed, but I disagree. For one this doesn't cover all forms of taxation, and two you have no other choice but to sign this paper. The government has made it illegal to work without giving them a cut of your income so you are forced by law to sign this paper or you can't legally work. If you can't work you can't live so there's obviously no choice there.

Taxes are clearly coercive, not voluntary.

When has choice ever meant "free of all constraint"? There are always limitations to what you can choose (there's actually an entire discipline dedicated to fleshing out this principle--it's called economics). That doesn't mean there is no such thing as choice or you don't have choices. As you even point out in your post, there are alternatives to the choice you've made, you simply like them less. Alternatives are available to you right now, some of which have already been suggested in this thread:

1. Emigrate. I suspect the tax rate in Mogadishu will be more to your liking.
2. Lower your income. The destitution choice will free you from the onerous burden of income taxes.
3. Pull a Thoreau. If you view your current situation as devoid of choice (and, perhaps, lacking in freedom), then presumably life as a wage earner and life as a prisoner lie on the same indifference curve for you. Try it out for a while.

Given that these alternatives are all available to you but instead you opt for paying taxes, by the definition you presented ("for something to be voluntary you have to be able to choose not to do it") they are voluntary. Similarly, illegality also doesn't absolutely restrict choices; you may have noticed that the crime rate isn't zero. What illegality does is alter the nature of the choice. If "A" is a legal option, and "B" is an illegal alternative, that doesn't mean there's some cosmic force or infinite potential well stopping you from choosing "B." Illegality simply means that with "B" comes some probability of sanction (a fine, jail time, whatever). That probability (and perhaps adherence to some particular moral tenets or conscience) is enough to make "B" the less desirable choice for most people but desirability doesn't determine whether the choice itself exists.

Quite a bit of what you probably consider to be voluntary is a bit more ambiguous if you want to take the position that constraint signals an absence of choice. Some examples: For many people, consumption patterns are dictated by the status group they happen to be in. Drug trafficking in a high unemployment inner city neighborhood may be the most immediately appealing option to a teenager facing a list of unpleasant options (just as paying your taxes is probably the most appealing option to you, given the list of alternatives I posted above). Choosing to go to work at a fast food joint while sick--even knowing one might, and probably will, infect customers--may be the only viable option for a low-wage hourly worker. A single mother may choose to settle for more less-than-healthy dollar menu meals and corn-based products for her children due to the relative prices and availability of fresh fruit and vegetables in her neighborhood.

These are all issues generally understood to fall under the umbrella of "personal responsibility." Life is full of constraints that make our actual choices less appealing than the choices we dream we'd make in some idealized world. But if you want to go down the road of suggesting that if the choices we're directed to make by ambient incentives and the contours of the world in which we live are not choices at all if they differ substantially from our ideal (e.g. if we simply don't like the best option available to us), then you're also going to have to accept that a great many people in this world, even in "free" countries, have never had the luxury of making a single substantial choice in their entire lives.

This is an excellent post.

The general point of this, and Greenbeard can correct me if I'm wrong, is that there is still a choice, because one can technically choose not to pay taxes. This is technically true, one could choose not to pay taxes and face the consequences. However, one can hardly call this choice voluntary, because very few people are going to choose to not pay taxes and face imprisonment or worse. Given the coercion involved in this choice it is clearly not voluntary. For example, I choose to pay my taxes because I have to work to live and I don't want to go to prison. However, in the absence of coercion I would not choose to pay taxes. Most people would make a different choice if they weren't coerced by the force of government.

So in essence, a person's choice cannot be considered voluntary if there is coercion involved.

 

[boedicca]

Why are people who cannot afford to take care of their children having them in the first place?

And I favor not having the transfer payment system in the first place that would require this form of Eugenics.

So you don't think the poor should breed but you're distancing yourself from eugenics.

That's not what I said. I said people who cannot afford to raise their children shouldn't have them. Many poor people take responsibility for their kids, and work to support them while teaching them the values to improve their own lots in life.

 

[bucs90]

Dun ask me, boedicca. I favor requiring semi-permanent birth control for any fertile female on any form of government aid. ANY, even school loans.

And I favor not having the transfer payment system in the first place that would require this form of Eugenics.

Whoa, I did not say I supported eugenics, boedicca. I'm radical, not evil.

As for doing away with social programs, let's hear it. No more student loans? No food assistance? No medical care? No housing assistance?

Just how far do you go in thinking that a safety net for the poor is a bad thing?

