Taxes and Welfare State - OG Myth-Weavers

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Taxes and Welfare State

 
Taxes and Welfare State

What kind of taxes should be imposed by government?
What is the right amount taxation?
Should there be a welfare state or not?
Are taxes moral?

These are just examples of the questions that can be discussed here.

It seems that the Marriage, Sexuality, and the State thread hit this topic several times so I think it is something that we could discuss, now in a separate thread.

What is the uses of tax anyway? If there wouldn't be a government, would they need taxes?

Lets say we remove all taxes, then the government has less money, and as such has less money to pay for social security and police and everything, but everyone has more money, so it might even out.

Great, the above paragraph is bullshit. I'll have to think about this a little longer. However, I do think that a country without taxes AND a government could survive.

Given Nuva Tethyr's sig, I'm going to avoid responding to his post . . .

Quote:
Are taxes moral?
Yes, it is morally permissible for govenrment to collect taxes to fund services rendered to its citizens. Anyone living in a state benefits from the services of that state and is thus morally obligated to pay taxes. However, "liberal" (in the classic sense of the term) governments are also under an obligation not to require their citizens to fund activities to which they are morally opposed. This is why I support legislation (in the U.S. at least) like The Peace Tax Fund.

I'm in favor of a flat rate tax on all yearly earnings, regardless of source (ie: employer, stocks, etc.). As to what they should be used for, I'm in favor of: government controlled roads, electricity, water, and other public utilities (internet, etc.), and a federally controlled armed forces. As for the morality of it all, I think that the government is created to serve the people, not the other way around. It provides services that benefit the whole group that require a monopoly to be effectively run, thus they are essentially run by all of the people (or their representatives). Thus, since the government is created by the people for the people, it is morally permissable for it to ask its citizens to help pay for their own benefits.

I'm very similiar to MonkWren. And expand what the government is responsible for conrtolling to be "Anything the poele need to survive".

Quote:
Originally Posted by Amnistar
I'm very similiar to MonkWren. And expand what the government is responsible for conrtolling to be "Anything the poele need to survive".
See, I disagree with the 'need' thing. I think the government is there to provide services that the community can't produce as individuals, and that's it. No more, no less.

Policing, hospitals, roads, rail, ports, legislation, water... most people can't afford these things. Without the government we would have to pay as much as the person who own's the dams likes. For one. Everything else, for another. The consumer watchdog, public education - I know Olivia supports the forming of a (de facto) oligarch, but it would mean a terrible life for 90+ percent of the population. Somalia is the most obvious (and extreme) example, but I can think of no populated area a people could exist well without a government.

The government serves the people - Americans want that country to become isolationist, supremacist, and civilly militant, so that is what is happening. I say this because it is often what the government is doing politically on which a person decides whether taxes are worthwhile. No matter how many hundreds or thousands speak out against things like the USA PATRIOT act (not 'the patriot act'), there are more that quietly support such things, as was shown in the ELECTION, and many more who do not have a care to know. Apathy - yes, another reason people need a controlling body.

The welfare state here is not so bad as Europe - I'm not sure about the US. Here, though, there are MANY Aboriginals that survive on it, and has been for thirty years been creating a spiral of poverty, as these people are entitled to it depending on their skin colour - they need not be looking for work. It's a bloody joke - it has come to the point where whole communities live off nothing else, children having no need to finish school, parents no motivation to teach their kids to function in society - petrol being made so they can't get high off it, threats of pay-cuts if parents don't wash their kids or keep some semblance of cleanliness... . Similar in the outer suburbs of Paris, where those famous riots began (I saw the famous ones, because riots in France are an everyday event). Those are the immigrants, though (mainly Arab) whereas here it is the original inhabitants. I fully support social security, so long as its not abused like this - people need to look for work or be dropped from it.

I personally agree with taxes. Not only that taxes are necessary (no matter what IMF says), they, in my eyes, are just. While my opinion isn't only based on moral argument, I do give it a little preference. While I like capitalism as a best system, I also agree that the system isn't perfect, containing numerous contradictions and creating natural injustices. I therefore find taxes as a way to at least partially correct these injustices in the society.

I believe that our wealth is mostly determined by an accident of birth. If we would be able to exist before we would be born without knowing where and to whom we would be born, we would most likely choose a more equality in the system. Therefore we would likely choose taxation, given the high chance of finding ourselves poor and 'discriminated' by the system.

I'm also for progressive tax, rather than flat tax. Flat taxes are naturally harsher for those who are poorer, thus I see them as still rather worse in terms of justice.





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