(10-18-2018, 12:44 PM)David Horn Wrote:(10-18-2018, 03:10 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(10-18-2018, 02:25 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm not sure where you got the idea of theft from but its wrong as usual.
Sounds vaguely libertarian, but I wouldn't say it is red.
The "taxes are theft" meme moves around RW circles on heavy rotation. Occasionally it falls out of favor -- especially following a massive tax cut -- but it resurfaces soon after. Here's an example courtesy of Fox News. Wikipedia has a more intellectual description.
At no point do the tax-haters explain how the world works without taxation … but they still hate it.
Hate taxes? Then go to North Korea, where all enterprise is state-owned, and high profits on government-owned enterprises support the ability of the government to feed whoever it chooses to feed, supply housing to whoever it chooses to house, and supply such needs as electrical power, fuel, and healthcare to whoever the government wants to have such things. Should the government choose to dispense with you it can kill you quickly with a bullet or it can kill you slowly with starvation.
Or go back to medieval times, when there was no meaningful money. The Lord of the Manor could compel all the labor that he chose to use, which typically meant that everyone toiled to exhaustion except for the lord and his closest retainers. Compulsory labor was the norm. Government was obviously not of the people, by the people, and for the people. But life was simple -- maybe too simple.
Freedom and the complexity that makes life interesting apparently require taxes. "Comply or die" is a horrible substitute for taxes.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.