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Comment by zzzzzzzzzman | Hacker News Reader

"1) Cheating on taxes is quite literally stealing from every other person in the country. That being said I think there is a lot of small scale cheating going, especially for small cash-driven businesses."

I disagree.

One monkey says to a group of other monkeys, "we all need to take one of the 5 bananas we individually have and place it into a central banana disbursement fund".

Then, another monkey from the group refuses to give up one of his bananas. How is this refusal equal to stealing?

The real question is why taxes need to be /forcefully/ collected in the first place.

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Please don't. This the kind of thing we mean when we ask people not to post generic ideological tangents to HN. We're not going to get anything useful out of the 30,000th "taxation is theft" flamewar.

People who feel passionately for or against these generic positions need to contain themselves on HN, because the railing and ranting they lead to is inimical to thoughtful, curious discussion—the kind we want.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13079647 and marked it off-topic.

One monkey says to a group of other monkeys: "We all need to take one of the 5 bananas we individually have to feed the doctor monkey, the asphalt monkey and the teacher monkey, from whom we receive services."

One monkey from the group, which just came back in his car from the doctor monkey with his daughter that goes to the local monkey school: "I refuse to give up my bananas!".

Remember context. Full context is important.

One monkey says to a group of other monkeys: "We all need to take one of the 5 bananas we individually have to pay for a 1.2 trillion banana fighter jet that doesnt work, and also to give bananas to people who aren't contributing any bananas at all"

One monkey from the group, who makes 4 of the 5 bananas, and doesn't want a 1.2 trillion banana fighter jet notices that all the people who are clamoring to take bananas aren't putting in any of the bananas themselves but are instead on the receiving end of the banana transfer, gets annoyed that they are basically having a meeting to take his bananas and give them to themselves. He gets upset by this"

Remember context. Full Context is important.

Naw that monkey runs the fighter jet manufacturing company, he's all for it and busy paying the lobbying monkeys to make sure the racket continues

Now now now Mr. Monkey, these fighter jets are for your protection! And the blanket banana surveillance we conduct on you and your community is also important so that we can collect a banana salary while protecting you from people that want to hurt you :)

The 4 of 5 Banana Monkey not only owns the Fighter Jet Company but also the Banana Plantation.

Remember context. Full Context is important.

And that monkey may actually be using the bananas it withholds from one group to do social good in a much more efficient manner for another group.

Not to condone tax evasion or fraud — I condemn illegal tax evasion — but there are many interesting dimensions to this.

I appreciate your response and POV :)

Why can we not assume that the doctor monkey is operating a private medical practice, his daughter is sent to a private monkey school, and they drove together in a privately produced car on privately maintained roads?

In the USA, I pay income taxes, and I still have to pay for all of these things above (fees, fines, tolls, surcharges, sales tax...)

That is called Starve the Beast and has been the strategy of the right for decades. It goes like this: Use a slight budget deficit as an excuse to immediately cut back on services and infrastructure investments. Never raise taxes. If there's no deficit, lower the taxes on the rich while promising 'dynamic effects' that will magically increase revenue for the government. Repeat until the services are so underfunded so that they are more or less useless. Use that as proof that the government is worthless and never can provide anything of value, so it is better to privatize what is left of it. So in the end the only thing you actually pay for with your taxes is wars overseas to keep the oilprice low and corporate welfare.

It's no wonder Americans are complaining about their taxes.

I pay 25% VAT (less on e.g. food) and about 30% income tax. For that I've got a free eduction (Ph.D), can commute to work with (mostly) very good public transportation. Currently my pregnant wife is getting weekly checkups free of charge. I look forward soon start working halv time sharing 390 days of paid parental leave with my wife.

Sometimes I think I don't pay enough taxes.

I cringe at your response. There's so much wrong in it. >>Use a slight budget deficit as an excuse to immediately cut back on services and infrastructure investments

A 'slight' deficit that's led to trillions in debt over a very short period of time.

>>government is worthless and never can provide anything of value

It is mostly worthless and hardly provides value(the worst part about this is is that a lot of times, I don't even have the option to opt out of these value-free services and pick something else that works)

>>Sometimes I think I don't pay enough taxes

Only a commie would say this.

We can assume the doctor monkey is paying for his kid's school, but it's possible that doctor monkey also benefits indirectly from the other monkeys' kids education as well.

All the roads you drive on are toll roads? Here in Oregon none are, and when I was back East only some highways were toll roads. Surface streets are nearly all paid for through taxes AFAIK.

I don't get the severe anti-tax stance some folks have. Yes I want my taxes spent efficiently, but I absolutely recognize that I gain benefits from paying them. Even when some of those taxes go to poor people. Without a peaceful society nobody will care that much about computers and the 'net ;).

I admit I'm a bit biased, because I get Welfare myself. That is, the gov't gives me a fair amount of money to offset the interest I pay to the bank for my mortgage. My effective income tax rate is less than 10% so I probably get quite a lot more welfare than any really poor family does. What a world we live in.

Thank you for your well-formulated points and civil response :)

Re: roads, I agree that not all roads are toll roads. The good news is that roads are relatively inexpensive to build and maintain (for example, the federal transportation budget is only 2.3% of total yearly spending, 28 billion dollars).

So, those who want to use roads, should be charged a fair price, and road companies should compete to lower costs where possible.

The argument that "if we don't pay taxes (which are ever increasing and are going towards services that are decreasing in quality), then everyone will go nuts and modern society will collapse!!!" is actually extortion and a clever diversion.

We all want cheaper, more effective services. We all want the poorest members of society to not be kicked when they are already down.

The issue is that world governments are run by an elite few people who funnel our taxes to their bank accounts through scams and poorly rendered services.

