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Comment by redeeman | Hacker News Reader

> Total cost: £0. > 5 months of excellent at home care for £0.

a lifetime of having way more than HALF your income stolen from you..... 0? okay..

Some of us see it as paying for services, not that the government are thieves. And we are pretty happy to pay, given the hellscape examples shown in the good old US of A.

I am not highlighting the US as a shining example of anything. but if you are happy to pay, make it optional? it seems to me that you are happy to force others to pay? biggest gang wins?

seems to me that "some of us" will be perfectly happy buying the services, and some other of us will be perfectly happy NOT buying the services

Then choose to live where the taxes are low and services are shit. Don't take the piss out of our choices. They do not affect you.

replying to sibling-response:

and where would I go? it seems that universally around the world there are a large amount of people that feel that they are entitled to rob their fellow citizens, at ultimately what is gunpoint threat of being put in jail.

if I just go mind my own business, and conduct business with other likeminded people, and the regime finds out, they will send their brownshirts with guns to drag me away, simply for refusing to give them half

> where would I go?

Somalia seems to be the only actually tax-free country. I think border control is lax enough that you can "safely" go live there if you wish.

Somalia isn't "tax-free". It just has rival gangs of warlords collecting taxes, rather than having one gang with a monopoly on it.

Not the same thing.

Hmm, this almost seems like the logical conclusion of a government with no revenue.

Do your own research. This is an article that leads to 0% taxation options, first thing Kagi suggests: https://www.theceomagazine.com/lifestyle/property/lowest-inc...

so you are atleast agreeing that you think the biggest gang should set the rules and force them upon other people who do no harm to ANYONE, but simply wish to be left alone?

I’m not sure “uproot and move” is an acceptable solution to wanting to opt out of parts of a society. You certainly wouldn’t give this suggestion as a solution to just about any other problem people have. Especially when the places you can move probably make up like 1% of the earth.

I don’t understand your logic. You claim that the “services” offered to you by your government are worth the taxes you pay. But you don’t want them to be opt-in. Aren’t you tipping your hand a bit? Seems like you might not be so confident that the services are worth it, and that a ton of people wouldn’t opt out.

If you really don’t drive on public roads or use any public services, you can probably get away with not paying taxes.

Government isn't a business. Society is the rules we regularly agree to keep playing. Your parents made the choice to birth you into a society. If you don't like playing by society's rules that everyone else understands results in a better life, then go live in Somalia or an unincorporated territory somewhere.

First things first: Get the fuck off the roads I pay for with taxes, stop drinking water I'm paying for, stop using ANY medical care because that gets government funding in the US, stop using electricity because there's often government involvement in that, stop using the internet, that was built with tax dollars, stop breathing the air that the government attempts to keep clean etc.

I am not in the US, and I cannot stop using the things others pay for, because they FORCE me to pay for it aswell, or they will haul me away to jail. and in doing this, they also keep ANY competition away, because who can compete with "free".

I pay for water, and then i pay 150% taxes on the water because reasons.. I would just hire someone to drill a well for me on market terms, but the regime made it illegal

edit: actually its about 300% taxes on the water

There are plenty of failed states on the planet where you can live with basically no taxation at all.

The NHS has its own share of tragic stories. https://archive.is/lkqY5

> People who suffer heart attacks or strokes wait more than 1½ hours on average for an ambulance. Hospitals are so full they are turning patients away.

It's positively utopian! Meanwhile, in the hellscape:

> On average in the U.S., the length of time between a call for help and the arrival of emergency medical services is about eight minutes.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-emergency-response...

In America we have half our income "stolen" from us as well. We just pretend it's not.

