Happy Tax Freedom Day!

Congrats America! Today is the day that we have "technically" earned enough wages to pay all the government tax, but the CBO calculated that actually if you factor in the $1.5 trillion deficit (almost forgot about that little detail) tax freedom day is actually another 45 days away, on May 29th. But thats not that bad... working half the year just to pay the government, is it? I mean think about all the great things they're doing for us: buying "toxic" assets (what does that even mean?), buying trillions of dollars of failed mortgages and government securities (I believe the Onion ran a piece on this kind of spending...), firing CEOs, and who can forget Bo? ( I sure hope Obama kept his promise of keeping it a purebred, because God knows thats what we care about...)

Well maybe those things aren't quite working out so great, but at least the state is spending the rest of our tax dollars wisely... aren't they? Then how come in Hawaii residents used their own money and labor to fix a park that the government said would take millions of dollars and years to fix? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that private enterprise is both cost efficient and actually gets the job done.

The Reason Foundation has put together a couple videos for tax day to remind us what we're paying for: "Tax Facts to Make Your Head Explode" and "3 Great Reasons to Pay Your Taxes".

I already blogged about why taxes are legal theft here, so please read that to get my basic overview on how the government legally steals from you. Just think about it, if I came up to you, demanded 30% of your money, and pulled a gun on you if you didn't comply I would be thrown in jail as a petty crook! So how can we give the state power we as indivduals do not possess? We can't, it doesn't make moral, ethical, or logic sense whatsoever, but we accept it anyways.

The State is force, the State is aggression. I do not care what services they provide (they all suck anyways) the simple truth is they act with force and not by choice. Would anyone in their right mind actually pay their taxes if they had a real choice? Hell no! Everyone knows half the money is wasted on needless bureaucracy and after all of that we still get a half finished product.

Arguments for taxes I've heard have included: "If the government didn't provide roads, schools, or police we wouldn't have them", or "I don't mind paying taxes for health care and schools, I just don't support things like the War". Well both arguments are flawed. It's ridiculous to think the government is the only entity that could provide these services. If that's true we wouldn't have private schools, private highways, or private security... which we have them all and they provide vastly better service. And to say you support some things but not others the government does is to say you don't support the government at all. Because you are partly realizing the lack of choice that comes from forced taxes, and that the government has total control over your money and how it spends it. We must follow this to its logical end that the State is aggression and is no better than a gang or the Mafia.

Well this is not the most well put together blog post, but I'm glad I got some thoughts down. I also think I've set a new personal record for links (go me). Please comment and read! Thanks.

Taxes: Legalized Theft

Taxes are legalized thief, plain and simple. The government is “legally” forcing money from you and we are expected not only to peacefully comply, but we are actually told that it is patriotic to pay taxes. I think I might drown in the bullshit…

Let me tell you why taxes are legalized thief in a simple example. Say you are walking home one night and suddenly feel a gun pressed into your skull. A man then asks you to either give him your wallet, or he will take it from your dead body (to reference Godfather, he is making you “an offer you couldn’t refuse”). Now do you really have a choice in this situation? Not really. You either lose your wallet or you lose your life, and a high majority of people would chose to save their life. Now I’m going to do this same example but change it up a little bit. Again you are walking home and a man comes up to you. He tells you to give him his wallet but gives you the explanation that he will use your money to pay for your kid’s school, your roads, provide healthcare to the needy, and protect you from terrorists. If say that sounds great but I would rather get those services from someone who specializes in each of those services. The man replies that if you don’t hand over the wallet he will shoot you, once again bringing up the lack of choice you had in the last scenario. Now I think we can all agree that the situation is the same, the man is still forcefully taking your money, but in the second scenario the man claims his motives are for your best interest.

To bring this back to the topic at hand all one has to do is replace the man with the government in the second situation and you have what we call taxes. The government tells you that you must give a predetermined percentage of your wages to the government or you will face the consequences. First being fines, then if you refuse to pay the fines you face jail time, and if you try to refuse the jail time? When then you will actually find a gun pointed at your head, except this time instead of a thief pointing the gun it’s a policeman (who is controlled by the government, but I think you get the point). But just like the second situation the government tells you that this is necessary for them to provide all those wondrous benefits they bestow upon us; public roads, public education, Medicare & Medicaid, national defense (which has somehow extended to well beyond our national borders), and so on with the thousands of government programs implemented in today’s society. But hold on… I thought we determined in the examples that regardless of what the man’s intentions were to use your money, that it was still wrong for him to forcefully take it from you?

Logically my next question is then how do we make this major exception for the government? How is it when the government takes your money in the form of taxes and does so with the stipulation that if you do not pay you will face punishment, that we just lie back and accept it? Quite simply I think we are both ignorant and fearful. We are ignorant of the alternatives to taxation and government control in general. And we are fearful of the implications of not paying taxes and also what would happen if government was not given money to fund all of its programs. Also a major factor is that of inertia. The fact is as long as there has ever been an entity label “government”, that entity has collected taxes on its members and this has remained true for thousands of years. So, taxes, having been around for as long as current written history, this force of inertia makes most people not even stop and consider the implications taxation truly has and whether or not it is just or not. The force needed to stop something such as taxation is so great that most people do not even bother to worry about it.

Regardless, I feel that there are things people should know about taxation and the government in general – firstly, that taxes are inherently wrong (which I feel I’ve already made a simple case for); second, that the government should not provide all the services it does and thus should have no need for taxes in the first place; and thirdly, that private enterprise can both provide for all the services government offers but do so at an incredibly efficient and fair fashion.