Living in a society without paying your share of taxes is also theft. So the only solution open to you is to get out and stay out.
Why are antiracists so... racist?
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Living in a society without paying your share of taxes is also theft. So the only solution open to you is to get out and stay out.
inthesomeday
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Why would I need to pay taxes in a society? Everyone should already have equal access to whatever my taxes would be used for
All taxation, regardless of structure, redistributes wealth. Consumption taxes redistribute wealth away from the people who consume the taxed item. Taxes on landed wealth redistribute away from people who possess real estate. Progressive income taxes redistribute wealth away from the highest percentiles of earners; flat income taxes redistribute it toward the highest percentiles of earners. Tax breaks redistribute wealth toward the people who do things that qualify for tax breaks. The government's legal definitions for corporations and limited-liability companies also redistribute wealth, specifically toward the people that would otherwise be taking on the personal financial risk of those companies' operations. Furthermore, all monies disbursed by the state redistribute wealth: toward the people who earn money whenever arms are manufactured for purchase by the state, for example, or toward the people who manage and/or work on civil engineering projects that only the state will bother to pay for, or simply toward the employees of the state.
Since all taxation is redistribution of wealth, and since taxation is fundamentally a coerced activity - the state will employ its agents to force you to pay up, and will levy penalties on those who do not, regardless of their opinion as to whether such taxes are justified - taxation qualifies as a "forced redistribution of assets by the tribe with the most power", i.e. the thing that you were saying is basically just "laws of the jungle". If you are okay with literally any form of taxation, then there is no reason for you to be not okay with redistribution in general - unless you specifically disapprove of a certain group getting assets for a certain reason.
Of course, most people here, with a few exceptions, think that taxation is one of those necessary evils involved in running a modern society, and even many of those who disagree with that sentiment still pay their taxes faute de mieux.
Any deliberate redistribution of wealth by the state in an effort to redress some form of perceived moral wrong or economic inequality, like the persistent effect of slavery, falls neatly under the heading of something the state already does quite regularly for other groups, like (in the American example) owners of small businesses or those who earn dividends on investments. That's one of the strongest arguments that Coates and others have put forth on its behalf. Functionally, such an effort by the US government would be nearly invisible. There would be no Soviet-style expropriations from kulaks or whatever other nightmare scenario you think might be happening. As much as some people might like that, it's so unrealistic as to not bear thinking about. It would simply consist of a slightly heavier tax bill for the people not benefited by the wealth transfer, and a rather lighter bill for those who would benefit. (Or, perhaps, for ceremonial purposes, a physical check or certificate.)
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And those things got built how?
inthesomeday
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Mechanized industry supplemented by a negligible amount of human labor
Perfection
The Great Head.
Even in this age of mechanization, making stuff is still a pain in the butt.
inthesomeday
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Elaborate
caketastydelish
Deity
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Do you mean pooping?
Perfection
The Great Head.
I design fancy new whizbang gizmos. It's tricky and a lot of work.
And there are a lot of manufacturing processes that aren't well automated or only partially automated.
inthesomeday
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Maybe right now, but technology advances (regardless of economic organization). I think that the vast social problems caused by capitalism are not worth the vague work-or-die incentive that "motivates" laborers to do specific tasks that could theoretically be mechanized.
Perfection
The Great Head.
While I don't favor the deconstruction of the capitalist engine that drives our prosperity (drives in part - a strong public sector is also vital), I do agree that economic coercion of workers is an evil that we ought fight. In particular I find the expectation that people work to earn their keep coupled with the low wages and high expenses for unskilled labor to be especially problematic. We should be doing a lot more to prevent people from being stuck in dead-end low-skill low-productivity positions.
inthesomeday
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Right, so then we're in agreement that there is a large population of people who are struggling in jobs that really don't need humans to do, and that if they didn't have those jobs they would probably starve. The solution here certainly seems to be the mechanization of the jobs they're doing, but then what of the people themselves? They'll be out of a job, and under capitalism that means that they will die. How to solve that problem? Are you an advocate for government welfare programs?
