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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (6614)	12/12/2005 2:21:21 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 542193

It's equally true that taking goods and services without fair payment is theft. By paying taxes to avoid the penalties of extortion, you are also upholding a basic principle of commerce. The only difference being that you can't choose your government goods and services a la carte and shop among competing providers. But many if not most services they provide aren't practical to provide on that basis. We all go through life constantly surrounded by services and protections provided by government-financed agencies - the safety of your food, water and utilities, the legal integrity of your finances and commercial transactions, physical protection from police and medical services and a zillion other things. How would you propose paying for all those services you consume if not through taxes? I would appreciate a practical solution that can be implemented for 300 million citizens at once. ;<)

To: TimF who wrote (6614)	12/12/2005 9:32:11 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542193

Taking money (or perhaps other things) by force or threat of force is a very mainstream definition for extortion. I haven't been able to get my head around your use of "extortion" in this discussion. It's just too weird. Maybe the above explains it. Taking money by force or threat of force is commonly called robbery or larceny or theft, not extortion. If you were to switch from "extortion" to "robbery," your position would make more sense, at least to me. I went to the dictionary. Extortion does mean what you say it means. I have always thought of extortion as closer to blackmail, a specific type of theft. Maybe it's just me and maybe most people understand extortion and robbery to be the same thing but I doubt it. In any event, your use of "extortion," which I think of as blackmail, was why I argued the point with you. No way I can't find blackmail in taxation. Theft, OTOH, would make sense to me.

To: TimF who wrote (6614)	12/12/2005 12:33:22 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542193

Well, let's pose a hypothetical. Suppose you go to City Hall to get the appropriate licenses. Say, you need a license to operate the building, and a license to occupy the building, and a license to operate the business. Three licences, and the law says that they're $100 each, per year. But the people running City Hall are crooks, and they tell you that you can't have those licenses unless you pay them a bribe, $10,000 per license. Do you say, "ho hum, just another cost of doing business"? And let's assume you pay the bribe, and you open up the business, and later on the official sends the Chief of Police to tell you that unless you give the corrupt City Hall official another $1000 per month, they're going to shut you down for health code violations? Do you think this is just normal government activity?