Either way, taxation is theft. Our government spends every penny stolen from hardworking Americans, and, simultaneously, continues to live off debt.
$39.5 trillion and counting…
Response from HRP admin, Jeff Kurtz
Paying one’s “fair share” of taxes has far more to do with reimbursing our civilzation consumption costs than the percentages presented in the original post.
We rely on a well-functioning civilization in order to survive. Those who say they live “off-the-grid” are fooling themselves if they believe they have somehow escaped civilization. The truth is, there is no escaping our reliance on what civilization offers. For example, the food you eat was grown, processed, packaged and delivered by those who have expertise in these areas. The utensils you use to eat with was crafted by someone else. The table and chair you use at dinner was made by someone else. Your running water, electricity, refrigeration… all provided by someone else. You have been educated by others. Government provides a host of services that eases and improves your life. And though our government could do much better, without government, things would be much worse. And all of these benefits are not free. Civilization carries a cost, and everyone must pay their civilization consumption costs.
As persons become wealthier, they take greater advantage of the benefits supplied by our flexibly cooperative civilization. Not only do they purchase more material assets (more cars, yachts, personal aircraft), they often own businesses that employ people who also rely on the benefits of society in order to relieve the stresses of life which ultimately makes them productive employees. Employees wouldn’t be productive if they were forced to fend for themselves without the goods and services that provide the comforts and conveniences in life. A flexibly cooperative society provides greater leisure time and reduces stress. So, when we consider all employees who serve a particular wealthy person, there is a multiplicity factor for that person’s civilization consumption costs. Employees who are less stressed are more productive in their jobs. Also, employees couldn’t get to work without systems of transportation all provided by countless others with expertise in these areas. Add the office building construction and maintenance, digital computer technologies and networks, telecommunications, and the list goes on and on and on.
Of course, it is easy to take the benefits of civilization for granted. But everyone on our planet consumes civilization and must therefore pay their fair share of civilization consumption costs.
The concept of a “tax break” suggests taxes impose a burden on people and our government provides “breaks” to relieve that burden. But this concept reflects biases that don’t approve of taxes. Most people who understand government’s responsibility to serve people by honoring our nation’s “Social Contract” believe taxes should never be considered a burden. Rather, taxes represent payment to government for goods and services that enable its citizens to live comfortably and safely in a civilized society. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, “I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.”
“Tax breaks” or “tax relief” also suggest that our government has somehow imposed unfair charges upon its citizens and we should claim deductions to recover these unreasonable overcharges. And admittedly, this may be true. Relying on knowledge acquired from past tax seasons, the IRS likely increases our base taxes knowing a certain percentage of taxpayers will claim legal (yet immoral) deductions, and that a disproportionate number of high income taxpayers will exploit tax loopholes to their legal limits.
Here are the reasons why I believe we need to eliminate all of the ways people can currently avoid paying their fair share of civilization costs:
Fact 1: Civilization costs money. The services provided by government come at a cost. These refer to roads, railway system, national parks, education, law enforcement, fire departments, department of defense, social security, unemployment, food/drug/energy/health regulations, and a host of other services.
Fact 2: Nothing in our world is truly free. Someone will pay the costs of civilization. Because the goods and services supplied by government costs money, somebody will inevitably pay for it.
Fact 3: The middle class generally file their own taxes and do not employ the services of tax consultants, tax accountants and tax lawyers. The Commerce Clearing House (CCH) estimates that the current US tax code is over 70,000 pages long. This makes it impossible to find and utilize every single deduction we may be entitled to. And the average person doesn’t have the time, patience or skills to research all of this complex tax code to find deductions and maximize their tax relief. Many don’t even claim their standard deductions.
Fact 4: In contrast, the wealthy apply far more resources than the middle class to take advantage of tax deductions, tax breaks, and tax loopholes. Consequently, they pay disproportionately less in taxes relative to income.
Fact 5: Because the wealthy have greater income and correspondingly greater taxes, tax breaks disproportionately favor them.