Eugenics is a left wing ideal. Most lefties dont know this, and it's not their fault, because it's hidden well.

Liberal icon George Bernard Shaw, along with Karl Marx, where enchanted with the possibilities of eugenics.

Shaw, who is worshipped by the left and on college campuses, pondered how humanity could rid itself of unwanted humans ("surplus undesirables" I believe was the exact term). He spoke with scientists and asked if it were possible that a "humane gas" could be created to extinguish these humans if a system were set up to gather them. Shaw even advocated that should such a gas be created, classical music should be played during the process "to calm the unwanted peoples during their necessary exit".

Adolf Hitler, as leader of the National Socialist Party of Germany, became intrigued by the studies of George Bernard Shaw, in particular the "humane gas". And we see where that went. Hitler was also intrigued by the eugenics studies of Karl Marx, although he personally was disgusted by Marx, but interested in his studies.

Anyhow, the long history of eugenics is seen in left wing minds, and the process of eugenics could only be carried out by a massive, powerful central government (hence the need for gov't to takeover all parts of human behavior).

More recent liberal icons who embraced eugenics is Supreme Court justice Ruth Ginsberg, who stated her disappointment that the abortion movement did not speed up the process to get rid of unwanted persons in the poverty stricken parts of America (100% true, google it).

 

[bucs90]

And I favor not having the transfer payment system in the first place that would require this form of Eugenics.

Whoa, I did not say I supported eugenics, boedicca. I'm radical, not evil.

As for doing away with social programs, let's hear it. No more student loans? No food assistance? No medical care? No housing assistance?

Just how far do you go in thinking that a safety net for the poor is a bad thing?

The Government forcibly sterilizing poor people is classic Eugenics.

No more student loans? Oh my god, yes. Students are graduating with obscene levels of debt for no value degrees which will enslave them for the rest of their lives. This travesty has received a great deal of press coverage lately. I suggest you read up on it.

Private charity can and does a far better job serving local communities than do the wasteful and self-serving centralized government structures. It's telling that Gates and Buffett are leaving their wealth to charitable trusts and not subjecting it to the estate tax.

As to the safety net - at this point it is no longer a net, it's a leash.

YES. I support no more gov't student loans 100%.

For one, we have devalued the meaning of a college degree to almost a piece of paper you can but at a vending machine. So many colleges and their degrees have become a joke.

Which is why we also have a population of 20-40 year old cry babies who "HAVE MY DEGREE" and refuse to work a job they see as below them, all while whining that the gov't isn't helping them.

We need more folks with tech skills. Not with a bachelors degree in "Diversity and Culture".

 

[Madeline]

And I favor not having the transfer payment system in the first place that would require this form of Eugenics.

Whoa, I did not say I supported eugenics, boedicca. I'm radical, not evil.

As for doing away with social programs, let's hear it. No more student loans? No food assistance? No medical care? No housing assistance?

Just how far do you go in thinking that a safety net for the poor is a bad thing?

The Government forcibly sterilizing poor people is classic Eugenics.

We now have the science to render a person sterile for a few years but not permanently. IMO, this alters the debate and labeling the notion "eugenics" is unfair.

No more student loans? Oh my god, yes. Students are graduating with obscene levels of debt for no value degrees which will enslave them for the rest of their lives. This travesty has received a great deal of press coverage lately. I suggest you read up on it.

I'm aware of the problems, boedicca, and I agree we need reforms. However, without student loans we'll likely have no one getting a college education unless they are rich. What you are suggesting is an end to upward mobility in this country....throwing the baby out with the bathwater, in my view.

Private charity can and does a far better job serving local communities than do the wasteful and self-serving centralized government structures. It's telling that Gates and Buffett are leaving their wealth to charitable trusts and not subjecting it to the estate tax.

I disagree. Private charities very often limit their largesse to members of a perceived group or those willing to surrender their rights in exchange for aid. People should not have to succumb to preaching in order to eat. And it is hardly true that private charities are some sanctified area of the market where fraud and waste are unknown.

As to the safety net - at this point it is no longer a net, it's a leash.

Disincentivizing people is a risk. I'll acknowledge we often design programs badly or fail to reform them when unintended consequences emerge. Worse, every government program is someone's fiefdom and maintaining a need for the services is in that person's best interests. We cannot ever fully overcome these probems because humans are not perfect.

You did not answer my question.....given all the above, what social programs would you continue, if any? Or do you favor discontinuing them all?