People downvoting this are cordially encouraged to have a look at countries that have no taxes.
People downvoting this are cordially encouraged to have a look at countries that have no taxes.
No one is thinking there should be no taxation, just that there's a sizable chance here that the government is in the wrong. To reverse your argument: please point me to this magical utopia where the government is always right and they never abuse their powers.
Your inverse isn't correct. The correct inverse would be to look at the countries that do have tax.
Let's look at Guinea
There's the tax information:
http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/guinea/pa...
Oh by the way it's the poorest country in the world 2017.
I did take a look at what jacquesm suggested and here is a list of countries that have no income tax.
* United Arab Emirates
* Oman
* Bahrain
* Qatar
* Saudi Arabia
* Kuwait
* Bermuda
* Cayman Islands
* The Bahamas
* Brunei
Now you could argue that the countries are rich countries and the only ones doing well are the native citizens or that two of them are tax havens for the rich. But hey that's not what he said.
And the moral of the story? Unquantified generic statements are usually bad. Don't do it. No matter who you are, don't do it.
He also said "no taxes", not "no income taxes".
Especially because those people often are talking about countries with some form of democratic socialism (where there are a number of strong success cases), and instead frequently put forward libertarianism - which is a completely untested government form in any country.
That is one of the reaons I moved here. Here more about this: "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech" https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
It always struck me as odd.
I think people don't mind taxes nearly as much if they feel like they are getting good value for their money. In the USA, you feel like your just getting shafted by the government half the time. In Canada not so much.
Personally, despite being aware of those issues, I take some manner of pride in the fact that I declare my side income properly and pay taxes on it, even when the people who paid me make an explicit point to pay with cash. I do my fair share, and that's why I feel entitled to whine about people doing a shoddy job at managing it. ;)
Medicare is a pretty good example. As best I'm aware, that program's negotiated rate is less than the average private insurer for any given procedure, which is pretty impressive.
Public broadcasting tends to do quite a lot on a continually reduced budget.
There are a number of programs that are generally inefficient, and while I'd very much like to see greater efficiency, I'd also be very much ok seeing those existing programs have more money: education, infrastructure, Medicaid.
And I feel like most people who malign the government's inefficiency have either never been exposed to the inefficiencies in the private sector, or willfully turn a blind eye to those inefficiencies to make a point. In my experience, all large organizations/projects suffer from an incredible amount of waste - the government is just the poor jerk that deals with some of the largest possible organizations/projects and then has publish that inefficiency for everyone to point at and critique.
Not very impressive considering the average prices everybody else pays are artificially inflated by collusion among the medical industry middlemen. That's how we end up with $500 Epipens and then get a "steal" of a discount for only $300.
Would you say that legitimately pursuing a law-evader somehow inevitably leads to a police-state?
I'm probably going to be in a similar fight (albeit with far less money involved) due to me having moved to Nevada from California this year. I'm not looking forward to a Californian tax man trying to wring me for money despite me residing outside of California for the entire time I've been employed this year.