So, rather than eliminate or reduce taxes, we simply need to fix our tax structure in a manner that prevents the wealthiest to avoid paying their fair share of “Civilization Costs”.
Human Reform Politics Well said. And that’s why the people who cry “taxation is theft” are all retarded.
No tax -> no police -> no law enforcement -> no laws -> no civilization -> no career and income that you’re complaining about being taxed on in the first place.
As a friend of mine once said, the way we treat children is one of humanity’s greatest crimes against itself.
This isn’t only because of school, but because of modern society requiring that immature parents raise their own children, resulting in general strife, antagonism, spite, conditional love, emotional abuse, authoritarianism, etc. But in this writing, I’m only going to talk about school—which, by the way, exacerbates all of the above by putting pressure on parents to make their children succeed in school.
Children are naturally curious and don’t need to be forced to learn out of fear, but perhaps they do when what we want to teach them is generally not truly interesting or natural, nor is it tailored toward the individual, but is rather one-size-fits-all.
Not only is the content of what we teach them unnatural for them, but so is the setting. We require them to sit still and not talk for most of 8 hours 5 days a week (and not to mention all the labor when the get home per homework and studying), which is completely contrary to their nature and stifles the play and socialization that not only come naturally to them, but are both more enjoyable and better for their psychological development. The setting isn’t much better than a prison; in some ways, it’s worse: it’s prison plus mental labor. It’s a labor camp.
The backpacks we make them wear, full of heavy books to carry from class to class, causing their backs to develop kyphosis, is symbolic of the psychological and spiritual burden we also place on them; as usual, everything is connected.
What I’ve written so far really understates pain and suffering we force children to endure for 12+ years, and it also doesn’t get into the natural creativity, imagination, open-mindedness and fluidity that we rob children of with formal education, replacing natural a left-vs-right-brain balance with pure left-brain imbalance, leaving them with a permanent spiritual void that they’ll spend the rest of their lives seeking to fill.
Have you ever noticed that the inner spark and happiness of a child generally leaves them by the age of 12-13? That’s not just the natural progression of things; that’s formal education and other sociological As a friend of mine once said, the way we treat children is one of humanity’s greatest crimes against itself.
This isn’t only because of school, but because of modern society requiring that immature parents raise their own children, resulting in general strife, antagonism, spite, conditional love, emotional abuse, authoritarianism, etc. But in this writing, I’m only going to talk about school—which, by the way, exacerbates all of the above by putting pressure on parents to make their children succeed in school.
Children are naturally curious and don’t need to be forced to learn out of fear, but perhaps they do when what we want to teach them is generally not truly interesting or natural, nor is it tailored toward the individual, but is rather one-size-fits-all.
Not only is the content of what we teach them unnatural for them, but so is the setting. We require them to sit still and not talk for most of 8 hours 5 days a week (and not to mention all the labor when the get home per homework and studying), which is completely contrary to their nature and stifles the play and socialization that not only come naturally to them, but are both more enjoyable and better for their psychological development. The setting isn’t much better than a prison; in some ways, it’s worse: it’s prison plus mental labor. It’s a labor camp.
The backpacks we make them wear, full of heavy books to carry from class to class, causing their backs to develop kyphosis, is symbolic of the psychological and spiritual burden we also place on them; as usual, everything is connected.
What I’ve written so far really understates pain and suffering we force children to endure for 12+ years, and it also doesn’t get into the natural creativity, imagination, open-mindedness and fluidity that we rob children of with formal education, replacing natural a left-vs-right-brain balance with pure left-brain imbalance, leaving them with a permanent spiritual void that they’ll spend the rest of their lives seeking to fill.
Have you ever noticed that the inner spark and happiness of a child generally leaves them by the age of 12-13? That’s not just the natural progression of things; that’s formal education and other sociological factors, but probably mainly formal education and the parental strife that comes with it.
We tend not to really think critically about any of this, taking it for granted or justifying it with some superficial level of thought about how it’s supposedly necessary for their own good or something. It’s easy to do this, since we, ourselves, are sleep-walking through life, due in part to our the same sociological influences that afflict our children.
