tax tax tax tax, page-35

@123enen
"Individuals need an organisation that pools the resources of individuals and creates what no single individual can create, for the benefit of the group , a community or society. You can call the organisation anything you like. In this case it happens to be a government.

It is outright selfishness for an individual to resist or bemoan the contribution to the pool ( taxes) and then conveniently and casually use the outcomes of the pool ( roads, hospitals, education facilities etc) for their own benefit.
Those such individuals who believe tax is theft while enjoying its outcomes, and believing they have a right to use those outcomes, are just leeches on their neighbours and on society in general"

I agree with your first point. call it what you will as it is essentially an organisation to help manage society.

Point 2 - disagree. I don't think anyone disagrees that some form of tax is necessary.

I would be happy to pay tax if:
- I had some form of control over where my tax dollars are allocated.
- There was some accountability for the gross mismanagement of tax payer money that governments consistently and institutionally perpetuate.
- Governments didn't continually see a portion of my money as their "right".
- if governments used other means to raise the money (investment for example) without continually returning to the well to tax the same group at a higher and higher rate or with more taxes.
- if the government did actually help me earn the money in the first place. I don't recall them paying a cent towards my university undergrad or post grad or masters. I paid for that myself, so should I not get the benefit myself?
- if the government provided an actual service to me in proportion to my tax dollars: I have to have private health care, I have to pay tolls on major roads that have been funded privately because the government is not building them. I have to really finance my entire lifestyle myself and as it turns out, the lifestyle of others. Does this seem fair?

So calling me a leech is at best niave and at worst a really crappy thing to say. (If I swear at you and threaten to pound your face in for the insult then that would just be weak considering we will never actually meet and it's just douchie to be a keyboard warrior, so I'll just stick with "really crappy" because I am a nice guy)

When I paid tax in australia I was taxed at a stupid rate and really still got very little for it.

Not sure how I was stealing from my neighbours or leeching from society when I was paying my neighbours baby bonus, contributing to their public education fund, paying for their medicare and because they were working in the public service, ultimately paying their pregnancy leave.

sounds like I was the one being leeched from.

R