Is taxation theft, or are taxes just the cost of living in civilized society?

Wow user Machiavelli, that must mean you're right.

Morality should come from society and religion not government. Control the culture and you'll have morality instilled, have a corrupt government shaking people down to use their hard earned money on bullshit and you have glorified organized crime that people eat up because they're largely domesticated like cattle.

Don't turn a blind eye to mass corruption just because you like some shit you read in a book user. Philosophy is food for thought not word of God.

Yeah, it's called representative democracy and it's one of the greatest achievements of western society. Just because I dont 100% agree with every single member of Congress doesnt mean the entire system is unjust.

Both

>pick your politicians
>pick corrupt politicians
oh woe is me how has this tyrannical system sprung forth to oppress me so?

The system is corrupt and democracy is absolutely retarded in many ways user. When the only standard for voting is an age not knowledge of issues or an understanding of anything including what the politician stands for there's a huge problem. Not to mention a 2 party system largely plays into divide and conquer tactics by pitting the masses against each other over issues that are largely passion plays the government shouldn't even have a stake in.

You're pacified by feeling like you have a say because you can push a button and vote someone in and pass off personal responsibility on a government that you let interfere with your life to an extent it never should.

Ad populum is a logical fallacy in a debate but not when running a country? Since when?

user "picking your politicians" is a meme, people are given very limited choices and those politicians have control over issues the government shouldn't even have a say in. See:

if you want to see the result of a free society with liberty and the pursuit of happiness like the founding fathers made look around you.

> implying this is a free society or that the founding ideals are even honored
kek

taxes are a necessary evil.
IT is not exactly theft because you've a say in how much money they extract from you by force. Also they can't extract more than what the law says, and finally most of that money it is supposed to be expended into society.
So it is similar to theft considering the use of force, but it is not like theft considering your participation in society.

What's your alternative?

picking your politicians is absolutely a meme. the structure of human society follows 80/20 as well. the fascists were absolutely right in their point of view of the state and authority. the government is the bully with the stick that lays down the rules generally accepted most by people. if they don't they are replaced with those that will fill the position as head of the totem pole. and without that bully to enforce the collective morality there exists no society as a whole because there exists no fundamental groundwork for a group structure.
we see even now the government upholds the ethics of society as a whole. greed, apathy towards justice, the whole spectrum of decay. the government is just another microcosm of the society that feeds it.

Society is the cost of taxation.

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>taxes are a necessary evil
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

Limit government, let people sort themselves out.

I disagree with the need to enforce morality being on the government, instilling cultural and societal values through spirituality and a general sense of community is good enough. There are always things that people generally won't tolerate, let them decide it for themselves on a community by community basis. The need for a federal government is largely nonexistent outside of people who want to babysat even as adults.

my point is simple, it was tried and look where it ended up. there is no practical way of duplicating it without ending up here gain unless your drastically redesign it, but then it would be something much different and would still have the same problem. people have always had a problem seeing past their lifetime. and as a result slowly will unravel through seemingly rational choices that culminate into dysgenic behavior through an inability to see past their own lifetime. essentially trying what was already tried wont magically work out differently the second go around.

The government is run by people, none of which are angels. That quote is largely senseless because it treats the government as an entity rather than a group of humans just as flawed as those they rule over.

Civilizations collapse eventually regardless of what they're built upon user. Nothing lasts forever, there's a cycle of destruction and rebirth in all things, just the natural order. Show me something that lasts forever and always will that isn't somehow divine or esoteric.

It's theft if you live in a 3rd world shithole like me.

By firing all of the useless workers in the Federal, State and local governments we could probably have a 15% flat tax, and you’d notice no difference in your daily life

Maybe just a sales tax on everything and eliminate all other taxes. The more you buy, the more you pay. Seems the most fair.

That is not conducive to civilized society, and any intellectually honest person knows it.
It's the best system we have, which is why every civilized society has adopted it.

