Taxation is nothing but theft.

originally posted by: Azureblue
a reply to: Aristotelian1

Premise 1: All cases of theft are cases of taking somebody else's property or money without their consent.
Premise 2: Taxation is the taking of somebody's money without their consent.


Conclusion: Therefore, taxation is theft. - Well no actually.

Tax in the US is voluntry if you read the tax code carefully. Somewhere in there it says that going by what I have seen quoted on a website once.

They like to deal with people on a 'voluntry' basis.

While not knowing this is not your fault (nobdy has ever told you) if one learns how, one can not pay tax.

AN exmaple, Forming a foundation and having your income 'donated' and not 'paid' into your foundation achieves a tax free income.

Another one; if you considered your labour was worth $20 per hour but your employer paid you $30 per hour, only then have earned an 'income' of $10 an hour. Had your employer paid you $20 per hour, that is not profit, its compensation for your knowledge, skills, expereince etc from which you did not earn any 'income' or profits.

If you were to write to the top tax dog and tell them that you are trying to complete your annual tax return but you in order for you to be able to complete it you require the tax man to provide you with an official documented defintion of income. But if you did that then you will be waiting a long time for it because the word "income" is not defined in ANY of the western worlds Income Tax Assemsent Acts.

Wanting to deal with people on a voluntary basis does not mean taxation is voluntary.

Your view on how much your labour was worth is also completely irrelevant to how much as you pay. What matters is how much you actually get paid.

OK. I will trim this down a bit. I'd love to go on and on but real life intervenes.

originally posted by: scojak
a reply to: BrianFlanders

originally posted by: BrianFlanders

I don't. I equate being fined for existing to being a prisoner (or a slave).

First off, work on that vocab.

Fine - Monetary charge imposed upon individuals who have been convicted of a crime or a lesser offense. A fine is a criminal sanction.

Taxes are not given as penalties for criminal actions, unless of course you think 'existing' is criminal.

Apparently, whoever wrote Obamacare thinks existing is criminal. The individual mandate in Obamacare is enforced by a penalty that is imposed upon you if you do not do what you have been ordered to do (buy health insurance).

Now this is where things get dirty because Obamacare has a twisted history. When Obama was running for office, Obamacare was supposed to be voluntary. That's to say that (in his own words) people will buy health insurance if you give them the chance (words to that effect).

Obama was against the individual mandate (or at least that's what he said). But of course, he was lying and he changed his tune after he got elected (effectively nullifying the election results).

So are you following this so far? Here's a brief recap...

1. Hillary wanted an individual mandate.

2. Hillary was Obama's only competition on the left

3. The left was virtually guaranteed to win the election no matter what (8 years of Bush had ruined it for the right)

4. Obama claimed he was against the individual mandate and went as far as to say that was a KEY DIFFERENCE between himself and Hillary on healthcare.

5. Obama gets elected, rams through Obamacare WITH the individual mandate and puts Hillary in his cabinet.

Wow. Does that sound like real competition to you? It sound more like a tag team to me.

So. It gets better. Obama and all of his buddies are (at first) kind of honest about it. They call the individual mandate penalty what it is. A fine/penalty. But as time goes on, they start to squirm a bit because it seems that it's kind of unconstitutional to fine people for not buying something.

If you look for it on Youtube you can find an audio clip of Obama's scumbag lawyer arguing before the Supreme Court. He goes this way and that. One minute it's a penalty. The next minute it's a tax. The justices are (understandably) confused at how something can be a tax and a penalty at the same time. But Obama's lawyer doesn't give up. Eventually, he somehow convinces the SCOTUS that the individual mandate penalty is actually a tax.

So. The court seems to agree that taxes and penalties are the same thing. Those are not just my words. That is history. If you don't do as you're told, the government can fine you and call it a tax. That is the Obamacare precedent in black and white.

Now. Beyond Obamacare. Progressive taxes are also punitive because you pay more if you make more. They are effectively intended to hit you harder the more successful you are. That is punitive. You cannot expect people who know they're paying more to see it as fair. Because it isn't.

By all means, spend the time finding out where each of your tax dollars goes and complain about the ones that go to something you don't agree with. The government, while faulty, has a lot to deal with, and I'm happy to let them worry about it so I don't have to. Keep in mind that most countries have taxes, because unless a country has significant natural resources, taxes are necessary to maintain a government and functioning society.

