Originally Posted by Bockman
Here's an important question: Who owns the fruits of your labor? If a percentage of what you earn is forcibly taken from you-- and by 'forcibly', I mean 'against your will' and with the coercive use of force (after all, if you don't pay your taxes men will come to arrest you, men with guns who will kill you if you resist)-- then you are a slave.
I'll put it another way: Would **** become morally acceptable if Congress passed a law legalizing it?
If you take the position that "No, idiot, **** is not nor would ever be morally acceptable", isn't it just as immoral when Congress legalizes the taking of one person's earnings to give to another? Surely if a private person took money from one person and gave it to another, we'd deem it theft and, as such, immoral. Does the same act become moral when Congress takes people's money to give to farmers, airline companies, Sadaam Hussein, or an impoverished family? No, it's still theft.
Ideally, the money we take from ourselves (we elected the people who do it remember) comes back to us in the form of public service of various forms. **** is a terrible example to use in an analogy.
Whether or not tax money is being properly used is a seperate discussion from whether or not taxes are acceptable to begin with.
I sympathize with apclassic, though. I've got serious doubts how much of my SS money I will ever see, and I know I could be in better financial position in the future managing it myself. It sure was a convenient way to temporarily inflate the federal coffers though. Oh well. It's just money. Can't take it with you.