Every civilized society fails and becomes corrupt user. Every. Single. One.

yes, thing is though democracies have a habit of only making it about 200 years. this is much less than say monarchies for instance, which is what was meant to be replaced with the american democratic republic. it was based on really a footnote of roman history and held up as the ideal. funnily enough even france the precursor of the american democracy almost slipped back itself with napolean within the lifetime of the jacobins. Its hard to make the case for something shown historically to be so volatile and so short lived as a better alternative. I mean heck more people were killed in the reign of terror than 400 years of spanish inquisition. that means the spanish inquisition lasted longer than roman democracy and killed less people than just turning france into a democracy. If collapse is inevitable I would still like to postpone it as far off as I could, and that rules out democracy.

Even if that were true, what is your point? Democracy was conceived of millennia ago and no ones come up with a better alternative since. Government requires the consent of the governed, and representative democracy is the closest weve come to an equilibrium between total individualist chaos and fascist totalitarianism.

I would like to see more debate regarding tax evasion than regarding tax as a concept. As in, should billionaires be allowed to avoid tax while they support higher taxes on everyone else?

If only there was a candidate who talked relentlessly about how the wealthy need to pay their fair share

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They take it so, yeah, theft.

Fair, I agree with you on democracy anyway user. It's literally the running of society based upon a logical fallacy.

What consent user? Can I tomorrow drop out of the country I was born in, not pay taxes, and go live anywhere that isn't some uninhabited island? Or am I by the simple consequence of being born here "consenting"? Democracy is ad populum in action and ultimately garbage. It's a pacification and division tool that makes people think they have power when in reality they have none. It's only on a small local community level where democracy can even be considered somewhat reasonable (though I'd argue only if informed educated citizens were allowed votes, which isn't the case) but on a federal level it's absolutely retarded especially in a large country lile the USA.

At the very least you should understand the necessity of state rights reigning supreme over the federal government right user? Surely you don't think someone from California should really have a say over what goes on in a place like Iowa where the culture, population, and lifestyle are so vastly different the same expectations can't be had.

Yes but he only talked about raising taxes. Nothing regarding tax evasion. Tax loopholes are not even a secret or weird, they are coded on purpose into law due to lobbying.

If only every commie and socialist willingly took extra out of their paychecks and donated it to the less fortunate instead of buying themselves any luxury items at all maybe the rest of us wouldn't have to have their ideals shoved down our throats.

Theft

>civilized society
wat

There are things that simply can't be privatised without creating monopolies that fuck the consumers in the ass.

>Can I tomorrow drop out of the country I was born in, not pay taxes, and go live anywhere that isn't some uninhabited island? Or am I by the simple consequence of being born here "consenting"?
If there was a mechanism in place where you could choose not to pay into the system and also not reap the benefits of everyone else paying for the luxuries you would continue to enjoy, that would be a coherent argument. But it isnt, and its not.
>Surely you don't think someone from California should really have a say over what goes on in a place like Iowa where the culture, population, and lifestyle are so vastly different the same expectations can't be had.
If Iowa thinks they can sustain themselves independent of the contributions of California, they're welcome to find out how that would go. Until then, the rest of us have to deal with two dipshits from corn country having an equal say as two people representing a state that, if it were it's own country, would be the sixth biggest economy on the entire planet. That's democracy.

Part of the issue with consumers is a lack of personal accountability, they don't care where things come from or who gets fucked over to make it they just want shit then complain about the state of the market. Also let's be fair here government business restrictions in many cases fuck small businesses over which is part of the problem that leads to monopolies. All that red tape works out better for big businesses than small ones.

theft

It’s theft. You should keep what you make. Taxes should be applied to sales and corporations.

>sex without consent: rape
>work without consent: slavery
taking money without consent: magically not theft.

fucking leftist.

its not rape is shes was asking for it, and its not theft if they voted for it.

You acknowledge that there's no consent then yes? You're a citizen by birth and a cog in the machine as an immediate consequence. You use consent so loosely you may as well be fucking someone who's gagged so they can't say no.

