Taxation Is Theft

 

Taxation Is Theft

From http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/666806/posts

What is the moral justification for taxation?  What gives the government the right to collect taxes by force, whether force of law or force of arms–which in the end amount to the same thing?

The coerced collection of taxes is allegedly justified by four arguments–all of which are demonstrably false:

1. The “majority rules” argument: The majority in a society has the right to impose its will on the minority, either absolutely, or within the limits prescribed by a Constitution.

The refutation: It’s been said that a democracy is where two wolves and a sheep vote on what (or who) is for dinner. The moral to be understood from this is that a vote by the wolfish majority to have the sheepish minority for dinner does not justify violating the rights of the sheep to life, liberty and property. By the same reasoning,  just because a majority votes to put those who don’t “voluntarily” pay taxes in jail does not make it morally right.

The “majority rules” argument is based on the false premise that what just one of your neighbors would not have the right to do–appropriate your property using unjustified coercive force–society as a whole (who are just the aggregation of all your neighbors) somehow magically is morally justified in doing. Were this so, what principle would limit it just to taxes, or to just those things allowed by a Constitution?  Where did society get the authority to use a Constitution to give its agent, the government, powers that none of the individuals in the society possess by themselves as single individuals?

If your neighbor does not have the right to force you to be his slave, could it be that two of your neighbors have this right? If not two, then what about 1000 of your neighbors? 10,000 neighbors? 100,000 neighbors? 250,000,000 neighbors? Everyone living on the same continent?  What gives a group (or a society, or its agent, a government) any right to act that any individual member of the group would not have? Rights are not additive: two people who form a group have no more rights than either one has separately. The rights of any group, even society as whole, are simply the union of the rights of all the individuals in the group. It therefore necessarily follows that a group cannot have any rights that any individual member of the group does not also have. So if your neighbor has no just right to simply take from you whatever he or she wants, then neither do any group of neighbors–not even the entire society.

The conclusion is inescapable: you don’t owe taxes merely because one or more of your neighbors say you do. I don’t have the right to take your property without your consent.  Therefore, no group of people has the right to take your property without your consent–no matter how many people are in the group, nor how many of them vote in favor.

2. The “debt for services rendered and benefits received” argument: Government provides benefits and services. The recipients of said benefits and services owe the government something of value in exchange.  Furthermore, society is entitled to a “payback from,” or “return on its investment in,” each member of the society, and a “return on its investment” in the infrastructure of the society, payable as “dividends” from the earnings of the individuals who live in and benefit from the society and its infrastructure.

The refutation: The argument is flawed in several ways. Firstly, it falsely assumes that a valid debt is created whenever someone receives either direct (or collateral) benefit(s) as a result of actions voluntarily performed by someone else–even when the person receiving the benefit(s) did not consent to the creation of a debt, and even when the person performing the action(s) was largely motivated to perform those actions in his own self interest and for his own benefit.  Secondly, it falsely assumes that every taxpayer was a willing participant in a commercial transaction, where he agreed to pay a freely-negotiated price for some service or benefit. Thirdly, it falsely assumes that the amount of tax a taxpayer is assessed is reasonably proportionate to the market value of the services or benefits he received. Finally, the argument falsely assumes that a debt can convey an equity interest in the life, property, or profits of the debtor, without the debtor having consented to the granting of any such equity interest.

• Taxation forces you to pay for what you haven’t agreed to buy

It is admittedly possible to accrue a debt without having first consented thereto: such a debt automatically accrues when the debtor causes harm to the life, liberty or property of someone else without valid cause (the only valid cause that comes to mind would be acting in justified self defense).  But other than this one exception (infringing on someone else’s rights without his or her consent), debts cannot be justly created without the consent of the debtor.

Therefore, you don’t owe anyone anything for those things that someone else voluntarily chooses to do without your consent to pay for them.  Conversely, you have no right to coerce payment from others who have not consented to pay you for the value of the work you voluntarily choose to do that happens to benefit them. 

