Why are taxes immoral?
It ignores the direct and indirect benefits that governments provide that support an entity being able to make money that can even be taxed.
It's quite a silly position.
Now specific taxes could be immoral and debate about the correct amount that it should be all you like... but the concept? No.
Imagine going off to live in the woods with a handful of other individuals, 100% off the grid and with only the tools you can carry. Inevitably, it wouldn't be long before you start insisting that everyone help out with farming or hunting or repairs or something. It's literally built into our DNA that individuals should contribute some labor to the betterment of the tribe in exchange for the security and comfort the tribe provides.
Now, fast-forward to the modern world. We have much, much bigger tribes called countries, and we have a way of talking about and trading human labor that we call money. But it's still true that you should contribute some of your labor (i.e. money) to the tribe (i.e. your country) in exchange for security and comfort (i.e. civilization).
Taxes are moral so long as the taxed individuals consent to be part of the entity imposing the taxes, and there are very few individuals throughout history who have actually been willing to opt out of civilization. And, since you're reading a page on the internet you are clearly not one of them.
Perhaps it would help understanding the other side if you were to look at it not as "insisting that everyone help out" but making trades with other people instead.
You start trading them food in exchange for shelter, etc. Rather than expecting everyone to deserve equal shares of all output.
Certainly this has happened many ways throughout history. The way you're suggesting is only one, and not only that, it's one which eventually falls apart as it scales up.
> Taxes are moral so long as the taxed individuals consent to be part of the entity imposing the taxes, and there are very few individuals throughout history who have actually been willing to opt out of civilization.
I'm not going to argue the "moral" aspect, but I think many people simply want to see the trade benefit of society and don't really care about much else. They're willing to tolerate the taxes for the sole reason that it's the only way for them to get access to wide trade networks currently. That trade benefit doesn't necessarily rely on much of what government provides and could, theoretically at least, operate completely without it, given the opportunity.
If the government was not stealing around 40% of your money I would come and take 100% of it and leave you bleeding in the gutter.
And if you don't like that the government is stealing your money you can always go somewhere else (and resign your citizenship if your taxiation is bound by that) where they steal less money. You can even go somewhere where the government doesn't steal any of your money (usually only in countries where there's no government).
At the end of the day democracy demands that we have to live with decisions that we personally do not like but the majority of people voted for. Everyone knows that this is not a great system, but we haven't found a better one yet. Not for lack of trying though.
if you can afford it.
> At the end of the day democracy demands that we have to live with decisions that we personally do not like but the majority of people voted for.
All major USA candidates are connected to Soros.
"But you can vote to change it." If voting changed anything it would be illegal. Only an idiot believes "voting" means anything in a two party system where both parties are identical, and both are funded and given marching orders by massive international corporations. Dollars > votes and you only have the latter.
Which is not to say that there aren't strong arguments to be made for a system based on property rights, but the idea that they're more "voluntary" than taxation is ridiculous.
Based on your comment I'm going to assume you live in the United States, and the only reason your argument has teeth is because you feel stuck under the current system (and rightfully so). If it were easy to opt-out by moving elsewhere then the relationship between government and citizen starts to look a lot more like a voluntary contract.
It really seems like tech has been hit with a wave of pro-big government thinking. My personal theory is that it's younger people who didn't have to deal with the threat of a draft and the baby boomers heavy handed social meddling.
The threat of being forced into a war you don't agree with will make you think twice about funding the entity making that happen. Same with watching decades of ineffective social engineering from above.
As a Canadian, I pay a lot of tax. I grumble a bit during tax season - but I am incredibly grateful that I was lucky enough to be born in a prosperous country. A good part of my sucess (education, health care, etc) was paid for by other peoples taxes. So I am quite happy to return the favour.
I also want to live in a society that is compassionate and takes care of those who can not take care of themselves. The libertarian viewpoint seems like "I got mine, so I'm OK".
It's great that you're happy, but you don't have a choice. You'll go to jail if you don't "return favour".
I also want to live in a society that is compassionate and takes care of those who can not take care of themselves.
Simple logic will tell you that if a society is compassionate, it doesn't need force taxation. From dictionary: compassion is a feeling of wanting to help someone who is sick, hungry, in trouble, etc. If you are forced to help, it's not compassion.
The fact that non-taxing countries aren't over-run with libertarian immigrants (despite being a tropical paradise!) makes me doubt the practicality of the concept.
A good test case is looking at movement within European countries that allow freedom of movement for other European citizens. I'm sure some people have moved to Andorra, Gilbratar, Liechtenstein, etc. for lower taxes but probably at a lower rate than people moving to places for employment opportunities.
You can try establishing some moral principles that will justify what government does (seriously, try this exercise), but let's not change meanings of words.
You live in a developed country that is natural resource-rich, with an established middle class and a somewhat functional government.