For tons of good advice regarding how to parent well as opposed to perpetuating the chain of psychological affliction from generation to generation, in the form of separate independent sentences and paragraphs, see https://inhahe.com/pics2/memes%2C-etc-child-rearing.html.
Here’s a short Facebook exchanged summarizing the above, embellishing on a couple of points that were glossed over:
Patrick Compton: To what degree are we naturally civilized, homo sapiens as so called, and not upright apes with ego problems, relying on language-based and law-based methods to temper our limbic urges? In what ways are we “evolutionarily displaced”, psychologically, behaviorally, socially, cognitively, in our ability to be educated, and how much? Please provide evidence for claims. Well informed anecdotes and personal stories are also valuable 🙂 Also, what mental capacities must be developed in one’s “formative years”; which become more difficult to learn as we grow up?
Me: Uhh, I won’t comment on the first parts of this message, but regarding the last question, you have something backward. Children have more than enough mental capacities just by virtue of being alive, which of course they’ll naturally build upon by living and growing over time. The problem isn’t so much that we don’t equip them with the right mental capacities, but that we attempt to *do it* by fixing what’s not broken. Formal education is by far the worst offender, which is where we cut off their proverbial wings, taking away their imagination, creativity, perception, connection to life, feelings and happiness by training them to become left-brain-imbalanced like the rest of society, and not to mention training them to be obedient and not to question authority so they’ll be good cogs in the economic machine when they grow up, and all the while forcing miserable mental labor on them for 19 years so they can learn mostly frivolous skills and facts that don’t have much to do with what it means to live, and taking away their valuable fun and social time in their formative years. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot causing them emotional trauma and feelings of unworthiness that they’ll take with them for life from conditional love by their parents by putting so much pressure on the parents to put pressure on their children to go to school and do well in it.
Patrick Compton: Richard A. Nichols III there are true observations in this but it may benefit from some nuance. Though I do see the education system working like this still, exploiting just as much as it teaches, if not more.factors, but probably mainly formal education and the parental strife that comes with it.
We tend not to really think critically about any of this, taking it for granted or justifying it with some superficial level of thought about how it’s supposedly necessary for their own good or something. It’s easy to do this, since we, ourselves, are sleep-walking through life, due in part to our the same sociological influences that afflict our children.
For tons of good advice regarding how to parent well as opposed to perpetuating the chain of psychological affliction from generation to generation, in the form of separate independent sentences and paragraphs, see https://inhahe.com/pics2/memes%2C-etc-child-rearing.html.
Here’s a short Facebook exchanged summarizing the above, embellishing on a couple of points that were glossed over:
Patrick Compton: To what degree are we naturally civilized, homo sapiens as so called, and not upright apes with ego problems, relying on language-based and law-based methods to temper our limbic urges? In what ways are we “evolutionarily displaced”, psychologically, behaviorally, socially, cognitively, in our ability to be educated, and how much? Please provide evidence for claims. Well informed anecdotes and personal stories are also valuable 🙂 Also, what mental capacities must be developed in one’s “formative years”; which become more difficult to learn as we grow up?
Me: Uhh, I won’t comment on the first parts of this message, but regarding the last question, you have something backward. Children have more than enough mental capacities just by virtue of being alive, which of course they’ll naturally build upon by living and growing over time. The problem isn’t so much that we don’t equip them with the right mental capacities, but that we attempt to *do it* by fixing what’s not broken. Formal education is by far the worst offender, which is where we cut off their proverbial wings, taking away their imagination, creativity, perception, connection to life, feelings and happiness by training them to become left-brain-imbalanced like the rest of society, and not to mention training them to be obedient and not to question authority so they’ll be good cogs in the economic machine when they grow up, and all the while forcing miserable mental labor on them for 19 years so they can learn mostly frivolous skills and facts that don’t have much to do with what it means to live, and taking away their valuable fun and social time in their formative years. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot causing them emotional trauma and feelings of unworthiness that they’ll take with them for life from conditional love by their parents by putting so much pressure on the parents to put pressure on their children to go to school and do well in it.
