Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RedKing]

The economy prior to that point was buoyed by westward expansion, railroads, and the fucking gold rush.

Again, you're getting the wrong lessons from the past, but fun fact, that first income tax was a flat tax!

It doesn't really matter whether it was flat or not, how the money was spent matters. In this case, despite a lot of corruption, it funded something necessary, the military, so the tax was not so wrong from a moral viewpoint, taxes that redistribute wealth constitute legal plunder and are not different from theft.

Do you mean taxes which were intended to redistribute wealth constitutes legal plunder or do you mean any tax that just happens to redistribute wealth, regardless of intent, is legal plunder?

Whenever the state takes something from one person and gives it to another, apart from the need to fund the police, army, judiciary, basic administration etc. it constitutes a legal theft in my opinion.

Translation: Taxes are bad, unless they pay for stuff I agree with.

1. Define "basic" administration, and how does this differ from "advanced" administration?
2. What about public health? What about fire departments? What about public education?
3. How much military/police funding via taxes is acceptable? At some point, you're going beyond funding the "common defense" and are just subsidizing a war machine/police state.

[Max™]

It's weird being super-left enough that damn near everything looks right-wing and bumping into someone so far to the right that everything looks left-wing to them.

[Moddan]

It's weird being super-left enough that damn near everything looks right-wing and bumping into someone so far to the right that everything looks left-wing to them.

Unfortunately followers of both extremes are usually unemployed and thus have a lot time to post on the internet.

[Max™]

Yes, if you're not slaving away a third of your time at a pointless job for far less than a living wage like the protestant work ethic demands then odds are you're a slovenly hippie or crazed right-wing nut.

[Dorsidwarf]

Didn't Yuma advocate slashing the military earlier in this thread, but now proposes ring fencing it?

[feelotraveller]

It's weird being super-left enough that damn near everything looks right-wing and bumping into someone so far to the right that everything looks left-wing to them.

Yup.

But it's also a recipe to make things fly.

[Starver]

When did we start income taxes? Just wondering from a historical starting point.

First suggested in 1812 (looking to copy UK law). First implemented by Lincoln (at least in part solving the problem where prior tax-by-property and tax-by-person had been taking double in the case of slave-owners, interestingly).

[Neonivek]

It's weird being super-left enough that damn near everything looks right-wing and bumping into someone so far to the right that everything looks left-wing to them.

At least you aren't like some people on the Far Left who are like "Everyone to the right of me is a Nazi"

[Ekaton]

I think that he wants to invoke Bastiat's idea of legal plunder, albeit very poorly. To describe it in a very basic form, the state is defined as an entity that replaces the need for every individual to defend himself and that purpose limits what it can do. Things that are natural consequences of "legitimate defense" in its collective form, such as police, judiciary, military etc. are all perfectly fine and taxes that fund them are alright.

The "legal plunder" occurs when the taxpayers' money is transferred to another individual which he considers a crime that can never be considered legal, even if the law says so, as the individual rights both precede and supersede man-made laws. All charity must be done without using forceful methods for Bastiat to be moral, and he gives examples of private charity which was much more effective than the public one, followed by American thinkers like A. J. Nock.

Therefore, as far as taxes are concerned, those that fund social security constitute a crime and those that fund police are alright. I studied law so I'm familiar with 19th century liberal concepts such as this. Until the1930s it has been considered the mainstream liberal concept of the state and the law and since the 1960s/70s libertarians adopted it.

[Zangi]

Would be nice to have a more precise definition of what this legal plunder / redistribution of wealth.  What is the bad?

Food, Medicine, or Shelter? 

At what point?  Homeless, Poor, or Destitute? 

Though, I suppose there are tax monies that are used with the intent to encourage certain behavior, which goes to businesses of all sizes and to people.  Is that where it goes wrong?

[Neonivek]

Another issue with requiring the market to regulate itself is that people do not have infinite patience to deal with every little thing that occurs.

How would pollution standards be if people were forced to all be perfectly aware of how much pollution every single manufacturer creates and then buy based on who pollutes within a reasonable sphere?

[Ekaton]

Would be nice to have a more precise definition of what this legal plunder / redistribution of wealth.  What is the bad?

Food, Medicine, or Shelter? 

At what point?  Homeless, Poor, or Destitute? 

Though, I suppose there are tax monies that are used with the intent to encourage certain behavior, which goes to businesses of all sizes and to people.  Is that where it goes wrong?

Everything you mentioned would be considered bad. The state by this definition can do nothing apart protecting an individual person or his property from an illegal attack. Everything else is considered contrary to the state's purpose and boundaries and therefore constitutes legal theft. Public education and healthcare included.

[Trekkin]

There is a problem with the "legitimate defense" (or "common defense") "is the only just use of tax revenue" argument, though: defense against what? You could argue that, for example, public health is a defense against biological warfare, or agricultural subsidies a defense against enemy sabotage of our food supply (albeit a clumsy and indirect one). Even welfare in the vein of universal basic income could be cast as a broad defense against economic conditions that could render the populace more amenable to enemy propaganda.

So what enemy actions are we defending against?

[Ekaton]

There is a problem with the "legitimate defense" (or "common defense") "is the only just use of tax revenue" argument, though: defense against what? You could argue that, for example, public health is a defense against biological warfare, or agricultural subsidies a defense against enemy sabotage of our food supply (albeit a clumsy and indirect one). Even welfare in the vein of universal basic income could be cast as a broad defense against economic conditions that could render the populace more amenable to enemy propaganda.

So what enemy actions are we defending against?

The classical concept, as expressed by Bastiat and very similarly by Nozick, Rothbard, Mises, Hayek and a lot of others, treats it as using force to prevent an invasion of someone's rights or to punish the perpetrator post factum. Either in the form of protecting an individual or a group thereof such as a state, assuming that states still exist. Nothing about dealing with the aftermath of the attack, the attacker is supposed to pay the damages, and if he can't, the victim must be made able to take what the attacker earns or use his labor forcefully till he pays, depending on whose concept you are talking about.

[RedKing]

So how does that relate to civil rights? Seems the state, in this model, must be the guarantor of civil rights.