The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #128440   Message #2875884
Posted By: Paul Burke
30-Mar-10 - 03:49 PM
Thread Name: BS: The strangest idea in the USA
Subject: RE: BS: The strangest idea in the USA
I'm not dreadfully sure which bit of the constitution says you are paying too much tax, but then I'm no expert on the US constitution, and the one we have here in the UK is a bit like the Rugby Union offside rule, it's what the chap in charge on the day says it is.

But I think you'll get a long way if you start from first principles. If you don't have a state, you'll soon have a state- whoever is rich enough to recruit the most goons will take charge. So you're going to have a state. And states cost money to run, so you're going to have to pay taxes. You are lucky in that you have some lip service paid to the idea that you should have some kind of collective say in what you pay; there are alternatives, as a quick reading of later Roman or Carolingian British history will convince you. Citizens in complex states get a huge amount of value from the services of the state. It's a pity that they can't see that money employed this way is far better spent than in individual hands.

It's much easier to have a state built and maintained metalled highway that ordinary cars can travel on, than for each individual to have a tank- like vehicle capable of travelling through broken, rutted, ground and crossing unbridged rivers.