You Can't Soak the Rich

Re:You Can't Soak the Rich by Prrometheus on Tuesday May 20, 2008 @07:44PM (#195462)

It's still obscene, ugly, wrong, and basically slavery.

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Re:You Can't Soak the Rich by Agathos on Tuesday May 20, 2008 @10:01PM (#195575)

Please explain how it's slavery.

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Re:You Can't Soak the Rich by llimllib on Tuesday May 20, 2008 @10:31PM (#195605)

As I understand the libertarian argument (I can't promise that this is what Prrometheus means), a sketch looks like this:

Money is your property

Your body is your property

Slavery is foreign control of your body

Taxes are foreign control of your money

Thus, by the transitive property, taxes are like slavery

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Re:You Can't Soak the Rich by Prrometheus on Wednesday May 21, 2008 @01:47AM (#195746)

I wasn't even going that far. I can see how people consider it hyperbole to call taxes "slavery" when someone is taking 40% of your earnings from you. You still have more than half of what you earned to do with as you will. But 95%? You're basically working solely for the good of whoever is stealing from you. It's true that they're not forcing you to work, but you either give over almost all your earnings or go without any benefit from your labor at all.

I'm not the first to make the comparison, you know. I believe Frederick Douglas compared income taxes to slavery in his autobiography. Unfortunately, I listened to it on CD so I can't pull up the exact passage at the moment.

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Re:You Can't Soak the Rich by llimllib on Wednesday May 21, 2008 @01:50AM (#195749)

> But 95%? You're basically working solely for the good of whoever is stealing from you.

I don't disagree, and I'm a person of libertarian leanings. Although I grant I'm not as fully given over to it as you seem to be.

I really was just trying to elucidate the sense in which I see many libertarians compare taxes to slavery.

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