Even more ludicrous is the idea that you owe anyone anything in exchange for the collateral benefits you may receive as a consequence of actions performed by others.  If I choose to build a dam for the twin purposes of generating electricity and controlling floods, solely because the dam benefits me (I make money selling the electricity, and my home is made safer against the threat of flooding), then why should the fact that your home also is made safer against the threat of flooding entitle me to send you an invoice for any part of the cost of building the dam?  I would have built the dam whether or not you benefited from it, and whether or not you agreed to pay anything for the privilege of benefiting from the dam.

If you benefit from what someone else has voluntarily done, and have not agreed to provide compensation, then you have no more obligation to pay than does the receiver of any other gift.  As long as we do not violate the rights of others, each of us may do; or not do; as we please.   If we do not like the fact that what we voluntarily choose to do happens to also benefit others, our only morally-correct remedy is to refrain from doing such things. If you think otherwise, go sweep the street clean and then send an invoice to the city;or to your neighbors; for the hours worked.  Good luck.

• Taxation forces you to pay the price set by a  monopoly provider

Typically, the amount of tax assessed is not reasonably equivalent to the fair market value of the services provided. One important reason that this is true is because the amount of tax that is assessed is not negotiated between “buyer” and “seller” in a free market.  Both overcharging and underpaying for goods or services makes one party a thief and the other party the victim of a crime.

• Rate-based taxation assumes that the “debt” for government services creates an equity interest

The debt you owe to a lienholder does not entitle the lienholder to an equity interest in your life, in your property, and/or in the fruits of your labor.  If you think otherwise, try billing (or even suing) your employer for a percentage of profits in lieu of salary, without his prior agreement.  Good luck.

3. The “social contract” argument: A society has the right to dictate to all members of (or residents in) the society what each individual must contribute (or “give back”) in exchange for being allowed to live in, and/or be a member of, and/or receive benefits and services from, the society.  By agreeing to live in a society, an individual is deemed to have “consented” to this “social contract.”

The refutation: This argument is based on the false premise that “society” as a whole has a right to coerce consent to debts as a condition for being “allowed” to be a member of the overall society.  

A society is just a group of people who interact.  It has no more rights or powers than does any one of its members.  Therefore, unless some individual member of a society has the right to coerce other members of the society to agree to conditions in exchange for membership in the society, then it cannot be that the society as a whole has any such right.

It’s true that an individual has the right to refuse to interact with any other individual. However, each adult only has the right to make such decisions for himself, not for other adults.  Therefore, even though 67% of the citizens of a particular community do not wish to interact with a particular person, the remaining 33% would still have the right to do so, if that is their wish.

No person, or group of persons, has the right to prevent any two adults from interacting, as long as both adults freely choose to do so. It therefore follows that the only way that an individual can morally be denied permission to be a member of society as a whole, is for all the other members of the society to unanimously (and permanently) refuse to interact with him or her. Therefore, society as a whole has no right to demand that individuals agree to conditions in exchange for being allowed to participate in the society–because society has no right to prevent free association (or interaction) among consenting adults. You have the right to interact socially, economically and politically with anyone who is also willing to interact with you, regardless of how many third parties may object.

In fact, the only way that someone could be expelled from society would be to violate the rights of the one expelled.  Society would have to kill the person, and/or steal his property, and/or forbid him the right to live on his property, and/or interdict his right to contract with others for a place to live and/or to produce income, and/or violate his right to travel.  No one has the right to deny anyone the right to live, to own property, to travel, to engage in commercial transactions with others who are willing, or to do anything whatsoever so long as no else’s rights are being violated. Therefore, society has no right to do any of these things, and so it therefore has no right to threaten to do them unless individuals agree to be taxed.  Such a proposition would be extortion; a fancy word for theft.

You have inalienable rights because you are a person, not because you agree to pay taxes.  To make the free exercise of your rights contingent on the payment of taxes converts inalienable human rights into privileges that must be purchased.  That way leads to slavery.

Society is an epiphenomenon that emerges from the actions and interactions of the individuals of which it is composed.  Society is thus a creation and manifestation of its members, who are therefore its rightful masters.  To posit instead that society rightfully owns and controls the individuals who are its members wrongfully makes each individual a slave to the group.  Others do not own you just because you interact with them. Neither do you own others because they interact with you.  Therefore, society does not own you because you live in it.

