Electile Dysfunction (Current students plz look!)

[Apoc]

Hyperbole, sarcasm, and outright dismissal weakens your position significantly,  Gerald.

You're better than that.

Sorry you feel that way, I'm not trying to be mean-spirited at all.  But like I said, if the premise is that 'taxation is theft', then clearly the antidote is that taxes should be 100% voluntary.  How should taxes work if they're 100% voluntary?  No one seems to answer that.

I have advocated use tax repeatedly, including a few pages ago. I've also advocated eliminating taxation on the goods required for a certain standard of living so a use tax isn't regressive.

People keep saying no solutions are being offered, but all I'm seeing is people picking on the "taxation is theft" statement and ignoring actual solutions presented.

People are saying no solutions are being offered to the taxation is theft argument.  It's a rhetorical bomb that people are gonna respond to.  I just think it's fun to think of a country where people could literally test out that philosophy.

If we talk about how taxes should be structured differently or reduced there are plenty of solutions that people like.  Simplifying the tax code and taxing consumption more directly or something like Fairtax would be interesting to see how it plays out.

I honestly don't think people would be much happier with use/consumption taxes though.  Truth is that people just hate paying taxes and if you told them no income tax but now every product has a 30% VAT and you have to pay more directly for services you use, people would hate that too.  I think it would take a drastically restructured government and country for it to work in a way that people would really be happy with.

I will admit that Rex and those like him are likely doing a disservice by continuously repeating the point, even if they do believe it. Although not nearly comparable, I'd argue people saying Abortion Is Murder in an effort to outlaw it are also doing the same. Which brings us back to the original point RJ made - stop saying taxation is theft if you want people to listen to your perspective. That said, I will always argue Rex has the right to believe it without being others misrepresenting his argument based on the absence of evidence (because something doesn't exist, doesn't mean it cannot exist), because Libertarian.