Taxation is theft, this much I know. The more money you earn, the more that you owe.
Theft means, “Taking without consent” includes taking by means of a threat of force.
This fact that it is theft is not altered because of what someone does with the money after taking it.
You wouldn’t say after someone has robbed you, “Oh, you gave the money to the poor? In that case, it wasn’t theft after all.”
No; you might claim that it is a socially beneficial theft, but it is still a theft.
Now lets compare the case of taxation.
When the government “taxes” citizens, what this means is that the government demands money from each citizen, under a threat of force and violence:
if you do not pay, armed agents hired by the government will seize your property, your assets in some cases, or worse take you away and lock you in a cage. This looks like about as clear of a case of stealing people’s property. They are literally stealing your body and other things for the purpose of depriving you. So the government is a thief. This conclusion cannot be changed by the fact that the government uses the money for a good cause (if it even does so). That might make taxation a socially beneficial kind of theft, but it is still theft.
The imposition of a federal income tax is more than just taking from those who work and earn and giving to those who don’t. And it is more than just a spigot to fill the federal trough. At its base, it is a terrifying presumption. It presumes that we don’t really own our property. It accepts the Marxist notion that the state owns all the property and the state permits us to keep and use whatever it needs us to have so we won’t riot in the streets. And then it steals and uses whatever it can politically get away with.
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There are a few ways to acquire wealth in a "free" society. The inheritance model; when someone gives you wealth. The economic model; when you trade a skill, a talent, an asset, knowledge, sweat, energy or creativity to a willing buyer. And the mafia model; when a guy with a gun says: “Give me your money or else.”
Which model does the government use?
Social Security
During the 2012 election, then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry, during the Republican presidential primaries that year, called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. He was right. It’s been a scam from its inception, and it’s still a scam today.
When Social Security was established in 1935, it was intended to provide minimal financial assistance to those too old to work. It was also intended to cause voters to become dependent on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Democrats. FDR copied the idea from a system established in Italy by Mussolini. The plan was to have certain workers and their employers make small contributions to a fund that would be held in trust for the workers by the government. At the time, the average life expectancy of Americans was 61 years of age, but Social Security didn’t kick in until age 65. Thus, the system was geared to take money from the average American worker that he would never see returned
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Over time, life expectancy grew and surpassed 65, the so-called trust fund was raided and spent, and the system was paying out more money than it was taking in – just like a Ponzi scheme.
FDR called Social Security an insurance policy. In reality, it has become forced savings. However, the custodian of the funds – Congress – has stolen the savings and spent it. And the value of the savings has been diminished by inflation.
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Today, the best one can hope to receive from Social Security is dollars with the buying power of 75 cents for every dollar contributed. That makes Social Security worse than a Ponzi scheme. You can get out of a Ponzi investment. You can’t get out of Social Security. Who would stay with a bank that returned only 75 percent of one’s savings?
The Constitution doesn’t permit the feds to steal your money. But steal, the feds do.
TAXATION IS
THEFT
Always
Taxation is not theft because:
Citizens have agreed to pay taxes. This is part of the “social contract,” which is a kind of agreement between citizens and the government, whereby the citizens agree to pay taxes and obey the laws, in return for the government’s protection. By using government services (such as roads, schools, and police), and remaining present in the government’s territory, you indicate that you accept the social contract.
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There simply isn’t any such contract. The government has never actually written up and offered such a contract, nor has anyone signed it.
Still, the use of government services might imply agreement to pay for those services, if people who didn’t use the services were not required to pay. But in fact, the government forces citizens to pay taxes regardless of whether they use government services or not. Therefore, the fact that you use government services does not indicate anything about whether you agree to pay taxes.
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Remaining present in “the government’s territory” also does not indicate agreement to the putative social contract.
This is because the government does not in fact own all the land that it claims as “its territory”; this land is, rather, mainly owned by private individuals. If I own some land that other people are using, I can demand that the other people either pay me money or vacate my land. But if I see some people on their land, I cannot demand that they either pay me money or vacate their own land. If I do that, I am a thief. Similarly, when the government demands that we either pay it money or vacate our own land, the government acts as a thief.
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Taxes are just the price the government charges for providing law and order. Without taxation, the government would collapse, then all social order would break down, and then you wouldn’t have any money at all. Taxation is unlike theft because thieves do not provide valuable services, let alone services that enable you to make the very money that they are taking a portion of.
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It doesn’t matter that you were given a good or service in exchange. What matters is that someone took took your money without your consent. It also does not matter if you benefit greatly from the good or service.Taking people’s property without consent is theft, even if you also benefit them, and even if you helped them obtain that same property.
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Imagine that I hold you up at gunpoint and take $20 from you. I also leave one of my books behind in exchange. When you see me later without my gun, you call me a thief and demand your money back. “Oh no,” I say, “I am no thief, for I gave you something valuable in exchange. True, you never asked for the book, but it’s a good book, worth much more than $20.”
It doesn’t matter that I gave you a good in exchange, and it doesn’t matter whether the book is really worth more than $20. What matters is that I took your money without your consent.
It also does not matter if you benefit greatly from the book. Suppose that (unable to convince me to take it back) you wind up reading my book, which turns out to contain such useful advice that you end up much better off (including financially better off) than before I came along. None of this changes the fact that I am a thief. The temporal order also does not matter: if I give you the unsolicited book first, then wait for you to profit from it financially, and then forcibly take away some of the money you earned, I will still be a thief.
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When the government plans to spend money on something (support for the arts, a space program, a national retirement program, and so on), one should ask: would it be permissible to steal from people in order to run this sort of program? If not, then it is not permissible to tax people in order to run the program. #taxationistheft.
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