Okay, was gonna stay away from this one but couldn't help myself-
Going by the logic presented in this article (and the OP does make a good point) any and all forms of taxation are socialism and therefore evil, correct?
Hence, why the government forcing you to give up your money so the old lady across the street can have her lawn mowed, etc.
So if socialism is a fundamentally evil concept, and therefore taxes are a fundamentally evil concept, what should we replace it with?
If we abolish taxes entirely society would virtually collapse, as there would be-
-no roads- roads fall apart VERY quickly, so within a year or two travel between major cities would be almost impossible
-no potable water- the water treatment system is payed for with tax dollars, and expensive repairs and parts replacement would mean eventual breakdown
-no fire department- your home on fire? Sucks to be you pal, hope you got lots of friends who'll help out!
-no postal system-
-no police- this means that anyone who wasn't happy with the anarchy could sling on some football pads with spikes (ala Mad Max) and become a bandit on the highway
And hinging off the fact that there would be no police you would have multiple forms of
-anarchy- people creating their own vigilante squads, going after anyone they thought was a 'bad guy' without impartial investigation, all kinds of nastyness would ensue
-no army-
meaning while everyone would be running around doing their own thing another nation living in the "evil" of socialism could come in and take over.
Now this anarchy wouldn't last forever... very quickly we'd return to a feudal system in which people would band together in little fiefs, ruled by a lord (or whatever modern term you want to call it... a rose by any other name) and these small groups would probably end up fighting or making alliances with other small groups ruled by their respective lords.....
oh, hold on one second......
That's exactly what we've been doing as a species for thousands of years!!!!
So it's safe to say that if you want to live in any kind of decent society (in which more than 1 % of the populace has any kind of quality of life) you NEED to have taxation and socialism present in some form.
If you don't, you go to a feudal, or even worse tribal system with which our species has ample experience and the track record for that aint too good!
Also, with no taxation democracy dies. Because you have a small number of very wealthy people holding all the power, the purse strings, who dole out the largesse of their wealth in scraps to the unwashed masses (once in the odd while the unwashed masses DO realize that they have the numbers advantage and then you get a situation involving torches, pitch forks and guillotines, but historically this is minimized if you can keep your poor people down by making them fight the poor people from the next fief over)
So, if socialism is truly "evil", then it is safe to say it is a necessary evil.
The question then becomes in what forms should taxation be used?
The argument from the right is that since it is fundamentally evil, taxes should only go to things that people can't accomplish individually. In nations where this argument has come to fruition, through the demands of entities like the IMF, World Bank and Chicago School of Economics, how has it played out? Look at South America, which has been a laboratory for testing ideological economic theories.
Taxes are cut to the bone, since they're evil and hindering rich people from creating more wealth.
Since taxes get cut, the government does 2 things-
1) Cut just about all infrastructure spending to the bare minimum required levels. This means that things like water treatment, road repair and the like still exist but they're so incredibly shoddy that they're largely unreliable, so the well-off build their own internal systems, hence small islands of gated communities with their own water wells/aquifers, private police and maintenance contractors that are surrounded by miles and miles of delapitating barrios in between.
While the bare minimum infrastructure for life still exists in reduced form, "luxuries" like healthcare, welfare and public education are the first to get the axe.
Then any form of price controls get axed, and legislation requiring companies to keep their money in-country go too. When price controls go, average folks often have the price of basic staples like bread and cooking oil take up half or more of their monthly income, therefore meaning they have no ability to pay for a luxury like medical care or education. With legislation requiring what companies must do with profits generated in country gone, corporations move most of their money out of country instead of circulating it in the local economy. This is a fancy lie as all of this money counts as GDP growth on the nations' books although very little if any is actually staying in country.
2) INCREASE spending on police and military. Since the infrastructure and fabric of society has been largely downgraded due to decreased government revenue, there are lots of unhappy, unemployed, miserable people who are against the government. Many countries in S. America have played this out time and again. In order to push through wildly unpopular measures like tax breaks for big business while at the same time eliminating public healthcare and price controls, the only way to do it is for the police and military to keep their boots on the necks of the people.
Often these increased expenditures on the military are justified as
a) Fighting terrorism
War on drugs
Interestingly enough, many of the targets of the beefed up military forces end up being labor leaders and non-violent grassroots political organizers.... aint that interesting!
