Your argument is an insult to slaves. The taking of your production is only ONE of the multiple conditions necessary to call yourself a slave. Some other conditions are:
1. Not being allowed to leave. You CAN leave any country, including the USA, and that country will NOT try to retain you--you only get sent back when the other country you go to wants to get rid of your mooching ass.
2. You are not respected as a human being. This includes being raped and forcibly impregnated so that you give birth to more things which are not human beings. This IS true in America, but only with Catholics and Mormons.

Taxes are a SOCIAL CONTRACT which are meant to maximize the well-being and the FREEDOM of all participants. Social contracts CAN go too far, but taxes are not fucking slavery, idiot.

@Anonymous: think for yourself and stop regurgitating warrens garbage. the u.s. didnt have an income tax for 150 years, and did just fine, because no one expected handouts, and base services were taxed on a local level. you grow up. get a job, pay 30% federal tax (4 month/year slave to the idiots that you to pay their way.), and then tell me your story.

@Anonymous: If that's your problem, then the only solution is one that involves creating your own sovereign nation. Good luck with that.

@Anonymous: >implying one who's latched on to the government teet would need to move to a different country.

@Anonymous: And he can be mocked for being a moron and a jackass. Freedom of speech cuts both ways.

@Anonymous: So you're calling yourself a moron and a jackass?

>this thread http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o64Fz-KW1Dk I swipe my card, he asks for my pin 1778 ugh, I punch it in

@Anonymous: More like "Hm. No understanding of the social contract that underpins all successful modern governments. Thinks that the infrastructure that sustains modern life just magically appeared out of nowhere. Probably thinks that private entities accountable to a small group of people are somehow more trustworthy than an entity accountable to the entire populace of the region it acts in. Hmm... moron."

@Anonymous: You argument is fail because it has with do with willpower, only.

Willpower (or lack thereof) is what stops you from leaving.
Willpower (or lack thereof) is what prevents you from living truth.
Willpower (or lack thereof) is what let's the wealthiest bastards continue to live off your backs rather than off their own laurels.

@Anonymous: It's cool, he's going to come pick up your trash when the new world (dis)order is established, out of the good of his own heart. When he's done educating his children himself for the day, and personally checking to make sure there are no sewage blockages in the neighborhood

That is, if he doesn't die first of some bizarre bacteria picked up from infected/improperly cleaned or transported produce or meat or chemically processed food that he didn't know about because his wife was too busy purifying her own water and physically removing the scary naked guy who keeps staring in her windows fapping to check to make sure the food she was feeding her children was safe. Oh well - that's one less mouth to feed, more money for them to spend however they darn well please!

@Anonymous: Nice samefiend.

@Anonymous: You're right - I forgot I was on the internet! It's impossible that more than one person could share an opinion that doesn't meet with yours, my bad ;)

@Anonymous: You know, I don't mind philosophical disagreement. I welcome it. Please, show me what I've missed. But if your grand objection is "hey that guy might be the same person as that other guy," all that tells me is that I'm right and you're too much of an intellectual coward to admit it.

@Anonymous: Also, I leveled on that cookie. Your condescension is delicious.

@Anonymous: I almost gave this comment a fuck yeah. Hahaha!

@Anonymous: "don't force your morals on me!" is a bullshit argument. If we're not going to force any morals then fuck private property.

For what it's worth I agree with you on most everything else. I just hate that argument.

@Anonymous: Crack a book. (Also, learn2paragraph.) The colonies rejected the idea of paying taxes to an empire without having some say in how the empire is run. That's why you live in a representative republic. As far as austerity goes, I have to give thanks to the great state of Tennessee for actually being so shitty that I have a concrete example of what happens without taxes.

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/12/fire_department_watches_home_b.html

To reiterate: You live in a society. The society has a structure that exists to maintain a certain baseline of quality of life. Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it fails, but it tries. As shocking as it might be for you to hear this, the deregulation that existed during the industrial revolution was not some kind of huge boon to society or some mythican Randian segment of "productive citizens." People worked 18 hour days in dangerous conditions. They were not poor because they were lazy; far from it. They were poor because they were not paid a living wage, and dropped like flies due to malnutrition or lack of any kind of workplace safety.

