Is Progressive Taxation Discrimination

[Berzerker]

Outside of Sicily and some parts of the US, most of us avoid the mafia just fine.

And Hitler and Stalin are dead, does that mean they can never be used in a question to illustrate a point? For all the accolades you've received from some of the leftists in this thread, I figured you'd be able to handle a few simple questions. My bad...

I'll leave you with what I said which still holds true,

Would that be the nonsense you guys keep avoiding?

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Big Crunch
Without the shipping you wouldn't have a customer at all. The cost of shipping is a necessary cost of business that allows you to make sales. Taxation is not a necessary cost and its presence does nothing but impinge on your ability to make sales.

One could argue that the Taxation are also necessary costs.
After all they include the Protection of the Commidities you sell against Fire and Thieves (by Police and Fire Department).

Without this protection you would have to pay a lot more, either, because the Insurance Companies would charge you higher fees for their insurances, or by having a higher chance to loose those articles by fire or thieves.

Also I assume that the taxes are used to pay the maintenance costs for the harbor and the roads which connect your Warehouse to the harbor.
So you probably also had higher costs of Transportation if Harbor and Roads where privately owned, as you probably had to pay some kind of Toll to use the roads to the harbor and of course some kind of harbor fee.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


One could argue that the Taxation are also necessary costs.
After all they include the Protection of the Commidities you sell against Fire and Thieves (by Police and Fire Department).

Without this protection you would have to pay a lot more, either, because the Insurance Companies would charge you higher fees for their insurances, or by having a higher chance to loose those articles by fire or thieves.

Also I assume that the taxes are used to pay the maintenance costs for the harbor and the roads which connect your Warehouse to the harbor.
So you probably also had higher costs of Transportation if Harbor and Roads where privately owned, as you probably had to pay some kind of Toll to use the roads to the harbor and of course some kind of harbor fee.

What the taxes are ultimately paying for is largely irrelevant to my point because the same arguments can be equally applied to standard income tax. My argument is to show that sales tax takes away from the 'fruits of one's labour' just as much as income tax. I am not arguing the validity of such a tax.

[MrBaggins]

zrkerer-

Originally posted by Berzerker
The opportunity to vote does not mean we are represented, it may mean the winners are represented and even that's dubious given corruption. And no, even the candidate who wins with %55 still only got %55 of those who voted. That leaves the %45 they didn't get and all the other people who can't vote or won't because the 2 major candidates suck. Throw in more than 2 candidates and you lessen the over all percentage. Look at the last 3 Presidential elections, Clinton got pluralities and Bush won with fewer votes than his primary opponent. But let's assume you can find an election where the winner got %50+ of everyone, why does that make it moral for these people to forcibly take what belongs to the minority? Does slavery become a moral institution if the slaves were shackled after a vote via majority rule? Nope...

Morality is relative (based on personal perspective,) not absolute. Differering groups can have differing ideas over the morality of certain issues such as slavery or taxation, but that doesn't make any side "right", because there is no such thing as truth in morality, only in mathematics.

Those who oppose the sales tax are not demanding others pay a sales tax.

Thats convienient. Those demanding a sales tax demand that everyone pay, to be fair to everyone.

You haven't even proven the logistics are impossible, you just assumed it. This country relied mainly on tariffs and sales taxes for much of it's history, these taxes required collection mechanisms no different than user fees.

Society has moved on since then.

Health care isn't a user fee wrt government under libertarianism.

How blindly utopian.

There are other options, health care providers can let the destitute off without paying or set up payment plans tailored to the patient's ability to pay over time. They can shift the user fees of those who can't pay to those who can... Charities can be set up to offset these fees, etc... Much of this happens now and we have pay per service within the private sector...

Doctors can't let the destitute off without paying, because without general taxes, patients they treat who don't pay a usage fee, would mean that portion of their wages doesn't get paid. Does the doctors wage get reduced? Would they EVER want to treat those patients?

