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Comment by Zak | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure it's that simple. I live in the US. The vast majority of the US Federal budget goes to the military, income redistribution (welfare) and insurance programs (social security, medicare). I do not believe most of those expenditures enable me to make money, and I think a significant segment is actively harmful. I also feel that I don't have a meaningful say in how that money is used because the political system is broken.

Given those conditions, I don't feel there's anything immoral about doing everything legal to pay less in taxes. I suspect things are different where you live.

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Exactly.. lets first talk about the morality and ethics behind the govt. spending MY hard-earned dollars to go bomb brown people in the middle of the desert for 20 STRAIGHT YEARS.

Your tax dollars don't pay for that. The government onflatess the currency via borrowing, so everyone's dollars pay for that.

I'm not saying I agree with all of it in practice, but there's a strong argument against your thoughts here, especially in principle.

The military keeps foreigners from invading/suicide bombing and thus creates stability which lets you make money. Social safety nets including welfare, social security, etc, create the same sort of stability since there's less of a likelihood a starving person or angry elderly woman will rob you, etc, etc.

Right, but they may not be the most effective means to do so. If I mow your lawn, then break into your house to steal $20, I might justify that on the grounds that your mowed lawn is worth $20. But in most sensible economic relationships, we do things in the opposite order: figure out if the service is worth the cost, and then perform it in exchange for payment.

I'm not saying having a military isn't valuable. I'm saying the US spends more on its military than the next ten countries put together and maintains a foreign policy of intervening in affairs of other countries and regions. I do not believe these things are necessary to defend the country, and may actually endanger us by creating new enemies.

I'm not saying social safety nets aren't valuable. I'm saying that the current implementation does little to encourage or help people who use them to move on to something productive. I'm also saying that social security is an unsustainable pyramid scheme and that medicare is both inefficient and a poor allocation of resources.

I don't necessarily have solutions in mind for the latter problems; they're hard problems and not in a field with which I have experience. What I am saying is that I don't feel obligated to pay any more in taxes than I have to when on the order of 90% of the money will go toward things that I believe aren't constructive.

Thoreau came to the same conclusion. "I don't support war, so I'm not going to pay taxes." This, however, isn't a tenable practice for society as a whole.

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