It must also be noted that the so-called “social contract” is not properly a “contract” at all.  At no time are individuals ever told what are the conditions of the “social contract” to which they must agree.  At no time are individuals ever asked to formally agree to the terms of this alleged contract.  I have never agreed to any such contract, and I strongly doubt that anyone who ever reads this essay has ever done so, either.  The alleged “social contract” is therefore nothing more than a fictitious “blank check,” drawn on the life, liberty and property of the enslaved population, that those in power can cash in any amount that suits them, at any time; again and again.

4. The “moral debt to those in need” argument: Those who have more than they need are morally obligated to provide for those who have less–and it is a necessary and proper function of government to make sure that the “haves” contribute their “fair share” to the “have nots.”  Therefore, the needs of society for the services and benefits of government outweigh the property rights of individuals.

The refutation: This argument is based on the false premise that the needs of one person constitute a moral debt or lien on the life, property or liberty of someone else. This is a wide-spread, but very dangerous, fallacy. No such principle can be morally justified, because it inevitably leads to logical contradictions that destroy individual life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is maliciously inimical to the very foundations of freedom.

Obviously, if I give (almost) everything I have to charity (or to taxes), then I become the “needy” person, and can then “rightfully” (sic) demand “help” from others.  Just by having less, and doing less productive work, I can “create a moral obligation” (sic) for others to provide for my needs.  As a result, those of you willing to work become the slaves of those of us willing to leach off the efforts of others.  But the resulting “negative feedback loop” must eventually lead to social, moral and economic decay.

To make each individual responsible for meeting the needs of others would have the following consequences:

The individual would become a slave to all those with greater need,

The principle of “moral risk” would result in many people failing to act responsibly with respect to their own welfare and best interests, and

The “haves” would use the fact that they are coerced into supporting the “have nots” to impose laws and regulations restricting everyone’s freedom—on the grounds that social welfare paid for by coercive tax collection gives the taxpayers a legitimate stake in preventing citizens from making poor life choices.

Down this path lies tyranny.

Fundamentally, neither my needs, nor someone else’s needs, justify coerced taking from others. Just because I need a heart transplant does not justify my taking your heart without permission. Just because my neighbor needs food to eat does not justify either of us taking from you the food you need to feed your family. Just because I and my family need a place a live does not justify my evicting you and your family from your apartment. Need is not a valid or workable basis by which to assign ownership of property. You are not a slave to my needs, nor am I a slave to yours.

The principle that your life, liberty and property belong only to you, and that you have no obligation to give them to others, and cannot rightfully be coerced into doing so, is the foundation of freedom.  Any society that violates this principle makes slaves out of its members.

You should not be responsible for the consequences of my actions and decisions, and I should not be responsible for the consequences of yours. Each person must be fully and solely responsible for the consequences of the way he/she lives his/her life.   

If you wish to feel guilty because you are able and willing to earn a living, that’s your affair. If you wish to donate some or all of what you have to others, that’s your affair. Nothing prevents you from giving as much as you like to the charities of your choice. But you have no right to select the charities that others must contribute to, nor to specify the amount or percentage of their charitable giving. If you did, then they would have the same right with respect to you, and you might not like their choices!

No one has the right to be “generous” (sic) with other people’s money without their permission. That’s not generosity – it is theft.

Working to support yourself and your family is not immoral. Expecting to receive the full benefit of the work you do is not immoral. Expecting others not to steal from you is not immoral. Your hard work helps yourself, your family, your community, your country and the world at large.  You owe no one any debt merely for having worked to accumulate property, nor for having done productive work.

Conclusion

The fact that your neighbors have voted in a law that says you owe taxes does not mean that you do, because others have no right to take your property without your consent. 

The fact that you benefit from the operation of government does not mean you owe taxes, because no moral debt can be created without either your consent or your misbehavior. 

The fact that you are allowed to operate as a member of society does not mean that you can be construed to have agreed to pay taxes in exchange, because a) you have not in fact agreed to any such contract, b) you have the right to interact (and do business with) anyone else who is willing, and c) no one has the right to violate your rights, or make the enjoyment of your rights contingent on the payment of a fee.

The fact that there are those whose needs are greater or more dire than yours does not mean you owe any taxes, because you are no one’s slave, no matter how needy they may be.

