Taxation as theft.

[hansgeorg]

But you have the option of renting from somebody else.

With countries as with landlords, the options are limited. If all landlords over the city where you work and have your friends decide to back a 200% rent rise and the state does not put them into prison (yes, there are real and good uses of tax money), your option is in vain.

As to countries, there are only so many of them across the world.

[hansgeorg]

For example, the same property "in the city" has taxes of $6,000 a year, where a comparable property in the county has taxes of $3,000 a year.

Without electricity or fossil fuel driven transports, that kind of thing would not work.

[hansgeorg]

Taxation is not theft...

If moderate and used for good services. Justice and defense + libraries, fire fighters, roads ...

[hansgeorg]

Why not? Spell it out for me. Can't you build a raft and sail into the ocean and try to live there, as some libertarians I've seen have actually considered.

Whta deterred them?

[hansgeorg]

Well... strictly speaking I imagine that if you as a US citizen go to Denmark and start working here for a while, you'd still pay taxes to the US?

If you are residing in your home country yes, if you are residing where you work, I think no.

[hansgeorg]

The real idea is taxation without representation. Today our "representatives" do not honestly represent us.

Sounds somewhat whiggish ... I think some Roundheads said such things about Ship Money ...

[hansgeorg]

Without taxation there is no government.

Sometimes great landlords have been government, so as to make government income financed without taxes (has also involved government monopolies) or rather with lower taxes.

Some of the titles of these landlords are king, duke, count, baron ...

[hansgeorg]

Some people don't believe they should be required to pay for things that they don't recognize to be of a personal benefit to them, but taxation has to do with the overall benefit to society, not just individual personal benefit. Public education comes to mind.

If what public education does is providing free education to those too poor for paying private schools, or voluntary and diversified higher education - no problem.

If what it does is forcing all school age children and teens to go to the same classes, even when it means imposing company so unwanted and unwantable it ends in suicides (France) or mass killings with suicides (US), and imposing false doctrines like Evolution and Heliocentrism by sheer peer pressure on those reluctant, then there is a major problem.

[hansgeorg]

and turn education over to local jurisdictions!

Local? You mean domestic, as far as the right to decide over own children are concerned, I hope?

But yes, when it comes to providing sth which most parents will accept, local will do!

[hansgeorg]

Can the private sector provide schools and education for everyone regardless of their ability to pay?

If the private sector were only commercial, obviously no.

Now, a school usually has some kind of idealist vision, and usually has no shareholders who want a profit of difference between parents (overall) paying and teachers and janitors and such getting paid, and so a school often makes some scheme of allowing poor parents' children to come in without a fee and to survive on the fees paid by richer parents.

But some places this might not work satisfactorily compared to a reasonable demand for education (if for instance it is then and there totally unrealistic to have most children educated as apprentices to tradesmen, who set off some hours a week on three R's and Christianity on top of gaining money and teaching the trade, or if Protestant/Jewish/Muslim values require all children to get schooling in a madrasa) and in such cases of course the government can and should step in with tax money to provide.

However, enforcing compulsory school education is very much over inflating the demand and to use the over inflated "demand" as an excuse for higher taxes is immoral.

[hansgeorg]

Btw, by local jurisdictions i assume you to mean local government!

Well, sure you would assume that, because you're a government pawn. But, no, I mean local school districts.

You mean non-governmental school districts, as there could be competing such in the same area, like a Protestant and a Catholic one?

Cool!

[hansgeorg]

When a person earns money they are earning that money by performing work for a certain party (i.e. company, person or private entity). The government is not involved in this arrangement. The only exception being of course if the entity you work for is the government themselves and in those instances the government gets that money from taxing individuals who do work for private parties in the first place.

So after they have performed this work in exchange for money, the government then comes along and takes a certain percentage of it despite the fact that this person has never accepted to giving the government money for their labour, let alone decided what percentage they should give to the government in the first place.

You did note money is usually a government privilege to issue, as governments are guaranteeing that 1 dollar = 1 dollar by the stamp which says 1 dollar (diversified with many other details so as to prevent frauds)?

[hansgeorg]

Now and again some governments may decrease tax but overall tax has been increasing over time. Pointing to Sweden may be a good example at this point.

As an expatriate Swede, to this I say "hear, hear"!

This is why it is important to understand that tax if theft. You might consider it to be necessary in some cases but it just makes it necessary theft. If you let this fact slip out of your mind then you are accepting that your hard earned cash is being used to fund things which could be against your will. i.e. Funding of abortions as an example.

Here there is a little confusion.

A government which funds abortion is indeed stealing tax money, but not because taxes are theft, but because it is first of all stealing a position of government power, which should not be with people who even allow abortions.

But the list can go on: compulsory schools, psychiatry, CPS, enforcing certain useless trade regulations or such which are more useful to companies the bigger they are rather (I suppose bar codes on merchandise is one of them, if it is enforced by governenment and not just by branch standards).

Or if one thing the goverment does for tax money is closing free schools over their teaching Creation Science.

Yes, that is theft, but less because of taxation than because of what creeps are stealing governement power in the first place. That said, a good government would hardly tax more than 15 - 20 %, including the 10 % which should go to the Church.

[hansgeorg]

Well, well, well, welcome to the Occupy movement CP. Is B. Sanders message finally getting through to you?

There is Plutocracy and there is Administrarchy. BOTH are oligarchic.

B. Sanders has half the truth and half the solutions, or less than half the solutions. Minimal wages are a good thing, but he's also for abortion and compulsory education.

[hansgeorg]

will corporations do the same thing, now that they have cheap labor outside of the USA.

All of my associates (Conservatives/Christian radio fans -- they don't know I've turned red) when I try to slip into conversation, how if you depend on private ownership to provide employment, you're at the mercy of greed and your job could end up going to Mexico or the Pacific side of the globe.

Companies which move out could be legally required to buy their laid offs farm land and offer it to them for free, on pain of not being allowed to sell in the land.

I think France was weak about Renault, that way. Not to mention that cars anyway only work as a business idea because so much of todays economy depends on circulation.

Regulations, not collectivisation, is the answer.