So on tax season you see lots of services being provided by Public Government and it seems that the price you are paying is reasonable. I really don't see it as someone "returning the favour", but there is no pointing in arguing there.
What can be argued is how much more effective would this creation and redistribution of the wealth be if it weren't this centralized. For this, most reasonable Libertarians will argue that societies are the most prosperous when there is the minimal amount of interference from the Government.
This is not to say that Governments and Democratic Institutions are not needed. They very much are. Without them, the natural resource-rich countries usually don't even manage to extract the value from the natural resources and transform it in long-lasting wealth. Just look at the Middle East, Venezuela or Brazil.
So, my "Angst" is not about paying taxes, but more about "it keeps growing and growing, how much is enough?" and "are we really better off with all the meddling in general affairs?"
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I have a private health insurance company here in Germany. Terribly expensive, but so is the public one. The interesting difference is that the private one sent me a check last year because they got some savings and less expenses than expected, so they returning some of my money. Could you imagine anything like that happening with the budget of your country? "We actually managed to build those schools/highways/power plants/sewage treatment plant at a lower cost than expected, here is your share of the savings..."
Was there ANY TIME you saw a career politician speaking anything that resembled "You know what, perhaps society can work out these issues without us having to take a bunch of their resources."? The only place where I see anything like that is Switzerland, which is precisely a country known for being prosperous and NOT natural resource-rich, and with low taxes compared with other countries in the OECD.
You were already born into a rich country. The question is, how can we make existing poorer countries richer? Should a Canadian taxpayer really be funding Bombardier to keep its fat contracts and defend them from competition from Embraer [1]?
> "The libertarian viewpoint seems like "I got mine, so I'm OK."
That is so wrong is even offensive. The viewpoint is more like "I want to get mine, and I want to help the less fortunate with the product of MY work. I don't want to have slacktivists that think that "compassion" is sharing something on the Internet and thinking "someone else has to do something about it".
Compassion can not be mandated or enforced by any Government. Worse, the more we remove individual agency, the worse we all become. We stop thinking about our own actions and start thinking that we are being effective by proxy.
The viewpoint is also "Plenty of people don't get to get their share BECAUSE YOU KEEP THINKING THAT YOU KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR THEM". In the USA, most of the Democrats that supported amnesty for undocumented immigrants were the ones benefiting from their low-wage jobs. The Dems always use amnesty as a way to get votes, but they NEVER introduce any serious immigration reform.
[1]: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/lessons-from-a-nasty-trade-dispute
HN downvotes libertarians who take the rhetorical position that "tax is theft" (or otherwise inherently immoral), because it's intellectually shallow.
There are many reasonable arguments to be made for reduced taxation, and you have presented many of them above. "Tax is theft" is not one of them.
Still, the drive-by downvote is not helpful. It just helps to polarize and removes any chance of discussion. This becomes a gold mine to the populists.
Let's try again, then: please tell me what is inherently bad at having options for "better earning individuals"? And what guarantees can be given by you that your proposal for a "fully-public" healthcare system would be more effective than the existing ones?
It is very easy to say "If Canada/Denmark/Sweden can do it, the US can do it as well", but for every well-reputed public system in the world, there is a bigger number of total disgraceful care systems around the world.
> That's a concept which those evil downvoters here on HN want to prevent.
The evil part is not in the downvoting. The evil part is in joining the mob rule, acting without any critical thought just because and just side along with your group identity, and in the end still consider yourself "being part of the good ones".
What is that you want to prevent?
Me, a supposedly middle-class citizen, of being able to make a choice?
For whose benefit? Will the poor and less fortunate be in a better situation if we force everyone else to be stripped of their choices?
At what cost? Are the countries with actual "universal, single-payer healthcare" being the most effective when managing the resources from their citizens?
> please tell me what is inherently bad at having options for "better earning individuals"?
The problem with that is that such a system doesn't work for a public health insurance if rich people can avoid their contribution to solidarity. If at all you will have system of two classes of people like we had in the middle age. Germany already has this two class system within their health system.
1) There is still nothing bad (immoral) at accepting a society where some people will "avoid their contribution to solidarity". Like I said up-thread: we can't code compassion into law, and every time we tried it, the long term consequences have been more damaging than beneficial.
2) I am not "rich", and I'd rather have the option. I want the best care that is possible at the most affordable price. The "public" system is not really free.
> Germany already has this two class system within their health system.
That is quite a bit of hyperbole, and wrong. There is nothing classist about a business that needs money to operate.
If anything, the real classism in Germany shows when you see something like the Künstlersozialkasse, where the Government pays part of the health insurance only to some type of people.
That depends on your moral compass and your level of egoism.
> That is quite a bit of hyperbole, and wrong.
I guess you never tried to get an appointment with a medical specialists in Germany with a non private insurance.
