[Phantom Hoover]

So I am certainly not some anarchist trying to get rid of all taxes, however I also dont lie to myself about forcibly taking someones money magically not being theft.

Actual anarchists don't want to get rid of taxes, they want to get rid of property. Anarcho-capitalists are a bizarre attempt at appropriating the label by people who are naive enough to conflate unregulated capitalism with 'freedom'.

[Flak]

"When the poor rob the rich, it is called Robbery. When the rich rob the poor, it is called Business."

Come to think of it, in the US and many others, don't you find it odd that megacorps can get loan from the reserve banks at almost negligible interest rate, while graduates are forced to pay their college fees with higher interests?

[General Battuta]

Taxation is theft, much like my use of this sidewalk is trespassing, my access to town water is piracy, and my morning subway commute is grand theft auto. You can voluntarily forgo taxation any time you please! Just forgo your membership in a state with public goods of any type. Go live in the wilderness. At last you will be free from the tyranny of the state.

You're not trespassing on the sidewalk because trespassing is infringement on private property, and the sidewalk is public.  You're not pirating the water because you pay a utility fee for that, on top of any taxes.  And riding the subway is not grand theft auto because a) you're not driving the subway, b) you're not preventing other people from riding the subway, and c) a subway is not an automobile.

Rather the point exactly, isn't it?

Also, you are laying the groundwork for a bait and switch here.  This thread is about welfare, corporate indulgences, and other redistributative schemes -- not public utilities.  Just about everyone who categorizes taxes as a necessary evil accepts them for the purposes of roads, utilities, and transportation.  There is a huge difference -- a huge difference -- between that and taking someone's property and giving it to another arbitrarily.  That's wrong whether the recipient is a poor person or a well-connected financier.

Replying directly to the topic of discussion is never a bait and switch. Welfare is a social utility. It's an economic sidewalk, a civil water system. Taxing people and redistributing the money is far from a huge difference - a HUGE difference - it's functionally and morally very nearly identical. The state collects the tax and uses it to maintain public goods that are collectively necessary but not supported by individual incentive.

e: Fractional reserve banking is by any definition much closer to theft than taxation; most people who go to a bank don't willingly consent to it or even know it's happening. Yet it's a vital engine of economic growth that on net benefits everyone. Reductive attempts to treat taxation or lending or even debt as simple household matters obfuscate what these systems really achieve.

[666maslo666]

Taxation is theft, much like my use of this sidewalk is trespassing, my access to town water is piracy, and my morning subway commute is grand theft auto. You can voluntarily forgo taxation any time you please! Just forgo your membership in a state with public goods of any type. Go live in the wilderness. At last you will be free from the tyranny of the state.

Many public services that are paid for voluntary and you can opt out of them if you want, such as public water, public mass transportation or lets say, highway stamps. These are of course not theft and I dont think they are considered taxation at all. So thats a different matter altogether. Taxation cannot be opted out and that is equivalent to theft, altough arguably justified one.

[General Battuta]

Taxation is used to pay for public services. You cannot say that public services are not theft but taxation is. You can try to advocate Lindahl taxation but the tragedy of the commons and preference revelation make it completely impractical.

Of course you can opt out of taxation! I just told you how. Simply reject the social contract and leave the state, including all its infrastructure and public goods. Move to a cave and make no use of any system which relies on public goods. You are free of the state and all it has built; you will not have to pay taxes.

[OverDhill]

You miss understood me if you think I do not want to help those in real need. For the able bodied I would think something along the lines of work-fare would be better than just a handout (my dad joined the CCC's that planted many of the trees we see today in that area of the country). I am sure we could come up with something for these people to do that would be better than sitting at home seeing we are already spending the money and foster some pride in their lives. As for the sick or anyone else that is not able bodied then we have an obligation to help them.

As for what is considered basic standard of living that seems to be blurred these days. Is alcohol, cigarettes, cable TV or cellphones basic?

My whole point is that this help is just that.... HELP. It should never be just expected like it is owed to them. It is the generosity of their fellow men (even if it comes through taxation). This world has become cold on all levels. There is a lack of compassion as much as there is a lack of gratitude. It is a serious problem when people start looking at the government as their caretaker. The powers at the top can use this to leverage their votes and slowly erode their sovereignty.