It's worth noting that due to companies laying people off every chance they can to provide a marginal return to shareholders, job security, even for good employees, doesn't exist anymore. Thanks to my taxes, you don't have to starve in the street when you get let go from Popeyes while go apply to the Christmas Tree Shops, or whatever the fuck you do.

@Anonymous: It sucked for workers in the industrial age... and as a result the US is a super power which, along with the UK and the USSR, was able to take out the Nazis- and continues to be a superpower today. The reason life is so good now is because life was so bad then.

We should try to find a middle ground.

@Anonymous: i do not live in a representative republic. doesnt that sound a bit redundant to you? the whole idea behind the "republic" part, is the representatives...derp... i live in a constitutional republic. and whats your point with the work conditions in the late 1800s? what are you blathering about over there? you do realize that our representatives have made laws that prohibit that type of work environment these days...i hope. what does any of it have to do with some lazy fat cow that rides around on a fat cart at walmart full of steaks and twinkies with her own herd of rugrat bastard children and a fresh $300 food stamp card in 2011? btw she doesnt vote for leaders, she votes for benefits, which is an obvious conflict of interest and imo reasonable grounds to either strip her voting rights till she gets her shit together enough to take care of #1 or cancel welfare program period, and send her to the nearest church to ask for assistance. and also fuck paragraphs.

@Anonymous: Honestly, if someone doesn't participate in Federal service (Military, Public Hospital, etc), they don't deserve to vote.

@Anonymous: wait, you're using actual PoliSci and economics arguments! You're gonna make all the libertarians' minds explode. Next you're gonna bring up the fact there are countries besides the United States!

@Anonymous: because capitalization is necessary when typing your input on canv.as. no one cares about how proper your grammar is nub, keep it to yourself.

btw, smarty pants, your answer: the same way they built and maintained this country for the first 150 years of it existence. through state and local taxes, excise taxes, luxury taxes, ect... of course at that time we didnt have the problems that we have today, such as hordes of welfare collecting, liberal voting, sucking the teet of the whore scumbags, we didnt have massive illegal immigration that uses our emergency rooms as clinics- takes our jobs- then sends their earnings out of our system, we didnt have "wars on ideas" that are infinitely stupid and costly at the same time, or any number of idiotic things that happen today that ought to be looked at in a less politically correct light, and examined under a light of truth and math. the lifestyle is not sustainable.

the income tax is not only a fraud, but the constitution forbids any direct unapportioned tax on the wages of citizens. the 16th amendment did not abridge this, but has been ruled in multiple supreme court cases to have brought no new powers of taxation. its a lie, a fraud. there is no law. if you can find one in black and white there has been a $50,000 reward that has stood since like 1999 for anyone that can find the proof in the tax code an american citizen that works in the private sector, on american soil has to pay taxes on his wages.

@Anonymous: The TFG has been about as capable of mounting any tax-collection efforts as a squadron of first graders armed with NERF and wet socks would be of decommissioning an M1A2 Abrams. Private militias and extralegal entities wandering around enforcing vigilante justice is precisely the problem with the libertarian conception of a no-taxes-small-government state: the force belongs to anyone who has the resources to employ it, and they're _not accountable to anyone._

@Anonymous: Your strawman confuses libertarian and anarchy. Libertarians still have police. They just have to have a warrant or just cause

@Anonymous: And magic money that grows on trees, to pay for equipment like body armor, emergency response vehicles, the training that makes them servants of the community rather than trained killers (usually including basic legal training, community outreach and sensitivity training), getting-shot-on-the-job insurance, the real estate necessary to conduct police operations...

I'm not even going to factor in widows&orphans pensions, because I'm guessing that in the libertarian utopia, if you're a twelve-year-old kid whose father got killed in the line of duty, you should just sack up and get a job sweeping chimneys.