California wouldn't be shit if it was on its own user, it needs to import water. You know that right? Democracy and the federal government are broken and you're praising a system that's fucking you over what could be loose trade agreements rather than a federal government that intrudes on state and citizen rights.

Taxation is voluntary so it is not theft. It is the cost of doing business in a given country. If you want to sell a toothbrush in Arizona, you gotta pay Arizona sales tax. You want to buy a house in South Korea? You gotta pay South Korean property taxes.
If you want to minimize your tax burden, you can, but at the end of the day the taxes represent the cost of the society to allow you to buy that good. (Having a healthy population with a roadway system who can purchase a product with the confidence that it won't kill them).

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It's the cost of living in a civilized society. We don't live in a civilized society though so yes taxation is absolutely theft. Fuck the gubmint.

Both

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>Is taxation theft?
YES
>the cost of living in Civlized society?
NO,
it's exactly the opposite
it's your taxes that fund the welfare for Savages

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>be US citizen
>need passport to leave country and to be able to obtain citizenship elsewhere encountering the same issue with a different government otherwise stuck here
> need home because human
>forced to buy home on us land
>forced to pay property taxes as a result

That's not really business and consent user, it's a lack of options resulting in a power imbalance that gives the government a "right" to take from people for basic human needs that they pay for. Also you're paying yearly for what should be private property because you own it and shouldn't have to be renting it from the government.

Commies bitch about landlords but are fine with property tax. It's assbackwards.

>You're a citizen by birth and a cog in the machine as an immediate consequence.
Pretty much, yeah. If you want to make this into an anti-natalist philosophical conversation that's one thing, but here were trying to talk about actual practical discussion of tax policy.
>California wouldn't be shit if it was on its own user, it needs to import water.
California has a hell of a lot more leverage in terms of the ability to meet its needs than Iowa does. Again, it would be the sixth largest economy in the world if it was it's own country. How long do you think Iowa would last on it's own, without all the benefits it receives by being in the same union as financial hubs like California and New York? Most of America is subsidized by the states you spit upon when you wouldnt last a single day without our contributions.

Of course it's theft, a just society would have a system of voluntary taxation which is so advantageous (being able to purchase goods online, the ability to own property, the ability to vote in elections, the ability to be paid above-board employment, to have a business license or work 1099 gig economy, to send your kids to school, to be treated at an ER for free, to use public transportation, enjoy public services like unemployment and police assistance) that doing anything else is hell.

There's no coercion, but you have to pay your membership fee for civilization. Losing membership is catastrophic for well-meaning members of society and is repaid by sponsors almost instantly.

I just pulled two random states out of my ass to demonstrate cultural and educational differences user. Why the same things can't apply for one over the other and so on.

That being said my point is taxation is absolutely theft because the citizen has no power or say. Let's not pretend that isn't the case. We're forced to pay for a government we didn't consent to by the act of being born somewhere.

The mafia takes care of its own, polices neigbborhoods, helps people with jobs and extra money and so on but it's organized crime when they do that shit right?

Rather than acknowledge the corruption that exists you bend over backwards to defend a corrupt government full of politicians who ultimately give no fucks about you as long as you keep shit running and don't step out of line. They throw you a bone here and there and you take it and think it's great because you have fucking Stockholm syndrome.

Who is refusing to acknowledge that corruption exists? All I've said is that the benefits to every single citizen of taxation vastly outweighs the possibility of the post-apocalyptic wasteland we would live in in its absence. I would love to see how long these "taxation is theft" idiots would last in a society where every basic need wasn't already provided for them by the state through taxation. And as far as individual state interests go, remember, California needs Iowa a lot less than Iowa needs California.

Also, inflation is theft.

Both are true. There's some price you have to pay but most 1st world countries, my own being a prime example, take way too much.

>Buy Gold
>Avoid tax

Works since 1990s for me