Unfortunate human nature being as it is will sometimes become lazy when they know they can get a basic level of living by not working.

We don't need better social entitlement programs we need more jobs. This is what people should be shouting for. As for my father's generation and not wanting handouts. It was way before the 70's and spanned across the great depression. They still did not look for handouts. People look back and think it was always easy to get a job. That was a very short couple decades. Let us not forget the oil embargo and food shortages of the 70's. The deep recession of the Carter years in the 80's. The blood bath in the streets in the 40's for worker rights.  For the most part it has always been a struggle.

[666maslo666]

Taxation is used to pay for public services. You cannot say that public services are not theft but taxation is. You can try to advocate Lindahl taxation but the tragedy of the commons and preference revelation make it completely impractical.

Of course you can opt out of taxation! I just told you how. Simply reject the social contract and leave the state, including all its infrastructure and public goods. Move to a cave and make no use of any system which relies on public goods. You are free of the state and all it has built; you will not have to pay taxes.

Public services are not always payed by taxation, often they are paid for by ordinary payment that can be opted out of, then it is not a tax. I dont pay taxes to have public water or electricity. I pay bills, and that is very different.

If I move to a cave then I wont be paying for these public services, but I still will be paying some taxes. For example, no matter when I move or whatever I do, I will most likely be forced to pay income tax or maybe some land taxes and who knows what else. That is no different that theft, except that it maybe can be justified as a lesser of two evils (i.e. stealing a bread to feed a starving person). You cannot reject the social contract because it is no contract.

[Luis Dias]

The problem of having welfare being given as "help" instead of regarding it as a social "safety net" that everyone is entitled to if we get unlucky at some point of our lives, is that exactly contrary to what you say, it is degrading to one's "ego", or pride. Most people who are unemployed are just not to be blamed for the state of the economy, they are the unlucky ones who got the bad side of the wheels of this nonlinear strange economies we have. If these people have to endure not only their dire situation, also have to beg and say "Thank you" every time they get a food stamp... do you really think this would be a better society? I loathe all the Rand Pauls and so on who actually believe in this ****ty nonsense.

I actually think a society where people who are unfortunate enough to be unemployed feel they deserve these "handouts" as you call them is a better society than what it substituted, with ego-smashed beggars all around. And no, I am sorry, I don't think other people get to say that these people should stop smoking or watching tv.

There's also this naive stupid idea (I'm not saying you have this idea, but there's lots of it going around) that states that if only unemployed would be with a better "morals" and "character", that the problem is one of personality, if only they were these self-made-wo/men that battled for a better life and perhaps start with scraps but fight hard and hard and eventually they will get jobs and so on and then the economy would be without unemployment. This is outright ridiculous. Yes, in individual terms it is true that if you try harder than anyone in your situation, you'll be personally probably better than your "competition", but this is a zero-sum-game. For all the "self-made-men" that get out of unemployment, there's another one who didn't get the job (because it was given to the former one), and unemployment figures will be left exactly in the same spot.

With a difference of course. Now these "self-made-wo/men" will be like rats willing to do anything their bosses tell them to and in any conditions they find themselves in. Isn't it a great thing that this amazing new morality of "job creation" gives rise to an incredible force for slaverization of workers who are just too happy to be exploited for any scrap of bread they are given?

[karajorma]

Many public services that are paid for voluntary and you can opt out of them if you want, such as public water, public mass transportation or lets say, highway stamps.

Good luck opting out of the justice system.

I notice that everyone claiming taxation is theft decided to ignore that one. You all benefit from having it but yet you don't want to pay for it. Who really is the thief?

