Why are taxes a bad thing?

I am all for taxes but I am for fair taxing – aka tax the rich more, tax the poor less – damn socialist that I am.

Taxes take wealth away from people, decreasing their spending and saving potential, decreasing the amount of money that can be used to fuel an economy.

Taxes don’t add any value to anything or provide a useful service or meet any needs. They’re just a way for gov’t to draw funds.

Taxes are necessary for sustaining a government.

I just have this crazy idea that the government should serve the people that it represents. You know, like ensuring people have the things they need to survive – like food, and a place to live, and health care, and a job.

I think that the people who have considerably more than they need have a social responsibility to give back to the community that made their wealth possible. And I think it is morally reprehensible that those who make more money in a year than most people will see in their lifetimes are consistently given more tax breaks and more favors and less responsibility, while children are going to bed homeless and hungry, and people in our country have been jobless for two years or more.

Taxes enforce the social responsibility that every member of society has. They also fund important services, goods and programmes that are necessary to sustain a healthy society, things like infrastructure, education, security, justice, universal healthcare, environmental protection, protection of the people from corporate abuse and exploitation.
Taxes can also serve to steer the economy in the right direction. For example, raising a high tax on fossil fuels or highly polluting industries will result in the innovative development of more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly engines and energy production methods, and encourage entrepeneurs to venture into alternative and regenerative energy sources instead of the fossil lane.

I am sure someone out there will regard these as negative effects

I do not believe taxes are a bad thing—I think they are a necessity and to rail against them is both a waste of time and emotional energy. I’m not sure how I feel about everyone being taxed equally or making the wealthy pay more—I’m of two minds about that—but I do know I’m perfectly willing to pay my share.

@Adirondackwannabe I have to respectfully disagree with that.

@ragingloli Yes, there is always a spin on it, which is why I wanted both negative and positive views, as to get a broader range of how people view taxes.

@Austinlad If you are willing to pay your fair share, should not everyone? If we live in a country where everyone is suppose to be treated equal?

@Seek_Kolinahr I hear some people argue that we tax the rich and we will surely see the rich tighten their pockets and screw the little people or hurt the economy if you will even more. Although as you said we give them breaks, yet I have to really see the benefits. Someone can correct if you feel what I have said is wrong.

Taxes are not a bad thing. They are how we all chip in for all of the infrastructure that we use.

@Steve_A Okay, Which parts or all of it. I meant taxes by themselves don’t add value to an item I purchase in a store. They’re just an added cost. I’d like to hear your thoughts.

@Adirondackwannabe When you say services I thought you included things paid by taxes. My fault.

Steve_Am, I don’t think I wrote anything in my comment that suggested otherwise. I only said I have mixed feelings about what the basis should be.

@Steve_A I worded my first answer poorly. R had a good point about how we can use taxes to direct economic choices, such as making it more expensive to consume fossil fuels. I don’t have a better alternative to funding government.

@Steve_A

The bigwigs are already screwing the little guy.

Take your average $8 an hour Walmart worker. Corporate knows just how much to pay them to force them to be unable to shop anywhere but Walmart. Thus, WalMart ultimately gets their labor for next to nothing.

Tell me – how many jobs did the Bush tax cuts generate for your average Joe American? I know I lost mine. And I worked in government.

The idea that we should bend over backward for the rich in fear of their wrath is way too Imperial Rome for me.

@Adirondackwannabe
”I meant taxes by themselves don’t add value to an item I purchase in a store.”
Look at it this way. Taxes levied on a product and business operations fund the infrastructure and other basics that are used when making and shipping the product to the store. Without taxes, companies would have to use more expensive private toll roads, more expensive electrical infrastructure, they would have to expensively educate and train their workers themselves, they would have to hire expensive private police and fire protection, etc, all of which would probably make the product much more expensive than they are with taxes.

@ragingloli That’s a good point. If every company needed their own fire and poice department that would be more expensive then spreading the cost over an entire municipality. But what would keep the companies from subcontracting those services on a large scale and could it be done more efficently?

@Seek_Kolinahr I agree , just about exactly what I was thinking I just don’t see the overall benefits from helping the rich via tax breaks or the like and assuming they will spread the wealth or excel the economy.

Funny because that seems more socialism to me…don’t flame me though as I really don’t know what real “socialism” is….

@Steve_A

No flame from me. I identify with Libertarian Socialism.

I agree the tax code should be progressive and slanted towards helping out the poor.

I don’t think taxes are a bad thing. I ought to know, my share is insanely high in proportion to my income. What I do object to are corporations being considered persons as a dodge to get out of paying for their fair share of the country’s resources they use. They use the roads, land and water. They depend on the police, among other things. They shouldn’t be able to do so for practically free while the lower classes pay such a disproportionate amount for the same things.