As for setting up payment plans thats just a reduced situation of the above situation. A person might refuse to pay... he's not forced by law now. Should people involved in mass casualty situations with a third party cause be forced to pay for their own treatment? If not, what if the third party isn't caught or can't pay?

As for charities making up the short fall... they never have before... why would they suddenly do so now?

You want police protection, you pay a user fee... That's direct...
Right now many people (communities) and businesses pay user fees for private security/protection in addition to paying for police.

Most police activity is inactivity; waiting and observing. If you had an area where 30% of residences didn't pay the usage tax, scattered throughout the area, then how would you deal with that? Police would have to have GPS linked maps with where they were or weren't supposed to observe, which would obviously put more burden on them, and increase the need for police.

Can we get "real enough"? You keep using mis-leading language... "Society" doesn't require this, some people require this and they force others to help pay for it... Now, people who send their kids to private schools pay a "user" fee. Why don't these impossible logistics you claim prevents user fees also prevent private tuition?

Because the cost of those logistics are passed on to the few rich who can afford to do this...

Only a tiny percentage of children are sent to private school, and thats absolutely confined to the rich. You don't see poor people sending their three kids to private school... they simply can't afford it.

You mean if people had to pay for their kid's education they would refuse? But they pay now thru taxes, it's just that some of the money they pay gets siphoned off by politicians in Washington, their state capital, then politicians at the local level. Do you think this is more efficient than parents paying tuition directly to the people educating their kids?

I'm saying that if they had to pay up front, some would refuse, but many just couldn't afford it... period.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Big Crunch


What the taxes are ultimately paying for is largely irrelevant to my point because the same arguments can be equally applied to standard income tax. My argument is to show that sales tax takes away from the 'fruits of one's labour' just as much as income tax. I am not arguing the validity of such a tax.

O.K.
There I agree with you.
Sales Tax is just like an Income Tax for someone who trades Goods.

btw.
Extremly good looking Avatar

[Berzerker]

aggins -

Morality is relative (based on personal perspective,) not absolute. Differering groups can have differing ideas over the morality of certain issues such as slavery or taxation, but that doesn't make any side "right", because there is no such thing as truth in morality, only in mathematics.

I disagree, murder and rape are immoral and are always immoral. Those are absolutes...

Thats convienient. Those demanding a sales tax demand that everyone pay, to be fair to everyone.

I'm not the one who said we all want a sales tax, that was you. It doesn't matter if some people want a sales tax on everyone, they don't have the moral authority to force others to pay a tax they like. Btw, sales taxes are not fair or across the board. We have higher taxes on booze and smokes and luxury items. Sales taxes are just one more way for politicos to social engineer... Look at what Rob Reiner did out in California with tobacco taxes...

Society has moved on since then.

And this means the tax code is moral? Nope... it has become even more immoral... Paraphrasing H.L. Mencken - elections are advance auctions on stolen property...

How blindly utopian.

It happens to be reality for the majority of Americans, we need medical care, we pay ourselves or thru private insurance/business policies. How is that blindly utopian?

Doctors can't let the destitute off without paying, because without general taxes, patients they treat who don't pay a usage fee, would mean that portion of their wages doesn't get paid. Does the doctors wage get reduced? Would they EVER want to treat those patients?

What are you talking about? Doctors have always had patients who could not pay regardless of any tax code. If the pinch on their income was too much, they shifted the cost to those who could pay.

As for setting up payment plans thats just a reduced situation of the above situation.

And? That's how most people pay for things they can't afford at the time of purchase.

Should people involved in mass casualty situations with a third party cause be forced to pay for their own treatment? If not, what if the third party isn't caught or can't pay?

That's why people buy insurance.

As for charities making up the short fall... they never have before... why would they suddenly do so now?

When have they failed? Medical costs were quite low in the past and have only recently started to climb beyond the means of some people coinciding with ~4 factors - government subsidised health care, costly education (also related to government subsidies for education), malpractice insurance, and costly machinery/facilities. Medicine just wasn't advanced enough to be too expensive for most people.

