SteveSy wrote:
[ . . . ]It's exactly equivalent to saying "You're greedy because you won't pay off the mob when they come around to collect their protection money. They are protecting you after all. Every one else has to pay it why do you think you're immune?"
I agree that "greed" is not the sole motivation for all tax protesters. I would also posit that greed is not even a significant motivation for many of them.
But of course Steve is wrong. The idea that "everyone else has to pay, why do you think you're immune" is not the basis for the moral and legal
rightness of taxation.
I have long been fascinated with this mindset that falsely equates forced exaction of taxes by the government with forced exaction of tribute by the mob. People like Steve seem to over-focus on the economic aspect and the coercive aspect of taxation and mob extortion (which are of course similar) and to ignore the legal dimension. Protesters profess to be horrified by the coercive nature of both the legal process of taxation and the illegal process of mob extortion, and they profess (apparently or impliedly) to see no substantive difference between the legal process of taxation and the illegal process of mob extortion, etc. This is intellectual dishonesty on the part of tax protesters.
Many tax protesters, on a gut, emotional level, seem unable to come to terms with the reality of
political and legal authority when it comes to U.S. federal income taxation. To many of them, the only thing that is important is that their money is being taken by force, without their
individualized consent. They accept neither the legal right nor the moral right of the government to take their money by force without their
individualized consent, even where that is being done in accordance with laws formally enacted through the legislative process prescribed by the very Constitution that the tax protesters falsely profess to adore. Instead, they whine on and on and argue that the Constitution is being violated. This is false rationalization. This is also the same sort of nonsense that one would find with a person who argues that he should not have to obey vehicle traffic laws because he has not consented to those laws on an individualized basis, or that the traffic laws are not in conformity with the Constitution.
Steve,
the government has both the moral and the legal right to take your money without your permission. In a representative democracy, a republic, such as ours, tax laws are enacted through a legal and political process. Those laws often are not enacted wisely, and the money exacted through the tax collection process often is not wisely spent, but as a general proposition that does not affect the moral and legal right of the United States government to do what it currently does with respect to taxation.
Of course, the executive branch of government and the taxpayer often have disputes over what the law actually is and how it should be applied. When disputes arise, the judicial branch of government may be called upon to decide who wins and who loses. And the legislative branch may be influenced to change the law for the future.
"My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line." -- David Mamet
