From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sun Jul 07 2002 - 12:51:38 MDT
Olga Bourlin wrote:
>
> From: "Samantha Atkins" <samantha@objectent.com>
>
> > Well, my biggest gripe with taxes is that those "teeny slices"
> > add up to over 60% of my income! I have a very difficult time
> > that believing I should devote 60% of my renumeration to
> > purposes chosen by others. There just aren't that many people
> > who have a better idea how to spend my money imho.
>
> But, Samantha, different states have different tax laws. Maybe there's a
> more acceptable state out there somewhere for you - where you may not have
> to pay over 60% of your income. I don't mean to sound simplistic, but I
> can't help thinking that you are somewhat condoning whatever is going
> tax-wise in the state where you live - simply by living there? (You may not
> like to pay 60% of your taxes, but it nevertheless seems to be working out
> for you - as you continue to vote "yes" by living where you are living?)
A large chunk of that 60% is never paid by you directly, but it is paid
at the various levels of distribution of products you buy. Direct
taxation on income, property ownership, and consumer level sales taxes,
etc. generally totals 30-45% of income, on average, depending on the
state (and city) you live in. The rest of that 60% is paid by those who
manufacture the products you buy, the taxes paid by those people whose
labor produced those products, etc. It is a fact that if all taxation
were eliminated, there would be hardly anybody living in poverty because
the cost of living would drop by such a large degree.
That's right: taxes cause poverty.
>
> I don't know if you're a property owner, but if you are - you may have
> experienced something like I have a few times, which has rewarded me
> tremendously financially. What I'm talking about is that - in spite of
> paying all sorts of property, income, and sales taxes - the rise in the
> value of housing in the last couple of decades has resulted in the fact that
> I've been living for FREE (i.e., the houses I've owned in the last couple of
> decades have produced more money than what I've paid in taxes, property
> taxes, mortgage - *combined*). How can I complain about paying taxes when
> I've been living in nice houses all these years - for free? I *love* paying
> taxes - it's the very least I can do for being one of society's lucky
> "haves." Of course, property values have not risen in some states as much
> as in the states where I've owned houses (California and, presently,
> Washington state), so maybe in those laggard property-value states one
> doesn't otherwise have to pay as much in taxes ....
You obviously have rather low expectations. Living for free is not
making a profit from your investment. Why should the state enjoy all the
real benefit of your property while just 'letting you live there for
free'? Who owns your property? You or the state?
>
> Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous quotation was that "Taxes are what we pay for
> a civilized society." Surely, we're not yet as civilized as we can be, but
> we're a hell of a lot more civilized than we were when "quiche" wasn't yet a
> household word.
And how many other utterly stupid things did Holmes say? Plenty. Taxes
don't produce civilization, they are what the thugs skim off the top of
a successful pre-existing one.
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