Most police activity is inactivity; waiting and observing. If you had an area where 30% of residences didn't pay the usage tax, scattered throughout the area, then how would you deal with that?

All sorts of ways, we have private security systems now with private security guards/patrols, customer lists and notifications of a break in. Those who do pay will show their displeasure with those who don't by discriminating against them (just see how life is when markets won't sell you goods). And virtually everyone, faced with lower taxes, will gladly pay to have police protection. In fact, even if taxes are extremely high virtually everyone will pay to have police protection because that's one of the few things government provides that we all want.

Police would have to have GPS linked maps with where they were or weren't supposed to observe, which would obviously put more burden on them, and increase the need for police.

Cops don't sit outside my house looking out for burglars. We call them if needed...

Because the cost of those logistics are passed on to the few rich who can afford to do this...

You mean I have to be rich to send my kids to private schools? Well, I do need enough money to pay for their tuition AND the public schools at the same time, but I did it and I'm not rich. Sorry, but that argument doesn't hold water. We paid far less for a private education than people pay in many public school districts.

Only a tiny percentage of children are sent to private school, and thats absolutely confined to the rich. You don't see poor people sending their three kids to private school... they simply can't afford it.

Where do you get this stuff? I'm not rich, and most of the people who send their kids to Catholic schools aren't rich. And if private schools were allowed to compete with government schools on a level playing field the cost would come down even more. But that's why teachers unions oppose voucher systems, they don't want to compete with private educators...

I'm saying that if they had to pay up front, some would refuse, but many just couldn't afford it... period.

Then how can they afford the taxes? It's something like $10 K per student in Washington, DC - roughly 3x what we paid here for a FAR better private school. You didn't answer my question, why is it more efficient to send taxes for public schools to Washington so politicians there can skim off money before sending it back to the state capital where more politicians are waiting to skim more before they send what's left to the local level where more politicians are waiting for their cut? Isn't it more efficient for you to send tuition money directly to the people educating your children?

[The Mad Viking]

Deity Dude-

You cannot understand how Sales Tax is the same as Income Tax because its not the same to you, as a customer.

This aptly demonstrates how self-centred ALLyour arguments are.

Try to imagine, and this may be a stretch for you, that your job is a seller of nails.

Can you not understand, that under your logic, the government is forcing you to do labour for them? They are requiring you to calculate and collect taxes on their behalf on every single transaction you conduct. They are requiring that you hold the money, and prepare an accounting, likely on a weekly basis. Then they are requiring that you remit the money to them. And if you do anything wrong, even an honest mistake, or you are a little late, they will treat you like a criminal. (I believe libertarians would consider this "slavery".

This IMO is far more onerous than income tax. And the libertarian solution, not surprisingly, is to coerce anyone other than greedy, lazy, anti-social libertarians to do the dirty work of maintaining a society for your benefit.


Next Item:
You actually made the argument that you have to pay taxes because you happened to be born in the US, that you did not choose to be born in the country.

Again, a self-centred argument that staggers my perception.

Poor baby, born into the richest country in the world.
You would have been better off, say, to be born in Burkina Faso?

A contract is a voluntary agreement, between informed parties for consideration along with a few other points. It does not have to be written.

Agreed. And you reaped the benefits of that contract for 15-20+ years, and then promptly claim you don't want to pay back. Well guess what, it doesn't work that way. The benefits you reaped were FOR CONSIDERATION. Its really an amazingly forgiving contract, better than you will ever get in business.

Your payback clause is very flexible and based on your ability to pay.

Your termination clause allows you simply to default on the payments if you choose not to engage in trade, or to leave the country. (Notice that I did not say choose not to work. If you choose to opt out of economic society, and grow your own food, make your own clothes etc, you will not have to pay. In fact, despite your assertions, if you barter for items roughly equal in value it will not be considered income!

Your argument about morals is perhaps weaker than the use of the word stealing. The right to property is a creation of the state, and property rights vary from state to state, and have varied over time; and essentially did not exist prior to agricultural society.