 

INCOME TAX: WHY WE HAVE IT

 

 

by Alan Stang
March 26, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

 

Tote that barge, lift that bale, and make sure you pay on time. April 15th approaches and my guess is that only a relative handful of Americans knows why we have the income tax. With rare exceptions, they will exclaim that we must have the income tax to “pay the expenses of the government.” Of course the truth is exactly the opposite. The income tax has nothing to do with paying the expenses of the government.

First an obvious fact, something you already know. When was the country created? Pick a date. Many would pick July 4th, 1776, when the Continental Congress adopted the nation’s birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence. Many others would pick the date of ratification of the Constitution. Let’s arbitrarily use 1776.

Now, when did we get the income tax? Except for the temporary income tax during Lincoln’s Communist War to Destroy the Union, there was no income tax in this country until 1913, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its validity in Brushaber, 240 U.S. 1. Indeed, even then it did not affect more than a handful of our people.

As late as 1942, only 3% of our people paid income tax. Until that date, most people probably had heard of it, but they didn’t pay it and had never seen the form. It didn’t apply to them. Indeed, if you check the records, you will see that in 1941, when the reader may have already been alive, the federal government collected more in alcohol and tobacco taxes than it did in income tax. Remember “moonshine” and the “revenooers?”

The income tax finally did hit the people in a big way only in 1942, and then only because we were of course in the middle of the war Franklin Roosevelt had finally succeeded in tricking us into by arranging Pearl Harbor. Even so, the conspiratorial warmongers could put the tax over only by calling it the “Victory” tax, a “temporary” tax collected by withholding, which would be repealed as soon as we had won the war.

Question: Name for me a year, just one year, between 1776 and 1942, when the nation couldn’t function because we had no income tax. Can’t find one? Okay name a month, just one month, when the nation collapsed, couldn’t pay its bills, because we had no income tax. How about a week?

Indeed, remember that during all that time, we fought many wars. We won them all. Yes, we won World War II with the income tax because it was “temporary,” not yet a permanent part of our lives, but mainly because we fought that war on behalf of Stalin. With the income tax we have not outright won a war since, from Korea to Iraq.

Remember, you knew all this. I am simply reminding you of something you already knew. So, if we didn’t have an income tax, yet never collapsed, where did the federal government get the funds to pay for itself? Again, they came from alcohol and tobacco taxes.

They also came from tariffs, which made foreigners pay for the privilege of selling products here. And they came from other indirect taxes. These were enough to pay for the few powers the Constitution grants to the federal government. Did you know that one of the biggest problems in Congress before the turn of the Twentieth Century was what the newspapers called the “tariff monster?” So much tax money was pouring into the Treasury that Congress didn’t know what to do with it.

So, if we don’t need an income tax to pay for the federal government, why do we have one? In August, 1942, Meyer Jacobstein, of the Brookings Institution, testified to a Senate subcommittee that “it is necessary to mop up the excess purchasing power of the community . . . because of its effect on the price situation . . . .” There are also a couple of Ohio University economists, Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway, whose study showed that for every dollar of increased taxes, Congress increased spending $1.58. In other words, taxes cause spending.

Now, another question you know the answer to. When there was money (gold and silver) behind our currency, the government had to deposit in the treasury the appropriate amount of money, in grains or ounces, whenever it printed paper currency. In the same way, you must deposit the appropriate sum in your checking account before you write a check against it.

U.S. currency used to say it was “redeemable” downtown at the bank. The bank would pay the amount of money printed on the face of the bill to the “bearer on demand.” Even early Federal Reserve Notes said that. The only difference between your personal check and government currency is that your check names the person to be paid and the government currency does not. It paid the “bearer,” whoever had it in his hand when he walked into the bank.

Now here comes the question. Since there no longer is any money behind our currency; since the government no longer need find and deposit rare gold or silver into its account in order to write a check against it; and since paper and ink are relatively limitless in supply – indeed, computer entries, today’s “money,” are utterly limitless – why does the government bother to tax at all? Why the audits, the penalties, the raids and seizures, the divorces and suicides?

Why doesn’t the government just print what it needs; bigger numbers on bigger pieces of paper? Even easier, why not just boot up and click on ever bigger computer entries; then use those computer entries to pay the bills? This is what Meyer Jacobstein was talking about. The answer is that doing so would constitute hyperinflation, which would send prices to Alpha Centauri and destroy the dollar here.