Berzerker
Deity
not user fees
Give an example of a user fee that doesn't redistribute wealth in some way.
Perfection
The Great Head.
I advocate for a robust social safety net that is responsive to the realities of our current economic condition. It is unconscionable that large swaths of population should have their ability to get basic necessities (e.g. food, shelter, medicine) so threatened by the turmoil of the modern economy.
But I wouldn't say that most people in low paying jobs are in positions that can easily be automated away. Most low paying positions today are customer service jobs (food service, retail, PCA, etc.) which are not easy to directly automate away. They're still vulnerable, to be sure, to entities like online shopping, but that's quite a bit different from factory jobs where a worker is directly replaced by a machine. Many of these workers are low productivity workers - positions that do not add much value overall to the economy.
Right now I see two problem groups:
1. People who are in those low paying sucky positions
2. People who rely on the welfare system because it's better than those low paying sucky positions
What I want to do is:
1. Migrate many of those people into skilled positions (education programs, apprenticeships, student loan reforms etc.)
2. Make it so having these low skill positions is not so sucky (minimum wage laws, supplementary welfare income)
3. Make it so not having any position isn't catastrophically bad, while maintaining incentives to take low skill positions.
I think that requires extremely careful and balanced policies crafted by wonkish bureaucrats not loudmouth ideologues.
Berzerker
Deity
a gas tax for public roads
Lexicus
Deity
Taxes are only one kind of transaction.
And how did you determine this?
inthesomeday
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Whose pocket do these programs come out of? In the context of modern capitalism, any of these programs would cost money, and money is generated for government use by taxes. If taxes are levied against the poorest population in the country, then they are essentially making net zero gain for the most part, and the poor folks with jobs will have to denote a chunk of their already measly pay towards the poor folks without jobs. Ultimately, poor folks shouldn't be paying any taxes at all when there are rich folks with vast and unnecessary stockpiles of wealth, which is serving essentially no purpose other than to establish them as an extortionist class capable of controlling the flow of goods. Do you see the dilemma with government social programs? The closest thing to a middle ground here would be to tax only the rich, and to a huge degree, so as to give the government enough capital to realistically provide the population with a social safety net. Then the question arises, if you're willing to forcefully redistribute wealth for the basic social needs, why not also for the luxury goods that are afforded in surplus to the rich anyway? IE, if the rich are wasting capital by hoarding it, what's the crime in instead repurposing that capital to bring the entire population the luxury goods that could be available to them but are not for sheer failure of organization?
I think that most service jobs could most certainly be automated, with a pretty simple computer interface, as the role of the retail service provider has been reduced essentially to a limited transaction interface. Then there are the slightly more involved positions, like maintenance or some more skilled, often technology-based retail, and to this I'll argue that, while the jobs themselves are admittedly difficult to mechanize, the training involved in many of them could probably itself be mechanized. For example, if somebody needs to fix a leaky pipe in their house, chances are that they would be able to use online resources to develop at least a very basic involved skill set. Now I'm not saying that these positions are quite as obsolete as simple low skill manufacturing or agriculture jobs, but it definitely seems that they could be in the near future, given many of our technological advances of the digital age.
You're forgetting:
3. People who hoard enormous amounts of capital and therefore withhold it from use from the rest of the population.
Alternatively:
1. (I agree, roughly)
2. Completely restructure the way capital allocation works so that these low-skill jobs (that can't be easily mechanized) provide stable and luxurious lifestyles in and of themselves.
3. Invest in the mechanization of these low-skill jobs, and the technology that can mechanize those which yet escape this.
As a loudmouth ideologue I can assure you that the whole point is getting the right wonkish bureaucrats in place.
Lexicus
Deity
Er. This doesn't make much sense to me (in some other context, might programs not cost money?) but it is simply not true that money is "generated for government use by taxes." The federal government's spending is self-financing - it doesn't require tax revenue to spend. This is actually an extremely consequential observation as left policy goals become far more viable when we realize that the federal government is not constrained by the need to finance its spending or balance its budget over any period of time.
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