Blogs > Liberty and Power > Taxation and Liberty

Apr 16, 2009

Taxation and Liberty


by Liberty and Power


This was earlier posted on my personal blog, "E pur si muove!"



There are a couple of things that are disturbing about this clip, taken at one of the nation's many Tea (="taxed enough already") Party protests today (Wednesday).

As a political philosopher, I suppose my reaction might seem eccentric. -- What disturbs me is:"liberty ... what does that have to do with taxes?"

Paying taxes is not the same thing as giving gifts. Nor are taxes membership fees. I cannot resign from the USA, as I can from a club. A tax is an coerced payment, extracted via the threat of a prison sentence and, unlike a membership fee, it is unconditional. There is no good or service that I get if I pay my tax but otherwise not. My government will not withhold from me protection against invasion by the Canadians or the Mexicans if I don't pay my tax, as a club would withhold the privileges of membership were I to fail to pay my dues. No, I am forced to pay, whether I want to or not, and whether the benefits are worth the expense or not.

The only way I can avoid a tax is to leave family, friends, and home to travel to a land where ... I will also have to pay taxes.

If you think that freedom is abridged when I am coerced ("negative freedom"), then every increase of taxes is a reduction of freedom.

Of course, you may think of freedom as the capacity to choose between options ("positive freedom"), but in that case the same result follows. Before my money is taken from me by the government, I have the power to choose how it is spent. After it is taken, the government makes that choice. Now, some of the things it chooses to spend my money on are in my interests, so I don't perceive these choices of theirs as a reduction of my positive freedom: things like punishing violent criminals, building roads, or maintaining the air traffic control system. These are things that I would choose to spend my money on if I could. But, as far as I can tell, by far most of the things the government throws my money at are not like this at all. They include:

  • Maintaining a national"defense" establishment larger than those of the entire rest of the world combined.
  • Maintaining a government schooling gulag that my wife and I tried to escape from by sending our son to private schools that better suit our educational philosophy, while being forced through taxes to pay for the government system at the same time. After three years and a second mortgage on our house, we ran out of money.
  • Keeping over half a million people in prison (mainly for possession of marijuana) to make sure that I don't take any drugs the government doesn't like.
Taxation has a great deal to do with freedom, but mostly not in a good way.

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More Comments:

Rick Croley - 4/18/2009

Shouldn't the majority of taxes emanating from the centralized federal government be considered excessive?

Since that monster bears no resemblance to the limited central goverment designed by the Founders, since it has usurped almost all of the powers once held by the states and individuals under the 10th Amendment, I would have to say . . .yes!

Lester Hunt - 4/17/2009

I think there is no way to evaluate whether taxation is excessive is to look at what is done with the money. In a world of increasingly mature (ie., bloated) nation-states, comparisons with other regimes simply bias the evaluation process in favor of the state. My own rough rule of thumb: taxation for any purpose other than to provide public goods (like law and order) for the taxpayer is tyranny. Note that the three examples in my post do not fall within that category.

James Otteson - 4/17/2009

I thought the most disturbing thing the reporter said was right at the end: she said that she didn't think this was "family viewing," and so returned the broadcast to the studio.

I thought that engaging in deliberative democracy, in having one's "voice heard," in "being part of the process" one was doing one's duty as a citizen. You know, "Rock the Vote" and all that. But to this reporter it is obscene and "offensive."

William Marina - 4/17/2009

I suppose the relationship between Liberty & Taxation is best seen in the old comment, "the power to tax is the power to destroy." Someone whose financial situation has been dealt with harshly to that extent, can hardly be said to have Liberty.
The key questions are: Are Americans, on the whole, taxed that severely?, and can the overall
structure of the tax system be said to have a degree of equity, admittedly a difficult term with which to deal?