When talking about the individual actions, it certainly depends on the individual's moral values, but this is not being discussed at the moment.
In regards on how to turn society values into laws, it really doesn't. I am not saying that the "right thing to do" is to avoid community and eschew solidarity. I am saying that no one should be able to impose their values into any other group, no matter if it is a majority or not.
So, while I (personally) am all for a more equal and compassionate society, I am also saying that we will NOT achieve this while we have so many individuals expecting that this should be enforced by the Government.
> I guess you never tried to get an appointment with a medical specialists in Germany with a non private insurance.
I don't want to. I don't need to. If it's already known that the public service is of such low quality, why would I subject myself to it? I'd rather find ways to help other people to enjoy the higher quality service than forcing everyone to share the misery.
Like I said before, what I want is to get the best service at the most affordable price possible. Being "public" is not a requirement. Where is the guarantee that if we remove the private insurance companies, that the public offering will improve? Look at all the ongoing debate in the UK and the NHS, all of the cuts in their system. How effective is it really?
Also, reverse the roles just for a second: if you were a teenager now and saw that it keeps getting harder and harder to make a career as a Medical Doctor and that the Government is removing any possibility for you to do a job outside of their terms, would you do it?
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Basically, what you are saying is that the "moral" thing is to have the Government dictating how much people should earn for their job. If you think about it, what you want is to have people that will dedicate their entire lives to become professionals and be forced to serve you and the "poor and less fortunate". And yet you want to pin on me the accusations of being selfish.
In this case, I am pretty sure it was the person I responded to because I saw the karma score drop right along with the response to my previous comment.
> I do care about pointing out irrational behavior.
Can't find anything about "pointing out irrational behavior" in your post, just some rage about "unsubstantiated" downvotes.
I upvoted your parent comment now, maybe that helps cooling down.
Being forced to fight a war etc is something else entirely, and I doubt a comment focused on that would be blanket down voted.
People should be allowed to keep 100% of their earnings. To involuntarily take a percentage is by definition immoral (theft).
Also, private charity is only good for very public, acute problems. It sucks for non-cute things (eg mental health) and for long-term things (someone crippled for life).
So no use of public utilities, roads, etc, oh and your company can't employ people who have benefited from them either - like going to a public or state school.
Good luck with that.
If you want something that doesn't have a good counter-argument, look at policing and contract enforcement (basically, a public legal system). That's something that can't be done very well by a private entity or multiple competing private entities.
Another problem without much of a counter-argument is looking at e.g. utilities and roads together (i.e. a monopolistic infrastructure with a non-monopolistic infrastructure). Roads are monopolistic because they control that land - in order to use it, you have to pay the owner what they want. This isn't too big of a problem because if you feel one route costs too much, you can simply take another route. Utilities on the other hand, can be provided by anyone, as long as they run the pipes, lines, etc. out to you. In itself, if you feel one utility costs too much, you can pick another utility. The problem comes with combining the two - typically to deliver the utility to you, they would also have to pay the road owner to run the lines along and/or make some agreement. So what happens when an exclusivity agreement comes into play?
Well, unless you don't want the utility at all, you have no choice but to either pay whatever fee they want you to, or move. When you move, it's possible an exclusivity agreement exists there too. One could argue that it's not any better the way it currently is (Comcast, etc.) however you couldn't make it better by making everything privately-owned without regulation, and you could make it better by going further towards the public side.
Smart, minimal regulation is often a better alternative to no regulation or to government ownership.
I think there's a simpler combination approach here which works out better in most if not all cases. Rather than having a central government to provide the utility themselves (ie: government gives you internet instead of comcast), instead use the government enforce competition, sharing of delivery lines, etc. This is the system that's been adopted in Canada and the UK and has generally solved the issue a lot better than the net neutrality rules and such which have been put in place in the US have.
It's cheaper on tax payers and still allows the market to ultimately provide many options and technological advances to consumers more rapidly. It's better for a government to make a market than to kill a market.
Yeah, like a lot of Libertarian "counter-points" though it's very handwavy and doesn't really hold up to much scrutiny when looked at for the economics of it.
We used to do that - know what happened? Mostly terrible "roads" and a few VERY expensive ways to travel. At some point all those systems got nationalized - why? Because it works better.
Private companies and co-ops can and do operate roads, electricity production, waste collection, etc. It's just a matter of government standing in the way of it being a more direct transaction.
I'm not necessarily saying one way or the other is a better solution, but to invalidate their argument on the grounds that "it's like this way already" or "I grew up this way" essentially is bullshit.
Do you think turning societies into country clubs is really workable, as in, does it scale? Tax payers are in effect members of civil society, but we have a technology that enables us to identify non-members so that we can each choose whether, and how, to exclude non-members from social and business ventures?
There are benefits to belonging to civilisation. Voluntary taxation is just not realistic.