Patrick Compton: Richard A. Nichols III there are true observations in this but it may benefit from some nuance. Though I do see the education system working like this still, exploiting just as much as it teaches, if not more.
Our vet prescribed a homeopathic medicine to us today, which surprised me, since I’m aware that homeopathic medicine is shunned/scoffed at and thought to be impossible by the scientific/academic community, but it didn’t bother me. My point of view is that, since homepathic medicine is still going strong and readily available despite the apparent absurdity of it and ~100 years of scientific/academic pushback, there have to be tons of people who are actually noticing results. My vet tech himself said that the healing can be amazing and observed over a relatively short period of time.
He said that the medicine works with “energy” (as in a nebulous/abstract, mystical, non-physical definition of “energy”), which really can be the only way it can work because, as far as I’ve heard, they dilute the active ingredient in homeopathic medicine so much that there are practically no molecules of it left in the final product. This is completely plausible to me because the scientific/physical/chemical/biochemical/biological accounts of reality could very well be incomplete. They can only account for what can be empirically (i.e., physically) measured, and the idea that physics, the nuclear model, etc. fundamentally account for everything that exists is weakened by the fact these models take zero consideration of any lived psychic, paranormal, etc. experiences or anything else that scientists readily facilely dismiss as “anecdotal evidence” en masse (to say nothing of the many times such phenomena actually have been statistically proven under controlled conditions).
(The fact that the mystic’s account of “energy” is nebulous/not wholly defined is not actually a point against it, because it perfectly suits the fact that the subject matter itself is something that’s inherently difficult for us to know about and/or understand because we can’t observe it empirically and it’s probably not even a mechanistic process.)
The last time I debated with somebody about homeopathy, his entire argument was that he thinks it’s impossible and absurd because there’s no evidence that it’s legitimate, and when I asked him if he was aware of whether there’s any evidence either way–for or against it–his answer was, “no.” And yet he continued to make the same argument after that. When I pressed him further, he broke all civility and called me a dumbass, at which point I promptly dressed him down and he shut up. I think his sort of thinking is typical of people who reflexively scoff at homeopathy.
Facebook follow-up:
Anela Puljic: I think that we should use science to vet things (no pun intended )
As with human and vet medicine … the foundation should always be “whole/real grown foods” and to supplement essential vitamins/nutrients as needed depending on dietary preference whether human or animal. When preventing or treating illnesses… science has given us so many tools… but everything should be looked at from a holistic standpoint… you still may need the Rx to treat something, but you should also always optimize home remedies and use nature to work with medicine hand in hand to achieve the best/safest/most efficacious outcome for human or dog
I’m very passionate about harmony, homeostasis, science and living well… if you ever find yourself at an extreme end of any opinion, it’s fine to step back and learn more about everything so that progress can be made in a healthy way.
I think science and nature work well together and we should be open to sharing and educating ourselves, rather than dividing or only sitting in one corner of the room of ideologies and opinions.
Richard A. Nichols III: Anela Puljic My post was less about “homeopathy definitely works” and more about “we should have an open mind about it.” I think science itself has systemic biases (as in the scientific community, which is made of people who are flawed, and popular scientific opinion), so we should take its positions with a grain of salt. That being said, if there have been studies of homeopathy’s effectiveness that showed it’s not effective, that’s important. I’ve yet to bother to look that up. As for safety, I don’t think homeopathic medicine introduces any risk, because the potency is so diluted.
Anela Puljic: I’m a supporter of both sometimes side by side as long as there is not harm (ex: homeopathic supplement can alter enzyme function that metabolizes medicines the human/animal is on, some have blood thinning properties, etc. ), provides some benefit even if it is minimal or subjective, and is accessible/made well.
That’s why it’s important for the science people to be open minded and learn about homeopathic stuff and for homeopathic people to also realize there is so so much science stuff enzymes, systems, etc that can be altered even from a natural substance. I don’t think we can survive without nature and science holding hands. One on its own couldn’t sustain population the way it is
Richard A. Nichols III: Anela Puljic Agreed that we probably couldn’t sustain 8 billion people without science, and science is definitely very useful. (though we probably shouldn’t have 8 billion people anyway, and I tend toward neo-Luddism, so science’s necessity is more incidental and contextual.) The question of whether we should defer to it for every question is a different matter. Though I’ll concede/acknowledge your points about homeopathic medicine having dangerous effects, I didn’t know that.
