Many of the Comment Field discussions on this site boil down to one disagreement: Whether or not it is moral for government to take money or property by force from one group and give it to another group.
Is it ok for a government to take your money to pay a millionaire to destroy his car in order to provide another year of employment to a Union worker whose job has better benefits than yours?
Is it ok for our government to continue taking your money to provide for the continued defense of Germany and Japan ?
If you were to win the lottery and wanted to voluntarily donate your winnings to deserving humanitarian organizations, how drunk would you have to be before writing a check to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services?
If you don't give your money for these causes, though, you go to jail. It's that simple. You don't have a choice. Cooperating with these programs (at gunpoint) is not a virtue. When A and B conspire to rob C for the benefit of D, please understand that A and B aren't being compassionate, and C doesn't automatically become a great humanitarian because of his failure to resist.
This is from the Tarrant County Libertarian Party website:
At most we regard it (taxation) as a necessary evil, so that the vital functions of government can continue independent of undue outside influence. For this reason we advocate the reduction of taxation to the lowest feasible level, and the replacement of taxation with user fees where practicable.
Here's U.S. Senator Harry Reid, with a contrarian viewpoint. Senator Reid claims that paying taxes is "voluntary".
The interviewer, Jan Helfeld, is the same person who taught us How To Interview Nancy Pelosi, and he's worthy of a wider audience.
Last Sunday, The Teleprompter Jesus went on the rounds of all the Sunday morning talk shows and hit healthcare slow pitch/coach pitch softballs from David Gregory, Bob Schieffer, and some other White House Spokesmuppets.
Can you imagine the devastation and carnage if Jan Helfeld was in a room for 20 minutes with a microphone and Barack Obama?
3 comments:
So according to Harry Reid, the US tax system is voluntary because the US government forces the taxpayer to do some of the collections work. If the US government forced the employers to do all of the collections instead, that would be a compulsory system.
I have to admit, I never thought of it that way before.
Didn't we hear this same bovine excrement from Joe Biden back in September 08, just before the election? You remember the bit, "Paying higher taxes is a patriotic act."
It was BS then, it's still BS now.
B Woodman
III-per
You can see that Reid is just baffled. It is funny to watch politicians get all tripped up like that. Even big government supporters aren't so dumb as to believe that taxes are voluntary, sure they will say that they are necessary, but not voluntary. Where I thinks he really starts stretching is when he makes the claim that because there are a few tax deduction people can take, like mortgage interest, this means taxes are voluntary. Even if his argument had any credibility that only applies to one tax of thousands levied against citizens.
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