Ok, there's your lesson on taxes. Next time you feel like a slave when you get your W2, remember that life would really suck without taxes

This is not a given. Life would be different without compulsory taxes. It wouldn't necessarily suck any more than it already does. Things work as well as they do because everything was designed around the current tax system. If you were to change that, a lot of things wouldn't work the same way. That doesn't mean you couldn't still do most of those things. It means they'd have to innovate and change the way they fund it.

What I am saying is this system was designed to facilitate an unaccountable government that can be wasteful, abusive and corrupt and still continue on unimpeded by the only mechanisms that remain for those things. The vote is worthless as a mechanism for accountability. The MSM is worthless as a mechanism for accountability.

If you go to a store and you buy something and you're not satisfied with it, you have the ultimate recourse. You just don't buy it again. If there is a company that's selling overpriced garbage, watch that company disappear when people stop buying their garbage products.

When things are set up a certain way, people will pay what something is worth to them. You cannot shop around for a doctor in the US because every doctor will charge you an arm and a leg. And most of them will pressure you to deal with them through the insurance mafia. If you doubt this, try finding a doctor without insurance. Most of them will make you pay up front before you even see a doctor. And you'll probably pay about $100 for 20 minutes of sitting there waiting and 15 minutes of him telling you he has no idea what's wrong with you.

Yes. This is what heavy government involvement in a given industry does. The healthcare industry is a great example because the government has turned healthcare into a disaster in this country. If you have insurance, you can ignore the fact that the problem with healthcare is that it costs too damn much. It's not that people don't have health insurance. It's that those people who do have health insurance don't have to care how much the actual bill is. The doctors and the hospitals and the drug companies do not have to change their prices. Ever. Unless they actually go up (which they do).

And believe me. They hate it when you don't have insurance. Because they have to deal with you on a level they'd rather not. They have to look you in the eye and tell you that you owe them $100 for nothing. That is why the government wants to take over healthcare. Because they need all that padding to hide the obscene amount of corruption going on.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

Too specific to equate to the general claim made in the OP.

originally posted by: BrianFlanders
Apparently, whoever wrote Obamacare thinks existing is criminal. The individual mandate in Obamacare is enforced by a penalty that is imposed upon you if you do not do what you have been ordered to do (buy health insurance).

This isn't true. The individual mandate requires some tax filers to purchase healthcare insurance or pay a penalty. If you aren't making enough to pay income taxes, or if you are earning too little to be able to afford any healthcare insurance on the market, then you declare that to the tax office and get an exemption (i.e., you don't pay a penalty).

How you go from that to claiming that "whoever wrote Obamacare thinks existing is criminal" is beyond me, but since you've also declared that taxation is like being raped, enslaved, executed, or kidnapped, I suppose it was only a matter of time before you took it to another level.

Incidentally, the rest of your scroll-wheel-erodingly-long post after the above remarks is just a lot of old guff and can safely be ignored by anyone not seeking relief from insomnia.

originally posted by: audubon

originally posted by: BrianFlanders
Apparently, whoever wrote Obamacare thinks existing is criminal. The individual mandate in Obamacare is enforced by a penalty that is imposed upon you if you do not do what you have been ordered to do (buy health insurance).

This isn't true. The individual mandate requires some tax filers to purchase healthcare insurance or pay a penalty.
If you aren't making enough to pay income taxes, or if you are earning too little to be able to afford any healthcare insurance on the market, then you declare that to the tax office and get an exemption (i.e., you don't pay a penalty).

OK. You weren't supposed to notice that (LOL) so point taken on the technicality that if you're unemployed you can kind of get around it. Most people are not unemployed and of those who are, they probably aren't doing it on purpose. So there is no choice there. No rational person would choose to be unemployed simply to skirt the Obamacare penalty. This is not a choice. This is "Do as we tell you or we'll punish you for it. And we'll call the penalty a tax to keep the court from striking it down.".

Do you honestly disagree with me that the individual mandate was intended to compel people (primarily those who may otherwise be disinclined) to comply with the order to buy insurance? Why put it in there at all if it wasn't aimed squarely at the unwilling?

How you go from that to claiming that "whoever wrote Obamacare thinks existing is criminal" is beyond me, but since you've also declared that taxation is like being raped, enslaved, executed, or kidnapped, I suppose it was only a matter of time before you took it to another level.

I have compared it to just about every situation I can think of where an individual is deprived of the right to choose. This was a courtesy to those of you who seem to not want to see the problem when there is no consent. I was attempting to simplify it and strip away some of the BS and expose it for what it is. I did not take anything to another level with the Obamacare thing. Obamacare speaks for itself. The government believes that it has the authority to micromanage your existence. If they can order you to buy insurance and call the penalty a tax, they can order you to do just about anything else and punish you if you resist.

