It is not right for one person to steal. It is not right for two people to steal. It is still not right for 51% of a voting population to vote for a representative who will hire a tax collector to steal for them. One of the great government lies is that theft can be moral when performed by enough people and called taxation. Theft is theft. Even if some of the money stolen is used for legitimate purposes, that doesn’t change the simple fact that taxation is theft.
Some politicians will try to make the case that taxation is voluntary, and in a warped sense, for some people, it is. If you believe that governments exist to serve the people, all your tax dollars are put to good use, and you pay your taxes enthusiastically, then you might be more susceptible to the lie that taxation isn’t theft. But even if you happen to be so lucky, and you feel that taxes are “the price you pay for a civilized society,” you are living in a civilized prison. The moment you decide that you don’t like what your tax dollars are spent on, either you are submitting to the coercion behind every tax law, or you are going to jail.
We can only meet our potential when all relations are voluntary and cooperative. Every relationship between a government and a citizen is involuntary. The amount of coercion actually applied is irrelevant to assessing the effect of the threat. When a tax is imposed on a population, it means a large chunk of the wealth is no longer allowed to serve the needs of the people who earned it, but rather the needs of government. Only when all the diversions of resources by taxation are taken into account can we begin to grasp the massive potential lost.
Governments use taxes not only to steal from us, but also to control our behavior. Generally, taxes are imposed to the greatest degree possible, taking as much as they can from whomever they can. But sometimes, governments can take more money from us overall if they take in a specific way intended to modify behavior. For example, if a government imposes a tax on an unpopular behavior, it can get people to see government as an effective way of stopping that behavior, while really using it as an excuse to steal from an unpopular group of people and boost its credibility.
One of the great lies of taxation is that it’s a way for the poor to band together to take back from the rich. This could be dressed up to avoid the language of theft as in, “Successful people show their gratitude to the society that helped them by paying more in taxes.” Some people even believe taxation is a way to take the power back from the super rich, corporations, and banks. The people who have the money to pull the strings of politicians have rigged the system so the net effect of taxation is always a tax on the poor. Some tax systems are actually set up to steal more from relatively rich people, and some unpopular or unconnected rich people end up at a disadvantage, but from their results, it is obvious that governments exist to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.
Because people respond to incentives, targeted taxation has precise effects. When any product, service, or activity is taxed, it becomes more expensive and the market responds as it would to any price increase. This is true with the income tax, which allows some governments to take their victims’ money before they get control of it. But “hiding” a tax does not diminish its disastrous effects. It only makes collection more efficient. The incentive problem is not avoided, and when governments make any activity (like earning an income) less profitable, people will do it less.
Sales taxes are just as much theft as any other taxes, even though everyone chooses to pay them as they make consumer choices. A sales tax is simply conditional theft, just like import taxes or any other taxes on trade. While a consumer might have the choice of not buying something, a vendor has no choice but to build the cost of taxes into the price if they want to do business openly. Unfortunately for governments, taxation does nothing to diminish the black market. It encourages it.
The taxation racket has developed, evolved, and adapted to new circumstances and technologies. Widespread application and profitability ensure taxation techniques are always at the cutting edge. They have come a long way from the chief of a small tribe demanding tribute to the massive surveillance, investigation, seizure, and imprisonment operations of today. If the racket is not stopped soon, it will only get more invasive and destructive.
Taxation is an inescapable part of the government racket. If governments never stole, they would cease to be governments. If we could withdraw our financial support from them at any time, they would be voluntary cooperatives, or service providers. Because taxation is backed up with the threat of force, it is theft, plain and simple.
Chapter 5 Section I From FREEDOM! by Adam Kokesh
I am the author of FREEDOM!, a book endorsed (I mean banned) by the US Department of “Justice.” You can get a copy here. I’m running for Not-President in 2020 on the platform of the peaceful, orderly, and responsible dissolution of the United States federal government. You can find out more here. I am currently on my #TaxationIsTheft tour! You can find an event near you here. Whoever has the top comment on this post after 24 hours can claim a free signed copy of FREEDOM! by sending me a message with their address.
Random statist:
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Theft by any other name...
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It still amazes me that people who acknowledge that if I stole from them, then gave them a sandwich, it's still theft. But if the government does it, it magically isn't theft. Why? Because someone with no authority over me can vote to magically somehow give that authority, that they never had, to someone over me to take my money?
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Mind Control. Oops! Need I remember. Most do not believe in mind-control. Therefore it doesn't exist. After all, the sheeple have minds of their own. They think and decide for themselves, and of course it is rational and makes sense because it goes along with the beliefs of the status quo, and we all know, the majority is right, because what we believe, is true, because we say it is, so therefore stealing must be okay, sometimes, for certain people. Remember the book `Certain People'? Are you one of them?
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The remake of Battlestar Galatcia ended their prayers with "So say we all." Consensus reality even in fiction...
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Agreed. But people are coming around to the idea!
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Beep! Beep! This humvee will be patrolling by and assisting new veterans, retirees, and military members here on Steem. @shadow3scalpel will help by upvoting posts from a list of members maintained by @chairborne and responding to any questions replied to this comment.
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Have you ever been the victim of theft?
When you were, was the amount taken determined by your elected representatives? Were the funds stolen used for governmental functions, as to which you had input as a voter? Did the thief afford you a means to challenge the theft by administrative proceedings and even court action?
I've never had a theft with the above features, which characterize taxation.
No, of course taxation is not theft, except in thuggish regimes where due process rights are not provided.
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Of course, it is theft. There is no due process you can follow to exempt yourself from paying taxes. If my friends vote for me to tax you, is that not theft? What if my friends give an official sounding title?
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As the book says, theft is theft. This does not change when a larger amount of people commit the act, how many people agree with it, or to what degree the thief allows you to 'plead your case' against them. The act of stealing remains the same. Taxation is theft since we are not given the option to not consent.
Sure, if you like paying taxes, go ahead. But that does not give you the justification to take from others against their will to contribute to the things you value above the values of others.
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So your saying as long as you can go to a court room after the money has been taken from you and plea your case (while giving the same organization that you are filing the complaint against) then it is not theft?
And because the organization that takes your property directly from you (prior to you receiving it) allows you to be engaged in process via "politics", after you have already paid for it, this also isn't theft?
Is the money you receive in your pay check yours first and foremost? Or is it the government's and you receive a portion?
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We should have limited taxation to pay for roads, police, military , fire rescue and schools. Nothing besides those 5 things should the government pay for. If we could limit the tax to those things we would only have to pay 5-10% of our income.
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Those things can all be provided voluntarily.
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So you have no objection to theft, as long as it's limited in scope? It's still theft.
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Are there examples of any countries that don’t have a tax on anything? I’m not disagreeing just trying to see what a community would look like without any taxes. Pretty sure Saudi Arabia has no income tax, they also have no middle class and pretty extreme laws.
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What is ownership? You can only be said to 'own anything' to the extent that you are able to control it and use it for your own purposes. In a society of people, in order to do this it is necessary for other members of society to recognise you as the owner. This applies to any object - including one's own body. It is not an absolute rule that you are the owner of your own body. There are enough counter examples in history to show that this is not necessarily true. In what meaningful sense did slaves 'own themselves'?
Property rights are a framework determined by society - in modern societies property rights are created by the government. Taxes are simply part of that framework. It is therefore logically impossible for taxation to be theft because the government cannot break its own rules.
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