Resolved: The United States Should Implement a Progressive Consumption Tax

Bossy seems to agree with my pragmatic benefits. So any voters must weigh in all the good progressive consumption taxes do. He argues, though, that pragmatism fails because it allows force, and morality is against force. This is incorrect. Bossy’s entire argument is this: taxes are force; force is bad; taxes are bad. Essentially he is saying that taxes are theft. I will offer compelling reasons that taxation is not theft. Bossy seems to think that when the state takes your money that you get nothing back. That is theft. But taxes, in many cases, are insurance. Payroll taxes go to social security -- as would part of the PCT (progressive consumption tax) -- so, in that case, you will get a return on the investment later in life. The state also provides roads, schools, and other services. I would also like to note that all pretax income is printed by the government and distributed as currency. This is because all monetary systems are a form of fiat currency [1]. As government print the money we use, by extension they also own what we have. Bossy could always argue that we should abolish the state, but this is problematic because any currency (or object we use as having worth) would have no worth. No government to enforce the worth of the product, no entity to make it something. So incomes would be worthless. So, in either scenario, you do not have a right to your pretax income. The thing that destroys Bossy’s case are social contracts. Taxes are not without consent. When one chooses to be part of our system we use the goods and services the government provides. Further, by using the currency provided by the government you consent to a few terms and must pay a fee for participating in the system. Say I broke my computer. I am raging and going through withdrawal because I cannot access steam. I need to play Hearts of Iron 3 and invade Iraq with support from my Indian allies. I go into the computer store and say “fix dis”. They said “aight m8”. A few minutes, hours, days, or weeks later I get my computer back. They say “bruh here is da bill”. I get angry and shout “I did not consent to paying money!” But I did. It was never stated that I would pay money for the service, but because I used the service the shop provided I consented to payment. If one does not follow the contract -- like in the case of taxation -- it is justified for the involved parties to use coercion in order to acquire what is due. This is all the government is doing. Thus, only people who literally consume nothing or use nothing in the current system are actually morally obliged not to pay. But to point out how extreme this is, read this: “How they can avoid this when the very dollar bills that the economy runs on are printed by the government is a good question. Try to imagine participating in the economy without using public roads, publicly funded communication infrastructure, publicly educated employees, publicly funded electricity, water, gas, and other utilities, publicly funded information, technology, research and development -- it's absolutely impossible. The only way to avoid public goods and services is to move out of the country entirely, or at least become such a hermit, living off the fruits of your own labor, that you reduce your consumption of public goods and services to as little as possible. Although these alternatives may seem unpalatable, they are the only consistent ones in a person who truly wishes to reject the social contract.” [2] Now, I will note that in this instance under my system they would pay *zero* taxes. Yes! They consume nothing so they are taxed nothing. So my system actually upholds the theory. TURN: PCT’s are consensual. PCT’s, a modified VAT tax, adds costs at each stage of the supply chain. This means if someone chooses to (1) emigrate, (2) not consume goods, or (3) consumes fewer goods they can pay zero taxes, or significantly reduce their taxes, through consensual means. The PCT also abolishes the IRS. Every time you purchase a product it is a social contract -- just like with my PC -- so there is no way my tax is actually coercive. The IRS is abolished. We do not arrest people who do not pay taxes because they chose not to consume. So, arguably, the PCT is actually moral even under Bossy’s criteria. At the very least, it is the most moral system we have. Note: Thanks for turning this into philosophy. () 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://www.huppi.com...