To think that anybody is ever “deserving” of misfortune, pain, suffering, death, etc., is to fundamentally misunderstand them, and it’s also, in my opinion, philosophically unjustifiable to issue retribution
I mean, you have to admit that (a) it causes harm to another, and (b) there’s actually no justification for it that I’ve -ever- seen anybody able to make beyond vague things like, they ‘deserve’ it or ‘they had it coming’ or ‘it’s justice/balance/payback’. Two wrongs don’t make a right; that’s not justice or balance. To paraphrase ‘Batman Returns’, justice is about harmony. Revenge is about making yourself feel better.
The entire basis of revenge is really sweet hatred and bitterness, which are really just vile, destructive emotions.
And we make exceptions for when we understand them well enough to know that, in their particular case, there are reasons they are the way they are, i.e., that’s it’s not their fault, but the truth is that ever thinking there aren’t sufficient reasons is always a case of lack of understanding.
Whatever the reasons they do something, they can of course only boil down to “nature”, “nurture,” and free will (for those who believe in free will; and for those what don’t, whatever business do you have blaming someone anyway?), and the “nature” of someone itself is also due to reasons, such as genetics, or if they have a soul, then to past-life circumstances (“nurture”) and decisions (“free will”), and the idea that they deserve it because of the choices they made out of their own free will doesn’t really hold up either, because you have to ask, if you have free will, and they have free will, but they use their free will in a way that you never would, then what’s to account for that? Again, that’s further “reasons” (and/or possibly meaningless randomness, but meaningless randomness isn’t blamable either).
The above arguments should be sufficient in and of themselves, but just in case it helps, I also suspect that the reason people condemn others is that they instinctively attempt to put themselves into their shoes and think, “well, If I were to do that, I would be committing a serious betrayal,” but the truth is that we can never adequately put ourselves into another’s shoes to account for the true differences in mind between them and you; it’s all projection.
In Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch, it says, “Nobody ever does anything wrong given their own model of the world.” You may think, well, that’s not true, because I’ve done plenty of things I thought were wrong, but it’s not that simple: you ultimately thought it was right for some reason to do something despite considering it ethically or morally wrong, or you wouldn’t have done it–either that or you just couldn’t help yourself, which isn’t a matter of free will.
‘Have you ever wondered how you might behave in someone else’s shoes? If you have, you’ll likely admit that this kind of thinking is usually critical of the person of the person you’re thinking about. The truth is, you are the other person, and they are behaving exactly as you would if you were indeed in the exact same shoes–however inconsiderate, abusive, outrageous, or immoral their behavior is.’
‘True, you are probably more thoughtful, fearless, loving, and honest than those who disappoint you. But you are also at a different point in your journey, maybe “more advanced,” or maybe just more at ease for having chosen a less “challenging” path. We’re all of “one,” exhibiting different colors of the same light, and rather than passing judgment, it’s best to remember that each of us is just doing the best we can.’
-Mike Dooley, ‘Choose Them Wisely: Thoughts Become Things!’
Oh, I forgot to mention one thing: whenever I hear the heartfelt cries and pleas of someone who’s being punished or going to be punished for something wrong they did, I can’t help but have compassion for them, and I know that that feeling is right. It’s not just having a “bleeding heart”, you can never have too much of a bleeding heart, and I know that I shouldn’t override the heart with thoughts anyway, at least/especially when what the heart feels is forgiveness or compassion and what the thoughts are are bullshit negativity. And also, the fact that they care about their own value and wellbeing (on such a heartfelt, universally human level) so much is proof in some way, to me, that they really are worthy.
Either way, taxation is theft. Our government spends every penny stolen from hardworking Americans, and, simultaneously, continues to live off debt.
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