@Adirondackwannabe I don’t know fully if I understand this all but if say the company had to have their own fire and police departments would the same regulations apply or would the company that owned it have more say?

An upside though maybe there would be less shortages on police and firemen?

@Steve_A I’m forming this idea as I go. I was thinking of a business formed to provide fire protection to an area and all of the people and businesses within the protected zone pay a fee for the service. Could it be done more efficently? But then I run into the problem of people not wanting to pay for the service, and their house catches fire. I don’t think it would work. Taxes kind of force everyone to pay.

There is no way a we can have a society that we would want to live in without taxes. Just for a start, we need a government of some kind to provide us with things we all need, such as safe roadways, bikeways, paths just to get around. Unless you want criminals threatening us in our homes, we have to have a police force that can protect all of us. Alternatives have been used in history, of course, and those must have been terrifying times to live in. But, when you have a society that actually supports the growth of the people, you provide schools as well, and then if someone is down on their luck, you provide welfare or some kind of protection so people don’t go hungry. We have seen over and over again that no one else steps up in a big way, except a larger government. I think the real problem with taxes is the sense that people have that the government either spends the money on programs they don’t want (some don’t like the idea of a giant war force and others don’t like welfare and others don’t want any kind of regulations at all) and also that the money is not spent carefully. There is also the sense that those making the decisions are not always choosing based on what might be right, but simply to make sure they are re-elected and personally will have a good life.
I find that when I pay taxes, I like to think of the money going to projects I think are important, and I do support a government that takes care of its people.

The more the government taxes, the less the individual has to spend. The less inviduals have to spend, the less income businesses and companies have. The less income businesses have, the fewer employess they will hire. Government spends money on many things that mystify the general public, and always spends a high percentage of the money it takes from the taxpayers on governmental salaries, buildings, and just plain waste. Government has no incentive to be efficient, since any money lost because of bad decisions can simply be replaced by raising taxes. The government must borrow to do all the things the politicians decide the want to do. This means interest must be paid to those from whom government borrows the money. The higher the interest and the more money the government borrows, the less money there is to invest in new businesses, thus decreasing job creation yet again.

Any questions?

The less taxes, the more money the individual has to spend on expensive private education, private infrastructure, private police and private fire protection services, which means they will have less money to spend on other goods and services, hurting the economy.
It will be the same upward cost spiral in those fields as it is in your health care industry today.

@CaptainHarley The theory that the private sector works better works for me right up until I get to the idea of someone not paying for fire protection and then the house catches fire. Is everyone going to stand by and watch the house burn?

@Adirondackwannabe

Oh for crying out loud! Where did I advocate cutting cutting emergency services? jeeze!

Can you say, “HUGE flamming straw man” boys and girls??

@CaptainHarley Easy my man. I was just addressing the funding idea. I wasn’t saying anything about cutting services.

Some services are taken for granted in my world: firefighting, police, EMT, etc.

@CaptainHarley Agreed. The first job of government is to keep the people safe and secure.

Taxes are necessary if you want to have a modern, responsive government. I believe that the ‘voluntary” taxes paid by lobbyists are responsible for ruining the government. When corporations can limit their tax deductible spending to influence laws and regulations for their own benefit we all suffer.

I submit if a corporation wants to contribute to the government over and above their tax liability, they should pay into a general fund with money distribution added as a part of the budget. No money should go to individual legislators or their campaign funds. They are already well paid. Notice how many politicians go into government and come out millionaires? That doesn’t happen in Civil Service positions.

Great answer @Ron_C !!

I don’t think taxes are a bad thing. I think overtaxing people to pay for huge government waste and abuse is a bad thing.

Short, sweet and to the point! And a good point too @wilma!

Thanks @CaptainHarley glad you liked it, wouldn’t want to be on your bad side.

Because the government wants more money to add to the money they already took out of your paycheck.

@Ron_C

LOL! No chance of that. : )

Too broad of a statement. Taxes in and of themselves are not a bad thing.

@Adirondackwannabe “Taxes don’t add any value to anything or provide a useful service or meet any needs. They’re just a way for gov’t to draw funds.”

Would that this were true, as nobody wants to have to pay huge tax bills. But government, alas, does do useful things like keep foreign enemies from killing us and stealing everything we’ve got, building roads, providing our kids educations, making sure our food supply is safe and much, much more. These things cost money.

If you truly yearn for a paradise without taxes, move to Somalia. They have no government and no taxes. I understand it is a conservative’s paradise. Because there are no taxes, everyone there is fabulously wealthy. Well, per person, they make a little over $600 per year, and most of that it made by a small handful of pirates and scam artists. But hey, they don’t have to pay taxes, so they get to keep all $600 if nobody steals it from them.