[General Battuta]

You can reject the social contract - you simply need to give up all the benefits it provides you. Believe me, if you're living in a cave in the deep wilderness nobody's going to be tracking you down for income tax evasion. You just have to accept that you're also giving up access to EVERY form of public good your taxes pay for - and yes, of course that includes utilities like public transit and water! In the US, the electrical grid is maintained horizontally by private corporations financed by private investors - but these organizations operate in an environment rendered permissive by the government. They use public infrastructure, arbitrate disputes under government law, receive finance from a stable and insured banking system, and obtain labor from a work pool kept healthy and educated by government action. Criminals who attempt to exploit these systems (e: Kara pointed this out well) are deal with coercively by the state monopoly on force. Your taxes pay for this.

Without the state, public goods vanish. Without public goods, private actors become ineffective. This is why game theory demands a state: the only way to align individual incentives with global needs is via an arbitrator.

You accept the social contract when you make use of public goods, because those public goods would not exist without state action. And those goods underpin pretty much every system you rely on.

The really interesting question, to my mind, is how to determine which uses of taxes are effective. Taxation is inevitable and necessary. Figuring out where taxes should be spent, and to what effect, is an open and useful question to explore.

e: and Luis is correct, having a social safety net is a public good. Imagine it as a friction shield that prevents the economy from losing valuable labor to the constant attrition of misfortune and happenstance. Most Americans on needy-family welfare stay on it less than two years before either dropping out or moving back into the workforce.

[Goober5000]

I would point out to you, however, that the people who are just slacking off on welfare are certainly in the minority. Most of those receiving assistance from the government are people who, despite being able and willing to work, just aren't capable of making ends meet. If someone has to work two or three jobs and still has to decide whether food or living space is what's going to be paid for this month, if someone has to decide whether or not to get treatment for something because doing so might bankrupt him, that's when you know your system isn't working right.

That's the common story, but it isn't true.  Yes, there are people who are simply unable to make ends meet, but they are vastly outnumbered by the people exploiting the system.  They purchase iPhones and expensive TVs and then the complain that they don't have enough money left over for food and utilities.  Other people discover that they can make more money churning out babies and getting welfare checks than working at a job, so they choose the rational economic action and stop working.

If you subsidize laziness, you get more of it.

You are calling social security help "entitlements". Let me ask you, do you have any personal experience with the circumstances that would lead someone to apply for social security help? Have you ever had to do the math on what you're earning, and find out that no, this month you won't be able to get good food every day?

My parents ran a sole proprietorship business for years, and they have plenty of experience seeing what the welfare system produced.  As an example, the US has a requirement that people receiving unemployment benefits must demonstrate that they are actively searching for a job to continue receiving them.  So that led to people coming into the office and asking if there were any job openings.  If there were, they would simply leave.  If there were not, the people would ask our office to sign a form stating that the person applied for a job but there was no job available.

As another example, there were three separate instances of female employees applying for a job, getting it, going out on maternity leave eight months after getting the job, and then quitting once maternity leave was exhausted.  And this was in an office with a staff of only five people, so one person on leave was a significant burden.

Merriam-Webster's definition of theft includes that it must be against the law; Wikipedia's definition is a bit broader but it does include the term rightful owner, which, again, is defined by law.

Legality != morality.  The legal system is not the objective arbiter of what is and isn't moral.  As I said, theft is "depriving the rightful owner of personal property", which fits your definition.  Taxation simply happens to be a legal form of it.

What I find interesting is your opinion that taxation is theft despite it being legal. You are not the rightful owner of the taxes you pay. It's that simple.

This is a very dangerous position to hold.  Who, then, is the rightful owner of that portion of your money?  The state?  If you take that to its logical conclusion, then is a person only entitled to as much property as the state deems, in its sole discretion, to be appropriate?

If you consider taxation to be theft despite it being sanctioned by the legislation...

...then logically you should consider killing people in war to be murder, regardless of the fact that it is sanctioned by the government waging the war, and in many cases sanctioned by the international legislation as well.

War is a special case because soldiers essentially put their life up as collateral when they fight.  Killing civilians in war could be described as murder.

A more appropriate extrapolation is abortion.  Abortion is morally equivalent to murder, as it is the taking of an innocent life without justification.  The fact that it happens to be legal doesn't change this.

Taxation is theft, much like my use of this sidewalk is trespassing, my access to town water is piracy, and my morning subway commute is grand theft auto. You can voluntarily forgo taxation any time you please! Just forgo your membership in a state with public goods of any type. Go live in the wilderness. At last you will be free from the tyranny of the state.