Is that fair enough? Let's forget the rest of it for a moment and just consider that specific point. Is it fair enough to say that if they can order the vast majority of people to buy insurance and punish them through the IRS if they don't comply, they can use that same blueprint to (for example) force you to lose weight?

Incidentally, the rest of your scroll-wheel-erodingly-long post after the above remarks is just a lot of old guff and can safely be ignored by anyone not seeking relief from insomnia.

I go through a lot of mice. I scroll when I need to. It's usually my keyboards that wear out fast. LOL

BTW. This is an example of something that can be done more than one way. You don't actually have to use the scroll wheel. You can cover more distance with less effort with the down key on your keyboard if you have your mouse wheel set for more precision (and more effort in scrolling).

originally posted by: BrianFlanders
Do you honestly disagree with me that the individual mandate was intended to compel people (primarily those who may otherwise be disinclined) to comply with the order to buy insurance? Why put it in there at all if it wasn't aimed squarely at the unwilling?

No, of course I don't disagree with that. Things are made mandatory to ensure that people conduct themselves and their affairs in a uniform way. But that's so obvious that it's not worth pointing out.

What you are - to be charitable - overlooking is the reason the mandate exists. It is to prevent people freeloading. If purchasing insurance was not mandatory, some (probably most) US citizens would not get insurance, pocket the money, and then only buy insurance when they got ill. This would push up prices for everyone.

I'm not defending Obamacare, I think it's a slightly bonkers system, but it's just about the only funding mechanism that wouldn't have been unanimously denounced as "Teh Islamic Nazi Communismism!!"11"2" by the usual frothing crackpots of the US zombie right. As long as it leaves corporations free to make an unhealthy profit by fleecing every sucker in the nation, the Tea Party convoys won't be riding shotgun on their obesity scooters outside their local tax offices, and so that's more or less what you've got.

This is all a bit of a distraction from your argument that taxation is the moral equivalent of being staked out on an ant-hill and then machine-gunned by Dracula, or whatever ludicrously melodramatic analogy you're currently running with, isn't it.

originally posted by: audubon

originally posted by: BrianFlanders
Do you honestly disagree with me that the individual mandate was intended to compel people (primarily those who may otherwise be disinclined) to comply with the order to buy insurance? Why put it in there at all if it wasn't aimed squarely at the unwilling?

No, of course I don't disagree with that. Things are made mandatory to ensure that people conduct themselves and their affairs in a uniform way. But that's so obvious that it's not worth pointing out.

What you are - to be charitable - overlooking is the reason the mandate exists. It is to prevent people freeloading. If purchasing insurance was not mandatory, some (probably most) US citizens would not get insurance, pocket the money, and then only buy insurance when they got ill. This would push up prices for everyone.

That's not relevant because Obama didn't address that when he was running for president. Scratch that. He DID address it when he said (repeatedly) that he wouldn't do it. So he lied about it and did it anyway and then lied about it again. Over and over this man lied about this (and other things) and got away with it. And now we are stuck with a legal precedent that sets the stage for allowing the government to order you to do basically anything it deems necessary to do. Again we are back to the fact that Obamacare is a decree. No one voted for this because the people who voted for Obama were voting for a lie. An empty promise made by a man who "changed his mind" the day he won the election.

And so, we are back to the fact that these people are not accountable to anyone. You can vote them out and nothing changes. Trump's promise to get rid of Obamacare was as empty as Obama's promise to not have an individual mandate. There is what they say and there is what they do. And they are often not the same. But you have to wait until you get screwed to complain. At which point, it's too late.

I literally woke up one morning and found out that I would be required to buy health insurance when I turned on the TV. I did not have any idea this was happening. I didn't vote for that. The votes of the people who were even trying to vote against this were nullified by a lying candidate who claimed he represented them. Obama knew people did not want to be forced so he lied. Now. Who is responsible for that? Who will be held responsible for it? No one.

I'm not making this up. You sound reasonably informed on the Obamacare thing. If that is so then you know that people like me had no representation whatsoever in this decision until it went to the courts. Which (not surprisingly) failed.

And Trump has not changed this. He's chosen not to enforce the mandate. The mandate is still there. If Trump doesn't enforce it, the next president will. The next time some crazy politician gets a wild hair up his ass and decides he wants to force people into something, that precedent will be there waiting for the exploit. And it will be an uphill battle to stop it.

My point here is this. The SCOTUS has 9 justices. What do you figure is the combined education and experience of those people on that court? What is the stated purpose of that court?