@Anonymous: O all-knowing Cable Guy, whose job mirrors some aspects of my own but for some reason wants to crow about it, please, fill us in, tell us your great plan for the majority of people who earn less than the rather poor national average wage to have their children educated, their roads repaired, public parks, libraries and other such services looked after, cars registered and drivers licensed so that it's not 3rd world chaos out on the streets, fire and police departments paid for, national disaster recovery plans funded, military who defend the country (OK, they're doing more of a World Police job right now, but keeping your ass alive and out of true despotism is their core role)... how are they to pay for all that, in a reasonably fair and means-tested way? Most devolved, truly capitalist plans work on flat fees. Those who have a lot of money, either through privelege or in a very few cases exceptional hard work and/or a GREAT deal of luck, won't even notice what they're charged. Those who are working for these people and being paid a pittance probably won't be able to afford all of it and still keep food on the table, let alone the lights on.

The no-tax no-government plan only works in a true communist sense (no, not soviet, or chinese revolutionary party, or whatever: actual communism. Castro's Cuba comes closest, but still "no cigar"), or if there's some guarantee that everyone who does an honest day's work will have a certain minimal wage to cover these outgoings and a little more besides to cover small luxuries and the building up of a retirement fund - and those forced out of work by illness, age, market/company collapse, or their expertise suddenly and unexpectedly becoming irrelevant (what happened to all the typewriter repairmen?) can receive sufficient enforced charity such that they can at least stay alive until their luck improves.

(Unless of course you're such a heartless, autistic piece of work that you'd happily feed grandma into the woodchipper once her arthritis gets so bad she can't make needlepoint quilts to cover her rent, and her dementia progresses such that she's just handed over all her savings to some door-to-door scam artist) ........ But what is the latter scheme if not a form of tax? And who's going to administrate, and pay for, the former?

I see some evidence of this in how the water and energy companies in my country are fully privatised, from once being nationalised. You want water supplied to your home, and sewage taken away? You pay for it. At quite a substantial rate, no less. The same as the electricity and cooking gas. Those who are on bare minimum wages, or are too disabled to do a full week of any substantial kind of work, have to get their income (if anything) topped up by benefits to afford these things that most of us consider essentials. It's possible to end up in that state just temporarily, e.g. if you've been in a car wreck that was someone else's fault, but the insurance hasn't paid out yet. Note, it could be YOU in that situation. Mull it over. Sure, you'll get a payout eventually, and hopefully return to work, but until then the bills still need to be paid, for an undefined period that may easily clear out your savings. Then what do you do? Happily be turfed out of the hospital to die on the curb, the same way as everyone else who'd be gipped by a totally capitalist system?

Yes there are quite a few spongers who think they have a good thing going, but the majority of those helped by benefits (that are a pretty small wedge of the overall govt budget overall) are in genuine, transient trouble. I've been there myself when laid off. But I did get back into work, after a few months of help with benefits to, e.g., ensure I wasn't turfed out of my home until I could afford rent again. And so I happily pack (bac…

No-one likes paying taxes, because it removes some money you'd like to spend on yourself. But if you step back and think about the benefit it brings to society, hopefully you're intelligent enough to understand the rather dystopian situation we'd end up in without some kind of central for-the-common-good pot.

Maybe you'd organise it a different way, but if you want to achieve the same ends, it works out much the same in the end. Just this way, it's more enforceable that those with more to spare, who have had better luck, contribute a little more. Rich people didn't get that way by giving cash away, and if they could make it so, they'd never do it ever.

It is the will of the people, the masses, in whose name these things are done, and by whose will they are allowed. There have been protests, riots, wars even over unfair or useless taxes, and over them going to people who shouldn't be getting them, and policies (even whole governments) have been toppled as a result. I don't see that happening here.

Have your little grumble, then reflect upon it should you be so unlucky as to end up in a situation where you're reliant on the charity of others. It will almost certainly come, one day.

As a comedian who has a column in a local free paper eloquently put, recently: It's not so much a case of "disabled" and "able bodied", but "already" and "not yet" disabled...

@Anonymous: Actually, I focused on your occupation because your grasp of economics and government funding is so poor I honestly thought you were 12 years old and being raised in a household where you were being deliberately misinformed. I was hoping to blame your stupidity and callousness on something aside from willful ignorance.

tahrey covered pretty much everything important here, so I'll just add that while it would be delicious poetic justice for you to get electrocuted during an installation, I hope you don't, because you clearly lack the people skills to make a living on your personality, and I think you're so backward your head might just explode if you were forced to take unemployment.