Stealing is taking property in a manner that contravenes the property laws that are invented by the state. Calling it stealing is both oxymoronic, and just plain moronic.

Morals. Morals are rules of conduct invented by a society to benefit that society. They are generally the guiding rules of a society and they guide both individual behaviour as well as directing the creation and enforcement of laws. Morals, like laws, change over the course of history. But they have no meaning outside a social context. Many morals are nearly universal, because almost all societies find certain behaviours to be contra-beneficial. Yet you find innumerable grey areas even in so-called "universal" morals.

The point is that society defines morality. Morality is not what is convenient for you as an individual.

So please stop the libertarian BS hyperbole. Taxes may be too high, and the government wastes money. Deal with solutions, not self-serving BS.

Libertarians conveniently don't value anything they think they can personally get cheaper elsewhere; they overvalue the benefit of the things they want to others, to suggest others should pay a disproportionate share of their benefits.

Libertarianism is the politics of greed.

Confession:
I am an ex-member of the Libertarian Party of Canada. Then I grew up.

[MrBaggins]

erker whats your point?

Originally posted by Berzerker
I disagree, murder and rape are immoral and are always immoral. Those are absolutes...

Nope... the Klan didn't think that murdering and raping blacks was immoral. I don't think that capital punishment is immoral. The rapist... and/or jury... might not think that a rape was immoral.

I'm not the one who said we all want a sales tax, that was you. It doesn't matter if some people want a sales tax on everyone, they don't have the moral authority to force others to pay a tax they like. Btw, sales taxes are not fair or across the board. We have higher taxes on booze and smokes and luxury items. Sales taxes are just one more way for politicos to social engineer... Look at what Rob Reiner did out in California with tobacco taxes...

And the electorate can advocate for whatever tax changes they want.

And this means the tax code is moral? Nope... it has become even more immoral... Paraphrasing H.L. Mencken - elections are advance auctions on stolen property...

If you don't like being in the minority, perhaps you should move to a place where you're in the majority. Its more worthwhile than wasting your time whining about it. I don't think its immoral, as don't a huge swath of the people in the US... and you can't prove it is, through your or other opinion.

It happens to be reality for the majority of Americans, we need medical care, we pay ourselves or thru private insurance/business policies. How is that blindly utopian?

Yet we still have a need for public health care, funded by state income and sales taxes... assuming that charities would suddenly pay for non-covered medical proceedures is the definition of blind utopianism.

What are you talking about? Doctors have always had patients who could not pay regardless of any tax code. If the pinch on their income was too much, they shifted the cost to those who could pay.

Doctors could always treat those who can't afford to pay, because of sales and income taxes. You can't "pinch" the supply of drugs of medical necessity. These always need to be paid for... and you've just admitted that there are circumstances where you only need to pay for more than just what you get. (which is essentially what sales and income tax deal with.) If you make this usage cost not only tied the cost of your proceedure, but also the uncollected portion of other procedures, then your cost is variable... which insurance companies wouldn't cover... since they didn't collect premiums for that other guy. So you'd be paying out of pocket.. which you may or may not be able to afford.

And? That's how most people pay for things they can't afford at the time of purchase.

Still doesn't change the fact that these people will not be paying all of the value immediately. Who pays the shortfall in the meantime?

That's why people buy insurance.

I guess... and too bad for those who neglected that, then?

When have they failed? Medical costs were quite low in the past and have only recently started to climb beyond the means of some people coinciding with ~4 factors - government subsidised health care, costly education (also related to government subsidies for education), malpractice insurance, and costly machinery/facilities. Medicine just wasn't advanced enough to be too expensive for most people.

We ARE dealing with now though... not the past. Charities DON'T make up the shortfall, between private expenditure and public cost... show me any example where they do in the US.