Top marginal income tax rate in California is like 55% and includes zero medical care. That’s extra.

and then sales tax, and then tolls on imported shit, and then the accumulated increases in prices due to others taxes.. at the end of the day, you pay WAY above half your life in taxes. in Europe its of course even more fucked up, where taxes are above 95% of some goods you buy

What goods are you thinking about? I think even tobacco (generally the most taxed product) is under that.

gasoline for example

I'm all for more expensive gas. Oil price doesn't properly factor in externalities and it needs to be much more expensive to incentivize transition away.

then how about doing the sensible thing and mandating that ALL the money the externalities cost be collected, and spent on undoing it? think burning gasoline causes X shit to happen? fine, go pay for that instead of salary to some member of parliament. but no, thats not what happens, all these "green" taxes go straight to the coffins that pays for all the retarded shit the regime wants

I assume by referencing MPs you're referring to Canada's carbon tax? You know that's a revenue-neutral tax right, none of it is kept by the government. It's all returned to taxpayers. Also "coffers" not coffins.

It's not possible to pay more than 50% in earnings related taxes (income tax and national insurance) in the UK because the national insurance is capped at £23k and the highest tax band is 45% (on earnings over £150k). Even if you earn £1m/year you still take home more than £500k.

According to helpful tool on ListenToTaxMan.com tax is 46% if earning £2million/year.

https://listentotaxman.com/?year=2022&taxregion=uk&age=0&tim...

yeah and when you spend it, you are taken for 20% sales tax, not to mention that the prices in general are far higher, because the people who made it need to pay taxes too

You could also end up with some serious illness when you're young and in need of special care without which you don't have any opportunity to build that income you're talking about. Each additional person being able to contribute means another person has contributed to your economic wellbeing and a egalitarian society where people's opportunity is not lost do to bad luck.

I would argue taxation is only theft if the money is spend on extremely bad, costly and possibly corrupt policy decisions like US wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan or even the war on drugs. Probably a lot of these policy decisions are influenced by lobbying from various industries and special interest groups. Follow the money.

I've lived in the UK and the US. The taxes are about the same.

Ridiculous. https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates It's clearly closer to "just under HALF your income..."

okay... so now lets say i pay 30% in taxes on my income, great.. now I go into a store, and I buy some things.. woop, how much sales tax? oh shit, now we're at 50%. how many tolls and various other insane things have to be paid to the government?

Even if you include VAT the chances are that you spend quite a small amount of your money on VAT-rated goods. There's only so much stuff you can buy. Most of your earnings are probably going on a mortgage or being invested, neither or which have VAT on them.

This is why initiatives to reform our healthcare system fail. People disillusioned with what it entails. They see taxes. They see money going to waste or worse, to people who don't deserve their support. Like the elderly. Or the sick. I'm not sick, why should I have to pay for you? American Greed Inc.

wouldnt it then be much better to separate it out, so likeminded people can pay for what they want? you say a large amount of people are happy to pay? great! make a healthcare system like you want. Guess what? I also wish to purchase healthcare services, I just dont want to be forced to purchase the crap the local regime forces upon me.

and what does it matter to you if I can opt out of paying? one less person to serve? great? everyone is happy.

right... the mortgage to pay for my house, constructed and made with materials that were once sold, and had VAT collected.

either way, that is not the case for the majority of my income. and dont get me started on when I go to purchase gasoline here in europe, not only am i first hit with 50% income tax, then a cool >20% sales tax, and then the outrageous taxes on the gasoline itself and the related industries. so I buy €100 worth of product, and more than 95 of them go to the government. Thanks! you sure did 95% of the work for me there (not)

Do you think the US healthcare system is better than the UKs?

im some ways, I also think the UKs is better in some.. but I mostly think both of them are total shit, and I think a very very large part to blame for that is government

We get close to half our income stole in the US if we make enough... and it doesn't take that much.

You can lose all your savings and your home in the US as a result of just Healthcare expenses alone. Do you think that is a good idea? None of the other industrialized nations of the world do. Hmmm.

and in the UK you can die while waiting for the ambulance.. in canada they will recommend you go kill yourself... every system has problems, but there is a thing in common with all the systems.. they all have the hands of government deeply involved

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