From: sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com (Fred Welden)
Subject: Re: What keeps me from being Lib.
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 13:41:57 GMT
Originator: sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com
X-Bytes: 3022

In article <rdippold.702881987@cancun>, rdippold@cancun.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold) writes:
|I should note in all this that I'm not opposed to paying the
|government for services.  However, to have the government take close
|to half my income, with the ability to toss me in jail if I don't
|cough up,

Suppose they couldn't toss you in jail?  As frequent readers of
alt.society.civil-liberty are no doubt bored to tears of hearing,
I think the crux of the taxation problem is that the penalties are
way out of line with the crime.  Jailing someone for refusal to
pay taxes is cruel and unusual punishment.  But what if the government
said, in essence, "If you don't pay for all the services the voters
have insisted we provide, then you can't take advantage of any of them."

| and then to waste it (and to know that all the money they
|take from me as long as I live will be wasted in less than a second)
|on pork, entitlements, unecessary spending, and just pure waste, or
|even worse, that they'll spend it on something completely repulsive to
|me (war on drugs, for example) is insane, especially when I know what
|could really be done with that money.
|
|However, if the government would fund things that truly need to be
|performed by the government, and made an effort to eliminate waste,
|and told me how much they thought they'd need to do it, and suggested
|a payment I'd most likely be happy to pay it.  I give 5% a year to
|charity, I would be happy to do the same to a minimalist government.
|5% is far more than necessary, but there are others who probably
|wouldn't give anything, so I'd give a bit more.  It's no longer
|coercive, and best of all, they have to justify to me that their
|spending increases are excusable, or I don't increase my payment.
|They have incentive to only fund necessary programs and to cut waste.

I can't speak for what the resultant tax rate would be if we adopted
a real flat tax, although I'm pretty sure it would be lower than
current levels.  But with purely economic punishments for the
economic crime of tax evasion, you could look at the package deal and
say "Nope, too much waste and corruption.  I'm not paying until you
clean things up."  But if the package deal includes enough programs
that you need, or feel are worthwhile for others, you'll pay and
then insist that things get cleaned up.  The Libertarians, who
insist that everything the government does can be done cheaper
privately, will of course withhold their taxes and spend the money on
toll roads, private parks, private libraries, and so on.  How about it?

|In addition, with the huge number of you "Taxes are a wonderful thing"
|still giving your 40%, they'll have more than enough money.

Well, I for one have never said that taxes were wonderful.  I do think
that, given a revision of the punishments for non-payment, they are a
reasonable way for a republic to fund its activities.

-- 
--Fred, or another blind 8th-century BC  |  sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com
        Hellenic poet of the same name.  |
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