The alternative isn't no government, it's getting the same treatment from a different authority with even less recourse. You're just blaming the messenger.
If you want to talk about brainwashing, have you considered how the company you work for puts a penalty on your efforts? Their literal model is paying you less than the value you provide and recording that difference as profit. The rate they collect is often much greater than 10% of your efforts.
1.a. given that you could do it by yourself, why do we work for a company instead of running a business ourselves? are you sure you are not missing some variables there?
2. does the employer have any additional risk? In my country, for example, firing a person is quite a bit of money. This is effectively an insurance to pay for the worker, besides the taxes they already pay (a penalty for the economic activity, basically, or, as I think of it: a theft)
3. do I do work for my employer forced by them or I chose to work there because it is my best alternative without coactively forcing someone to do something they do not want? Of course we always want higher salaries. But taxes do not work like this: in taxing systems you do not have a choice to pay or not to pay, you pay and that's all the story. You also have no word on where your money goes or any control over it. The people who manage it do not pay penalties for mismanaging it. In private companies I can assure you this is much more sensitive and you are much more careful with what you do than in public instances.
Please, let us keep the conversation rational. I would like you to discuss this topic rationally. Because I would really like to understand it.
P.S.: noone explained me yet why taxes are not theft. For me they are, I said, because they are coactively putting penalties on something you produce. Coactively, not even by mutual contract as in the case you mention from the employer. Of course we want more from the employer and the employer more of us, but, at the end, this is a mutual contract, not a do it or I put you in jail.
You're absolutely right about 1.a., but you're missing the fact that the same is true for the relationship between companies (and their owners) and the government. So just as the typical employee often could not generate the same value without the infrastructure and resources of the company, that company could not generate the same value without the infrastructure and resources provided by the state.
My entire original "profit is theft" argument rests on the same kind of assumptions as your "taxes are theft" argument. Namely that in both cases the affected party is not getting anything for their contributions and could have done it themselves. In my mind the only difference here is that taxes are explicit and transparent, while "capturing excess productivity" is hidden. The former seems much more honest in this regard.
Edit:
> You also have no word on where your money goes or any control over it. The people who manage it do not pay penalties for mismanaging it. In private companies I can assure you this is much more sensitive and you are much more careful with what you do than in public instances.
This is patently false. Not only do you have less control over how your employer spends your excess value than how your government spends your taxes (I don't recall being able to vote for my CEO), but corruption in companies is not uncommon. It's just less visible because companies are allowed much more secrecy than governments. This is not any better. It's also rare for a CEO to be seriously punished for running a company into the ground. "Failing upwards" is common.
Incorrect: profit from a company is hiring + working cooperatively. No matter you would want more money as an employee: you accepted it. You could go somewhere else to pick something else. You do not because you do not have something better.
Taxes is basically a gun in your head saying: 50% for me. Why? Because I say so. And you have no alternative. That is coaction no cooperation.
Seriously recheck it. We could talk what taxes are used for or ig u get enough from your wage. But the fact is thst the first case is cooperative and the second is coactive.
I should not have control on how my emplouyer spends my money if it is not part of thr contract. After all, we both accepted. But if you really dislike what they do, just go get work from another and NEVER work for such a piece of rubbish right? Can I do that with the State? No, I would be enjailed.
The state will not ask you. Simply like that. Factual and true.
By the same token, you could move to another country, no? The problem with this logic is that having a choice of jobs is often a privilege of having money in the first place (just like relocating to another nation). You probably can't turn down work, no matter how bad the "deal", if you need that money for food and shelter. So for many (most?) people the supposed free choice of employment is illusory.
This gets even worse when you consider how competition tends to drive companies to all be shitty to employees in similar ways. It's now really common for shifts to be scheduled algorithmically and on short-notice in fast food. If you're just entering the job market or have little experience, how do you "choose" to work for a company that won't schedule you for last-minute 2 hr shifts or have you "clopen" at the behest of some scheduling algorithm?
Do not work in fast food. But if you have to, in part it is because you cannot work elsewhere. Which takes me to... bsd choices? But even if u did it... My grandparents were raised without welfare. They were not rich.
They saved money and reinvested parts in a house for many years and other things. This is a mindset. It is not about being rich or not.
That is how you usually get out of poverty. As for working in fast food, probably is a consequence of not studying or having chosen studies with little demand. It is the crude truth. We cannot blame those on others.
I understand how hard it is. But the reality is that there are even socialist experiments about removing prices in cooperatives in Russia for making I believe it was screws and nails.
Two cooperatives provided with the same number of employees, same resources. One made better pieces than the others. Which ones do you think people wanted? And that without prices, some pieces were more valuable. What this shows is that no matter how much u try to equal things, they will naturally shift away by themselves. Jobs, faster vs slower, skilled vs unskilled. Fighting that permanently... I do not see it as a good thing.
There are ~15 countries that don't have income taxes. Some of them are even quite nice. I suggest you move if taxes offend you so much.
It's not like taxes go into a black whole. They pay for schools, roads, police, military protection, and a host of other services. We can certainly debate the relative allocation of funds, but going tax free isn't something most large nations can do. The nations that are tax free tend to be extremely wealthy on oil money (Bahrain) OR borderline anarchy (Somalia).
Yes I have been actively looking for reasonable countries. Not because I think I cannot pay but because I am convinced we should NOT unless we authorize someone to do it. Of course you would lose the services you do not pay for.
I do not need 0% taxes. But you know what? I do not need 54% income tax + 21% VAT plus many others that amount to 70% of my earnings and they laugh at us in our faces. I really do not need that. Here I talk about Spain. Let us leave USA apart bc I do not know enough. Just know that they are sailing in the same direction so if I were you guys, I would be a bit careful.
In the real world I do not need a 0% taxes country either. Of course.
I am spanish (54% over 60,000 euros in my "State"). But I see the US going in the same stupid direction of taxing and overregulation and it catches my eye.
Seriously, do not break it. I admire the founders of USA more than any other people worldwide.
The ideas of real freedom were born there, even if there are, like everywhere else, dark episodes.
