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Comment by ones_and_zeros | Hacker News Reader

Taxes are whatever the electorate want them to be. Plus the modern day idea of taxes is relatively new... I mean, income tax in the US is barely 100 years old. The whole basis of the US tax system rides on the "General Welfare" clause, so really taxes provide for the general welfare (food, shelter, etc), and a basic income covers all of the general welfare bases without all of the overhead of separate agencies and regulations.

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> the general welfare (food, shelter, etc)

Those are not the general welfare, they are the particular welfare of the person eating the food or living in the shelter.

> The whole basis of the US tax system rides on the "General Welfare" clause

No, it rides on the 16th amendment which explicitly authorized income taxes.

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

No, the US gov't was able to set taxes well well before the 16th Amendment, which as you point out, is only for income taxes. The US gov't had all sorts of taxes before the 16th Amendment and the justification for that as outlined in the US Constitution is for the general welfare.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause

We were discussing income taxes; and income taxes existed before the 16th as well, based on other tax clauses until the courts ruled the direct taxes and thus unconstitutional. You're correct about the general welfare clause as the basis for most taxes, but it's not the basis for income taxes which is what "taxes" mean generally when people are discussing taxes.

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