All sorts of ways, we have private security systems now with private security guards/patrols, customer lists and notifications of a break in. Those who do pay will show their displeasure with those who don't by discriminating against them (just see how life is when markets won't sell you goods). And virtually everyone, faced with lower taxes, will gladly pay to have police protection. In fact, even if taxes are extremely high virtually everyone will pay to have police protection because that's one of the few things government provides that we all want.

All supposition... completely unprovable since you can't point to any universal police system funded solely by voluntary usage tax.

Cops don't sit outside my house looking out for burglars. We call them if needed...

So they don't patrol about neighborhoods where you live? They do in NYC.

You mean I have to be rich to send my kids to private schools? Well, I do need enough money to pay for their tuition AND the public schools at the same time, but I did it and I'm not rich. Sorry, but that argument doesn't hold water. We paid far less for a private education than people pay in many public school districts.

Thats you... there are plenty of people poorer than you... or do you consider yourself as poor as you can be?

Where do you get this stuff? I'm not rich, and most of the people who send their kids to Catholic schools aren't rich. And if private schools were allowed to compete with government schools on a level playing field the cost would come down even more. But that's why teachers unions oppose voucher systems, they don't want to compete with private educators...

Most of the people who send their kids to Catholic Schools are middle class... not poor.

There is always economy in scale... which is why numerous separate private schools will always be more expensive than one public system.

Then how can they afford the taxes? It's something like $10 K per student in Washington, DC - roughly 3x what we paid here for a FAR better private school. You didn't answer my question, why is it more efficient to send taxes for public schools to Washington so politicians there can skim off money before sending it back to the state capital where more politicians are waiting to skim more before they send what's left to the local level where more politicians are waiting for their cut? Isn't it more efficient for you to send tuition money directly to the people educating your children?

You think that private schools don't skim money off the top? Its called profit.

[The Mad Viking]

I disagree, murder and rape are immoral and are always immoral. Those are absolutes...

BS. You are choosing words that include a moral judgement in them to make your argument: "Wrongful killing is always wrong". Gee, thats insightful.

Different societies defines when killing is wrongful in different ways.

Many Europeans think the Death Penalty is murder. American society does not yet define it as such.

Right to lifers call abortion murder. Is it?

The same Bible that said "Thou shalt not kill" was not talking about your enemies, because it gave very specific instruction for killing them.

Morals are defined by society. They are absolutely social constructs, and are NOT universal. As I said above, a few very select behaviours are so clearly anti-social that they appear to be universally immoral. But careful examination shows societies where infanticide is considerd moral, where rape is simply punishable by a fine, and where cannabilism is expected and encouraged bahaviour.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

The most onerous of all taxes is local property taxes. Theft out and out for the mere sin of having property.

[The Mad Viking]

Oh, I forgot to thank Mr. Baggins for making all those excellent currency arguments in my absence. I could not have done it as well myself.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Berzerker
aggins -

I disagree, murder and rape are immoral and are always immoral. Those are absolutes...

Berz,

Keep fighting the good fight. You, David, and Deity are doing well.

On this tho' be careful of absolutes. Murder and rape have not always been considered an immoral.

Consider Aztecs wrt murder, Vikings & Huns wrt rape and plunder.

Mad Viking (How aprapo ) does raise validity that morals are culturally defined. One only need look back through the history of man to find evidence that almost everything we find horrible today were at one time sanctioned in one form or another in years past by one culture or another.

[MrBaggins]

No problem... nothing like beating a bit of astronomy into a flat-earther, as it were.

[GePap]

Consider Aztecs wrt murder

The Aztecs would punish someone for murder-which would be defined as the unlawful killing of one member of the polity by another recognized member of the polity.

Now, a human sacrifice was not a member of the polity generally, and their killing was "justified" on religious grounds (just like Burning witches and heretics was fine).

Which is why the Bible says murder, not killing- becuase murder by definition is always wrong, while killing may or may not be.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Yet we would describe Aztec's human sacrifce as murder in todays view.

The fact that we differentiate shows that the concept of murder is maleable and subject to cultural interpretation, no?