You're not trespassing on the sidewalk because trespassing is infringement on private property, and the sidewalk is public.  You're not pirating the water because you pay a utility fee for that, on top of any taxes.  And riding the subway is not grand theft auto because a) you're not driving the subway, b) you're not preventing other people from riding the subway, and c) a subway is not an automobile.

Rather the point exactly, isn't it?

Of course not.  Taxation fits the definition of theft that I provided.  The three examples you provided do not fit the definition of the crimes you describe.  Your argument is not coherent.

Also, you are laying the groundwork for a bait and switch here.  This thread is about welfare, corporate indulgences, and other redistributative schemes -- not public utilities.  Just about everyone who categorizes taxes as a necessary evil accepts them for the purposes of roads, utilities, and transportation.  There is a huge difference -- a huge difference -- between that and taking someone's property and giving it to another arbitrarily.  That's wrong whether the recipient is a poor person or a well-connected financier.

Replying directly to the topic of discussion is never a bait and switch. Welfare is a social utility. It's an economic sidewalk, a civil water system. Taxing people and redistributing the money is far from a huge difference - a HUGE difference - it's functionally and morally very nearly identical. The state collects the tax and uses it to maintain public goods that are collectively necessary but not supported by individual incentive.

Now that I've pinned you down, you're trying to escape by confusing the issue.  What you are doing is a bait and switch, because you responded to an argument about the negative effects of welfare with a statement about the positive effects of public utilities.  You are trying to make them equivalent when they are not.

Welfare is not a social utility.  It is not the provision of public services for money, it is the deprivation of resources and property from an unfavored political class, and the granting of the same to a favored political class.  It is unjust deprivation of one party and unjust enrichment of another party.

e: Fractional reserve banking is by any definition much closer to theft than taxation; most people who go to a bank don't willingly consent to it or even know it's happening. Yet it's a vital engine of economic growth that on net benefits everyone. Reductive attempts to treat taxation or lending or even debt as simple household matters obfuscate what these systems really achieve.

A discussion on fractional reserve banking would warrant a separate thread.

[General Battuta]

Already replied to, see above. Remember, I'm discussing taxation as a whole.

[Goober5000]

I notice that everyone claiming taxation is theft decided to ignore that one. You all benefit from having it but yet you don't want to pay for it. Who really is the thief?

I stated that taxes are a necessary evil.  I would consider roads, utilities, infrastructure, and the justice system to fall under that necessity.  But the fact that it is a necessary evil doesn't change the fact that it is an evil, and therefore it should be minimized as much as possible.  It is not minimized if it includes things like redistributative schemes.

This is similar to what George Washington said about government:

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

[General Battuta]

Taxes are not inherently deontologically evil. They should be used to exactly the extent that they're effective at achieving aims. If a 100% tax rate got the job done better than a 10%, and if 'got the job done' could be cleanly and consensually defined, there'd be no reason not to go for it. These conditions are just generally impractical.

[General Battuta]

Welfare is an incendiary topic and I don't have a rigorous grasp of the statistics in play, but it's also worth noting that the myth of welfare exploitation is AFAIK largely not supported by empirical evidence. Families on social support spend less, particularly on entertainment and luxuries, and average time on welfare stats just don't suggest a pervasive lifestyle of gaming the system.

There have been several waves of welfare reform over the past decades, with interesting effects on the population taking welfare and the poverty rate. I'm hesitant to make a lay analysis without really getting into the science.

[Luis Dias]

That's the common story, but it isn't true.  Yes, there are people who are simply unable to make ends meet, but they are vastly outnumbered by the people exploiting the system.  They purchase iPhones and expensive TVs and then the complain that they don't have enough money left over for food and utilities.  Other people discover that they can make more money churning out babies and getting welfare checks than working at a job, so they choose the rational economic action and stop working.

If you subsidize laziness, you get more of it.