That court is intended to be the last line of defense between injustice and the American people. It apparently did not take very much to subvert the entire thing and have that court rubber stamp this farce of a law.

But if there is one interesting consequence, it is that now they have gone beyond simply stating that actions are subject to taxation. Now inactions are subject to punitive taxation as well. Let that sink in for a moment.

This is not so much about Obamacare as it is about the future. Obamacare is not sectioned off in it's own little legal vacuum chamber. It will change future laws.

Irrelevant, yet somehow strangely... irrelevant.

When you've finished venting about Obamacare, I'll be just over here, cutting my nails. When you have a moment, I'd like to know why it is that you think every politician in the system is out to con and fleece you...

... apart from libertarians like Rand Paul and his buddies, who promise you on their honours that if you stop taking taxes from very very rich people (like Rand Paul and his buddies), your life will instantly improve.

Call me cynical, but that sort of sounds like a flim-flam artist's patter to me.

originally posted by: audubon

When you've finished venting about Obamacare, I'll be just over here, cutting my nails. When you have a moment, I'd like to know why it is that you think every politician in the system is out to con and fleece you...

Oh no. I don't think they're out to con and fleece me. I'm one person. And I have very little money to take. They're out for much greener pastures than I can provide.

I just happen to have a fairly well developed moral compass. That is to say that I can feel bad for homeless people and overtaxed middle class people at the same time. I can see the injustice of being born homeless or poor. I just have a different culprit in mind (poor children tend to be born to poor parents who didn't do their children any favors when they chose to give birth). I cannot blame the mean old rich people for an orgasm that ultimately caused one more poor person. That is beyond the power of the richest of the rich.

apart from libertarians like Rand Paul and his buddies, who promise you on their honours that if you stop taking taxes from very very rich people (like Rand Paul and his buddies), your life will instantly improve.

Call me cynical, but that sort of sounds like a flim-flam artist's patter to me.

It's funny that you should mention Rand Paul (and presumably Ron Paul by association and last name). Because I am not a fan of Rand Paul and I don't believe a word he says about anything. He's just another politician who licks his finger and sticks it in the wind and finds his audience. Rand Paul is not going to change anything.

And I would not call you cynical. I would call you overly optimistic. I, OTOH, have been called cynical more than once. I wonder why.

originally posted by: BrianFlanders
It's funny that you should mention Rand Paul (and presumably Ron Paul by association and last name). Because I am not a fan of Rand Paul and I don't believe a word he says about anything. He's just another politician who licks his finger and sticks it in the wind and finds his audience. Rand Paul is not going to change anything.

Ah... I... um... so you support the libertarian principles espoused by Rand Paul, but you don't trust him personally to deliver them?

Have I got that right? So you'd vote for another libertarian candidate? Or for none?

(This is completely off-topic, but I'm curious.)

originally posted by: audubon

originally posted by: BrianFlanders
It's funny that you should mention Rand Paul (and presumably Ron Paul by association and last name). Because I am not a fan of Rand Paul and I don't believe a word he says about anything. He's just another politician who licks his finger and sticks it in the wind and finds his audience. Rand Paul is not going to change anything.

Ah... I... um... so you support the libertarian principles espoused by Rand Paul, but you don't trust him personally to deliver them?

No. I support the libertarian principles that make sense to me. And I do not trust politicians. Rand Paul can espouse libertarian principles until the cows come home. I'll take him seriously when any of it ever happens. He evidently does not need my vote. Someone is voting for him. For all the good it'll do.

Have I got that right? So you'd vote for another libertarian candidate? Or for none?

(This is completely off-topic, but I'm curious.)

I have told you that I don't believe voting makes a damn bit of difference. So why do you ask me who I vote for? I supported Obama in 2008. I didn't vote but if I had, it would have been for him. If I had voted for him, I would have deeply regretted it. And he wouldn't have cared. Because voting doesn't make a difference when you're in a permanent minority.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

I have to admit, I sort of admire that kind of fundamental anarchist cantankerousness. How can any anarchist, even a capitalist-anarchist like Paul, stand up and ask for votes? The moment he does so, he proves he's not worth it.

What he and his circle-jerk ought to do is buy an unclaimed island and set up an experimental society there, only allowing very rich people in at first, and see how things shake out. Hey, the free market applies to ideas, too. If there are buyers for what Paul is offering, it would work. And the worst that could happen is that the USA would be rid of a few selfish and obnoxious billionaires.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

Then don't listen to the Government.