Realistically, taxes can be too high and starve growth, or two low and also destroy growth. There are things that government provides that contribute to the common good. When we starve investment in our infrastructure, our education, our public safety and our safety net we all suffer as a consequence. We shut off growth for the future just as surely as a corporation does when greedy owners take too much from the firm and refuse to invest in its future.

The problem with taxes is that everyone wants their services, but they want someone else to pay for it.

The more money that comes out of our pocket and goes to pay for someone else to have a free ride, the worse it looks.

Then there is the issue of waste in government. The more waste we see of our tax money, the less we want to pay even more for them to throw away.

@YARNLADY Good points. But imagine what our defense would cost us if we outsourced it all to the likes of Erik Prince and his Backwater nee Xe (pronounced She). They pay their mercenaires about $160,000 a year. Lord knows what they bill for each man, but it figures to be double that.

Also imagine how safe we’d be if they had our nuclear arsenal in hand to extract higher profits.

Look at the mess with the prison break in Arizona. That was a private, for profit prison those three murderers broke out of. Two people are already dead thanks to that incompetence. I wonder how much Arizona’s “saving” by outsourcing prisons. Governor Brewer has several key advisers who are former lobbyists for the for-profit prison industry in the USA. BTW, if Arizona SB 1070 had remained in place, the largest private, for profit prison contractor in the USA would have been the housing agent for detainees waiting processing by immigration.

There are all kinds of potentials for ugly conflicts of interest when we start outsourcing certain core government duties and paying a premium for for-profit efficiency.

And I’m serious, I just found out that I am being paid $1,200 and since the government takes money, I’m basically being paid $200 a week. That’s $1,000 dollars I could use for something useful, not help the government pay for their mistakes.

@SowhatifimfromWV That’s a horror story, all right. How did the government “borrow” ⅔rds of your paycheck and still charge you so much in taxes. That sounds very odd for so low an income.

@ETpro You completely missed my point. Taxes by themselves don’t do anything. Plain and simple. And making our food supply safe? joke!

The question is whether imposition of a tax improves things or makes them worse. Taxes can be spent on improvements that make life better for everyone such as roads, water systems, or medical research. They can also be stolen by greedy leaders or used to fund wars. Taxes are not a bad thing in and of themselves. What matters is how they are used.

GA Crankmonkey. Welcome to fluther and cool name. (For JP)

@Adirondackwannabe Your point is that taxes don’t do anything? Roads build themselves without anyone paying for them? Air traffic control is magic? Schools just exist. Nobody needs to pay teachers. The Tooth Fairy will pay them?

Somalia is sitting there waiting for you folks who are convinced a nation with no taxes is a paradise. Don’t try to sell me your fantasy, though. I am a bit too worldly to fall for such drivel.

Because they are not. Taxes are a good thing. Try living in a city where the fire department depends on charity. Suppose your house is on fire. In a month when the willingness to donate is low, they might not come at all. What a bummer.

This doesn’t mean that taxes always make sense. We need to keep things in perspective. Citizens should not have to fund totally inefficient public systems.

We keep arguing past each other on this issue. Taxes are a necessaary evil, but there should be ( and are ) limitations on the ligitimate functions of government.

@CaptainHarley unfortunately, the government limits are defined by lobbyists. There are even private prison lobbyists that are strong supporters of increased incarceration for obvious reasons.

If we ever want to get hold of our government we need to eliminate corporate donations and direct lobbyist access to congress.

@Ron_C

Perhaps so, but the limitations I was speaking of are written into the Constitution. We need to hold our elected officials ( and the appointed ones as well ) to the highest standards of accountablility.

@CaptainHarley

As voters, all we can do is vote for someone we hope doesn’t do something we don’t approve of.

After they backstab us, the only recourse we have is to not vote for them again. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make all the stuff they fucked up go away.

@CaptainHarley are you one of the strict constructionists that says that the constitution is cast in stone and can never be changed and updated? Our founders realized that it was not and instituted a process called amendments to correct this. Unfortunately the process has been undermined with ridiculous things like prohibition.

What we need it to get rid of a good number of law while strengthening regulations like bank and food, drug, and tax laws to make them fair for citizens and tough on multinational organizations. What we are seeing is just the opposite. It started with Reagen and is not being torn down and reformed like Obama promised. Now we have a chance for the people that caused the problem to return to office. That is very frightening to me.

@Ron_C

Please give me a lil bit more credit than that.

@Seek_Kolinahr

Perhaps we should look at adding things like Referendum and Recall to the Constitution. : )

@CaptainHarley Some of our influential founding fathers were men of noble birth and high education who were afraid of giving too much power to the unwashed masses. I often wonder how they would feel if they could return today and look at what’s become of their grand experiment. They might well decide that in truth it is the elite and moneyed sort who are not to be trusted.

@ETpro

I would like to think so. The founders were concerned about mob rule, and rightly so, but trusting the power-hungry and avaricious is a risky proposition at best.