They don't have to be, but as presently done, I believe they are. How could they not be theft? By seeking the public approval! That is simple. States could be asked to put this on each state ballot. If the public approves, a particular by law, cited tax level, would be legal. For instance. If the public approved 5 percent top rate, that is it. They pick the number.
What if there are ten of us, and six of us agree to define theft as the forcible taking of more than 5% of one's possessions at a given time. I think we all know that my pointing a gun at each of the other nine and demanding(and getting) 4.999% of their money would still be theft. - - - Updated - - - And when I do it again, the following year or the next day, it would still be theft.
No they're not. The dominant force on our planet currently is human societies run by governments. You are a part of them until you can undo them and you currently can't so you are a part of them, hence you benefit from them hence you pay into them. Simple as that. You trying to deny you benefit from them is nonsense. We all do.
"Taxation is theft" has always been an over-simplistic metaphor. At best it'd be some kind of "demanding money with menaces" but that just goes to show that the whole question is more complex than the people who bring this up wish to consider. But there already is "public approval". You (like most in the West) live under a government of democratically elected representatives and they in turn determine what (if any) taxation is levied. If people don't like their decisions, they can elect someone else, just as with any other government policy.
Taxes are levied, not stolen. You choose to live in a taxing district and receive the benefit of specified services, either directly or indirectlh, and you know that comes with a pricetag. That differs from theft, in that it is unpredicted, covert, and without any compensation in the form of government or services. If you are going to say there must be specific contract between the taxed and the government, then government cannot presume to take from the minority who said "no' on your ballot without 'stealing' from them . the majority who say 'yes' would be stealing from those than said no but still were taxed. Yun'd need signed permission slips from each taxpayer.
Let's give you a go. We all read parties go back and forth over government. Some fight today that Trump will be president. Some fight in the Dakotas over a steel pipe. Some fight to shut off coal, nuclear, etc. So, if you intend nobody gets to disagree, you have a high hurdle to climb. I would never complain if they took the funds as intended. Even though it is wrong to target only the rich, it was not a lot of money. In principle it is just as wrong. I would go with the rich if they wanted a fight. Bear in mind they also banned liquor. The public by constitution simply got barred from buying liquor. We also had the constitution defining blacks as 3/5 of a human. We had Dred Scott telling us slavery was fine. So, merely telling me it is governments fault is really no excuse for my tastes.
I happen to believe the public loves the FAIR TAX. This law has been submitted to congress yet despite the love of the public, congress fails to pass it. The public also did not want the ACA. Yet it passed. Republicans did not want the law. It passed. It seems easier to make bad laws than good laws.
I am hoping I am discussing one tax. The income tax. Was I vague? In a sense of he word, when one chooses to live in a high crime area, must they simply say that comes with the territory? That if change was desired, the public would simply move away? I pointed out the alcohol amendment to the constitution. Why was it legal then, but not today? Was it wrong all along or right all along? Merely that you obey laws is not proof they are correct. We might have expected the entire USA to have owned slaves if it was so proper. The other point is the system is what you can easily call "broken." Back in the days of the law, the 16th amendment, the rich were taxed. And limits on the taxes. We are so far off that track, how can the changes be still legal? If you study the 1916 tax law, you learn it was 5 percent on the rich. What if under that law, you found out you were not a black slave, but you were a slave anyway? A slave performs work for no pay. Allowing the slave to keep some of his income does not disqualify him from being a slave.
This is what I find remarkable about lawful or unlawful Here in CA, were I to wear a pistol on my hip, buttoned down, and enter a hospital, this is illegal. Cop does it, and it is lawful Cop wears his gun into the courtroom. I would get arrested. Cop sits in car with several loaded guns in said car. I do that and again get arrested. Point being one passes laws which essentially create class fissures among what we like to call, free people. Even on the income tax, many Americans are totally free not to pay them. I believe on the order of 47 percent are excused from paying income taxes to the Feds.
No, it doesn't. Why don't you just come out and say it? You define unlawful as anything the government says thou shalt not do, and lawful as anything the government does.
You say they're not, but didn't explain why. You went on to talk about how governments run the most dominant force on the planet and we all benefit from that arrangement. Even if both of those claims were true, they don't show that taxation is not theft.
So if I alert you to the fact that you are living in a taxing district which lies between the arctic circle and the ataractic circle, that a fee is levied in the amount of $100 per month, the benefit is a haircut if you decide to avail yourself of it, that would not be theft?
I never claimed the current system is perfect, only that it exists. Your proposed system of direct referendum to set taxation levels would be at least as flawed.
I could not have started a rational topic were the income tax not to exist. I do not argue it is non existent. I however believe a much better revenue to the Feds system can be constructed. My argument is to get that improved system to the public fast. There definitely is a good argument the public is flawed. It elected Obama two times. That proves it is flawed.
"Extortion" is the term you're looking for. It's a type of theft. I, for one, am willing to consider any nuance you'd like to introduce. Remember, though, that your claim is that there is a kind of forcible taking, whether the payer agrees to the arrangement or not, whether services are rendered or not, where the taker and "service provider" gets to decide unilaterally on the price and nature and quality of the service, which is not theft of any kind.
I make no distinction between taxes for the purposes of this discussion, since no taxes are theft if they are levied by an agent of government and you are living in the taxing 'district'. You are discussing a whole lot of issues with respect to whether taxes should be levied, and in what format and on whom. that is a fine discussion as long as you are not trying to label those you dislike, or abhor as 'theft'. Theft involves legal concepts, defining conduct described under the statutory definition as criminal. There are elements to the criminal conduct described in the statute. Theft is the illegal taking of anothers property. Government defines the paying of its taxes as a fiscal obligation by its citizens. Just stop the hyperbole and talk about the income tax as a bad nasty mean and rotten form of taxation and move this along.
In logic, reductio ad absurdum (Latin(*)for "reduction to absurdity"; or argumentum ad absurdum, "argument to absurdity") is a form of argument which attempts either to disprove a statement by showing it inevitably leads to a ridiculous, absurd, or impractical conclusion, or to prove one by showing that if it were not true, the result would be absurd or impossible.[1][2] Traced back to classical Greek philosophy in Aristotle's Prior Analytics (Greek: ἡ εἰς τὸ ἀδύνατον ἀπαγωγή, translit.(*)hê eis to adunaton apagôgê, lit.(*)'reduction to the impossible'),[2] this technique has been used throughout history in both formal mathematical and philosophical reasoning, as well as in debate. Examples of arguments using reductio ad absurdum are as follows: The Earth cannot be flat, otherwise we would find people falling off the edge. There is no smallest positive rational number, because if there were, then it could be divided by two to get a smaller one. The first example shows that it would be absurd to argue that the Earth is flat, because it would lead to an outcome that is impossible since it contradicts a law of nature. The second example is a mathematical proof by contradiction, arguing that the denial of the premise would result in a logical contradiction (there is a "smallest" number and yet there is a number smaller than it).[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
Someone should edit that entry. The first example is not a reductio ad absurdum. It's just an invalid argument with hidden false premises about the nature of gravity and what an observer should expect to witness.