Pure unadulterated bull****. "Citation needed" doesn't even make it justice. FUD type kind of excuse to keep blaming the welfare "takers" for the state of the economy and pretend this ideology isn't farcically cruel. These ideas are not only ignorant, they are outright harmful. It's as if people actually believe there are no such things as "poor people", they are just a cover for actual "lazy people with iphones".

Again, I had predicted this comment. I said above that the conservative mindset about the unemployed who are receiving welfare benefits are "lazy", or having other character flaws. "If only they were better organized, if only they were more disciplined, this culture is to blame, all these lazy takers".

Until conservatives stop spewing this bull**** we will get nowhere.

[666maslo666]

You can reject the social contract - you simply need to give up all the benefits it provides you. Believe me, if you're living in a cave in the deep wilderness nobody's going to be tracking you down for income tax evasion.

Whats this thing with a cave in wilderness. You dont need to live in wilderness to not use any or very little government services. You certainly dont need to stop interacting with other people! My point is that if the system was set up on "you pay for what you use" basis, it wouldnt be theft. But it is absolutely not and so it is clearly theft.

And by the way, tax evasion would still be illegal if you live in wilderness and I really dont think anyone could live there for long and remain unnoticed. So you have yet to show how the fantasy about a social " contract" is anything other than a figure of speech.

[General Battuta]

You can reject the social contract - you simply need to give up all the benefits it provides you. Believe me, if you're living in a cave in the deep wilderness nobody's going to be tracking you down for income tax evasion.

Whats this thing with a cave in wilderness. You dont need to live in wilderness to not use any or very little government services. You certainly dont need to stop interacting with other people! My point is that if the system was set up on "you pay for what you use" basis, it wouldnt be theft. But it is absolutely not and so it is clearly theft.

And by the way, tax evasion would still be illegal if you live in wilderness and I really dont think anyone could live there for long and remain unnoticed. So you have yet to show how the fantasy about a social " contract" is anything other than a figure of speech.

Yes, you do! You must stop extracting benefit from all public goods, and the only way to do this is to get out of ALL systems that benefit from the state, including, yes, interactions with other people, which are governed by state law!

I've pointed out multiple times why 'pay for what you use' is completely impractical. Preference revelation sinks it totally. Lindahl taxation does not function with real actors and information - people cannot accurately assess the utility they extract from public goods and the tragedy of the commons burns everything.

Of course you can live in the woods and remain unnoticed. Bear researchers do it! It's just going to be extraordinarily difficult and unpleasant, and you'll die young. This is the price of rejecting all systems built on public goods.

e: You should be pushing tax choice, not Lindahl taxation.

[Luis Dias]

how can you "pay" for military protection for instance. or environmental protection? or justice? or police? or firefighting?

All these services cannot function properly if they have to worry about who their "clients" really are. Are we letting this house burn but not its neighbor? Are we going to let that person die from an attack because he wrote a post saying he "wanted out of the system"?

You are just not thinking this thing up. The only way you can stop benefitting for these services is actually to live in the wilderness. Go watch how Somalia is doing without a government. I heard it's the perfect libertarian paradise!

[666maslo666]

Yes, you do! You must stop extracting benefit from all public goods, and the only way to do this is to get out of ALL systems that benefit from the state, including, yes, interactions with other people, which are governed by state law!

I've pointed out multiple times why 'pay for what you use' is completely impractical. Preference revelation sinks it totally. Lindahl taxation does not function with real actors and information - people cannot accurately assess the utility they extract from public goods and the tragedy of the commons burns everything.

Of course you can live in the woods and remain unnoticed. Bear researchers do it! It's just going to be extraordinarily difficult and unpleasant, and you'll die young. This is the price of rejecting all systems built on public goods.

e: You should be pushing tax choice, not Lindahl taxation.

Ahh, now I see why you are confused.

Using public services just like any other service including private ones only counts if it is done willingly and directly.

example number 1: someone gives me a gift which I benefit from in some way. Then he decides to steal my money for what the gift was worth. This is theft, too.

example number 2: in my block of flats we have individual heat meters on every flat. For a big part of winter I dont need to use any heat because I can manage with heat radiating from my neighbours. Should they have a right to take my money for this heat? No, and it would be theft to do so.