That is what happened in the Weimar Republic in post-World War I Germany, where the process took two years. It is happening now in Zimbabwe. The reason it has taken so long to happen here is that the financial geniuses who run the conspiracy for world government run the unbacked printings and now the computer entries through the non-Federal non-Reserve System, which is brilliantly designed to confuse and conceal what is happening. Extra layers of obfuscation have since been added, including the CDO and other alphabetical horrors. I have explained the process many times; no need to do so again here. But it is happening and when the train stops we shall be in Weimar.

The man with the answers is Beardsley Ruml. Ruml was a lifelong Rockefeller factotum. Rockefeller is the family David Rockefeller boasts in his Memoirs is part of a globalist conspiracy against the United States. Ruml was chairman of the New York Fed. It was he who devised World War II “temporary” withholding. It was originally named for him: the “Ruml pay-as-you-go plan.”

In January, 1946, American Affairs published a speech by Beardsley Ruml. The title was, “Taxes for Revenue Are Obsolete.” In it, Ruml speaks of two remarkable changes: “the gaining of vast new experience in the management of central banks,” and “the elimination, for domestic purposes, of the convertibility of the currency into gold.”

Under the heading, “What Taxes Are Really For,” Ruml listed three main purposes: “as an instrument of fiscal policy to help stabilize the purchasing power of the dollar”; to express public policy in the distribution of wealth and of income, as in the case of the progressive income tax and estate taxes”; to express public policy in subsidizing or in penalizing various industries and economic groups.”

Redistribution of the wealth by government is communism. Subsidizing and penalizing various industries by government is fascism. You are seeing such fascism right now in the government “bailout” of certain favored companies. For instance, the government saved Goldman Sachs but flushed Lehman Brothers. What about stabilizing the purchasing power of the dollar? Ruml says this by far is the most important reason for the income tax and other federal taxes, sometimes called “the avoidance of inflation.”

Ruml explains that “federal taxation has much to do with inflation and deflation, with the prices which have to be paid for the things that are bought and sold. . . .” If people have “too much” purchasing power, prices will rise. “. . . This will mean that the dollar is worth less than it was before – that is inflation. . . .

“The dollars the government spends become purchasing power in the hands of the people who have received them. The dollars the government takes by taxes cannot be spent by the people, and, therefore, these dollars can no longer be used to acquire the things that are available for sale. . . .” So this is what Meyer Jacobstein meant by “mopping up purchasing power.”

The true purpose of the income tax, therefore, is to inhibit the inflationary effect of ravenous government spending. The income tax allows our rulers to juggle their fiscal balls in the air a bit longer, by offering a safety valve through which the inflationary pressure generated by that spending can more safely be released. The income tax does that by transferring purchasing power from the people to the government. Again, it has nothing at all to do with paying the government’s bills.

By the way, if you would like to read all this on paper, you will find most of it in my book, TaxScam: How IRS Swindles You and What You Can Do About It. There you will see a picture of the “tariff monster,” from Puck, a magazine of the time. Why I don’t know, but they tell me it has become something of a “minor classic,” maybe merely because of its advanced age: twenty one.

It originally was $9.95. Despite its “classic” status, we ask only $5.95 (plus shipping and handling) because the covers are no longer perfect, in some cases no good. But the pages are like new, and, of course, so is the information. You can order at alanstang.com. Click on STORE and scroll down to the book.

All right, now you know why you pay income tax. Are you not inspired? On April 15th, when you put your head on the block, you will do so happily, maybe even singing the national anthem, in the knowledge that you are doing your patriotic part to mop up, to fight inflation and save the dollar. Illegal alien Also Known As thanks you.

[Announcement: Alan Stang's radio show, The Sting of Stang, airs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Central, M-F, via Republic Broadcasting Network. Call him on the air at (800) 313-9443. To listen, go to republicbroadcasting.org and click on Listen Live. If you can't listen at that time, do so via the archives. I'll be talking about the various manifestations of the conspiracy for world government, its tactics, such as the illegal alien invasion, its purposes and its players, from Jorge W. Boosh on down.]

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