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I know a few people believe or at least feel taxes are theft.
This is a poll to determine how many feel that way.
As a side note
I do believe it is a crime to receive (knowingly?) stolen goods.
I think it is mostly legal semantics much like killing and murder.Generally people view that taking someones property by force and with out permission to be an act of theft but legally speaking since it is legal for the government to take your money without permission and by force it is not legally theft.
I know a few people believe or at least feel taxes are theft.
This is a poll to determine how many feel that way.
As a side note
I do believe it is a crime to receive (knowingly?) stolen goods.
I know a few people believe or at least feel taxes are theft.
This is a poll to determine how many feel that way.
As a side note
I do believe it is a crime to receive (knowingly?) stolen goods.
Generally I am asking if the you (not you specifically but any poster) feels that believes taxes are theft whether or not they are legal (as in government making them legal).
A
I think it is mostly legal semantics much like killing and murder.Generally people view that taking someones property by force and with out permission to be an act of theft but legally speaking since it is legal for the government to take your money without permission and by force it is not legally theft.
"Other".
Depending on the circumstances and context surrounding each individual tax examined, they may or may not be "theft".
Property taxes, and some consequences for not paying/not being able to pay them, I consider more theft-like than most.
We SHOULD expect our legislators to spend those tax dollars wisely. If they dont we should replace them. That we dont cant be blamed on congress...that responsibility falls on the American people.
Yes...and no.
There are transparency issues (or lack thereof), complexity issues (witness a recent 2,700 page bill), and cases of incompetence or fraud where politicians promise "this bill will cost X and do Y" when in fact it will cost 3x and accomplish very little of what it claims.
Most people are too busy earning a living and raising a family to really dig into policy and the details of Congress' fiscal activities to be fully informed about what their Reps and Senators are up to, especially given the smoke-screen of the factors in the preceeding paragraph.
It is hard to hold a large, bewilderingly complex and deliberately opaque government properly to account. Our government loses billions of dollars (BILLIONS) and can't even explain to itself where the money went. :roll:
Contrariwise, the average voter doesn't pay a great deal of attention to politics until a few weeks before an election, and is then subjected to an information-overload of candidate and party propaganda... sorting the truth from the lies is a daunting task for most.
IMHO, the cure for this is to realize that we've given government, at all levels, far too much money and far too much power. We need to shrink it to a more manageable size.
I'd prefer that no tax could be levied, unless a caucus of all those who would be PAYING the tax vote in majority support of it. This would necessitate defining what the tax would go to pay for, of course; to get that approval the object of the revenue would have to be something a majority of the tax-payers thought was worthwhile.
A public referendum on any new taxes sounds like an excellent idea as long as the budgets must stay balanced.
Agreed. Limiting the ability to tax won't prevent the government from wrecking the economy with deficit spending unless a balanced budget is required.
Funny how almost everyone agrees a balanced budget would be a good thing, but we still can't get it made into a law that actually holds water.
The issue here of course, is that it is LEGAL, because the government (which makes all law, lol) SAYS it is legal.
In a sense that is like allowing a pickpocket to write the state's laws on petty theft, or setting the fox to guard the henhouse. :mrgreen:
I'd prefer that no tax could be levied, unless a caucus of all those who would be PAYING the tax vote in majority support of it. This would necessitate defining what the tax would go to pay for, of course; to get that approval the object of the revenue would have to be something a majority of the tax-payers thought was worthwhile.
BTW, I don't simply mean caucus of registered voters; I mean a caucus of whoever will actually be paying the new tax or tax hike. If the tax hike is on cigarettes, only cig smokers should be allowed to vote in the caucus. If the tax hike is on the wealthiest 10%, then only the wealthiest 10% should be allowed to vote on it.
That would be real, actual "taxation with representation."
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