And when we figured out this scam and went public with the info, we were yelled at to keep paying our taxes ;)

> Re: roads, I agree that not all roads are toll roads. The good news is that roads are relatively inexpensive to build and maintain (for example, the federal transportation budget is only 2.3% of total yearly spending, 28 billion dollars).

Wow, so you have an extra half-billion or so just sitting around? ($28 billion x 0.023 = $460 million) How fortunate for you!

Beggin' your pardon, M'Lord, but the peasantry doesn't consist of multi-millionaires. And they need to use roads to live their lives in a modern, industrialized society.

So, no, you can keep your libertarian dystopia where everyone has to build their own roads, hire their own police forces, etc. Go build your own civilization, away from ours.

That sounds like forcing a service (that you might not want) down your throat, and accusing you of stealing if you refuse to pay. It would be surprisingly better to let monkeys pay for what they want to use, instead of making every monkey pay for what they won't ever use.

Everybody is a neoliberal until they have to pay for their own hospital bill.

I am an American and I pay for all of my medical care privately, without insurance :)

Ah, yes, the old "I have totally done this so far in my life and thus it is a model for all peoples" chestnut.

I have this vague memory of someone who was litigating about obamacare being unconstitutional for forcing people to have insurance and then defaulting on their sudden unexpected large hospital bill...

Realistically you've been lucky, and that's fine. You're against risk pooling because you feel that's not something you need. Self evidently the pooling is to cover the less fortunate. the "there but for the grace of god go I" situation. Maybe you think they're all scroungers and wastrels? Or that they don't deserve access to medical care just by virtue of existing and being ill.

It's a cultural thing tbh, but bemusing to me.

Man, I don't often wish life threatening or chronic diseases which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat on anyone. But I would pay to see the moment your smug tone changes to one of despair.

So if tomorrow you got a rare form of cancer that cost millions of dollars to treat, you plan to be euthanized?

You can't justify theft like that.

You must be fortunate not to have any preexisting conditions or to not need any medical procedures that, without insurance, can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.

I appreciate your response :)

The real question is why are medical procedures so artificially expensive.

The only thing I would really need medical insurance for is a rare emergency procedure like an appendectomy. Information online says an appendectomy can cost anywhere from $1,500 to $150,000.

Why is there such a deviation? This is how insurance companies make their money.

When we consider that medical insurance in the USA is several hundred dollars per month, $1,500 out of pocket seems completely reasonable.

Oh, and another thing:

> The only thing I would really need medical insurance for is a rare emergency procedure like an appendectomy.

If you need an appendectomy, then you do not have time to fiddle around and comparison shop for medical insurance. If an appendix needs to come out, then it needs to come out ASAP (otherwise, the appendix could burst, causing sepsis). And there's no insurance provider on the planet that will take on a new customer and cover a procedure done before the customer's policy goes into effect.

Let me guess: you also think car insurance is a sham, and that you shouldn't be required to have it. And if, heaven forfend, you get into a car accident, you can just call up State Farm (or whoever) and get them to retroactively approve a claim for the accident. Am I right?

Sorry, my eyes can only roll so much...

And exactly how many people do you think have $1,500 laying around? (Hint: not many)

> And exactly how many people do you think have $1,500 laying around? (Hint: not many)

If you're paying $300/mo and are reasonably healthy (i.e. not going to the doctor regularly) then you'd save that up in now time. The real fix to all of this is to remove day-to-day care from health insurance and let it be just "insurance" (i.e. not healthcare). They have a bit of that with catastrophic plans but there are limitations on who can sign up for them (which I personally think is really stupid).

Five months is not "now [sic] time".

But personal responsibility! You are responsible for the things you aren't actually responsible for, like cancer or genetic diseases.

> That sounds like forcing a service (that you might not want) down your throat, and accusing you of stealing if you refuse to pay.

You can leave if you do not like it. Or you can vote for a different system.

"hey, I want to sleep in this room, but they say they don't let me until I pay, THEY FORCE ME TO PAY!!!"

That's totally different. Government vs Business. First one forces you to pay for things you don't asked for in the first place. The latter is optional, as no one has the right to force you buy their stuff/services.

I can't see my original reply, so I think something is wrong with HN.

Reality is more like:

2 out of 10 monkeys spend all their waking hours sacrificing and working so their children can have more than 1 banana and then give 15 out of the 20 bananas they earn to the group. The majority of monkeys in the group gives 0 bananas, but continue to say that the ones that do give the most aren't paying their fair share (and need to give even more). They then have many discussions on how they can force the other monkeys to give the rest of the group even more bananas, rather than putting energy into earning their own.

Reality is more like:

2 out of 10 monkeys spend all their waking hours sacrificing and working so their children can have more than 1 banana and then give 15 out of the 20 bananas they earn to the group.

The majority of monkeys in the group gives 0 bananas, but continue to say that the ones that do give the most aren't paying their fair share (and need to give even more).

They then have many discussions on how they can force the other monkeys to give the rest of the group even more bananas, rather than putting energy into earning their own.

Despite the exaggeration (2 out 10), this is actually an issue in the Nordic countries, so I do not understand the downvote.

In what way is that an issue in the Nordic countries?

2 out of 10 is really close in the US.

"One monkey says to a group of other monkeys, "we all need to take one of the 5 bananas we individually have and place it into a central banana disbursement fund". Then, another monkey from the group refuses to give up one of his bananas. How is this refusal equal to stealing?"

This is the most American and the most stupid thing I've read on HN. It's almost pop art.

I hope my POV can serve as a piece of history some day then :)

Because the banana was grown on the fields that the other monkeys paid for, transported on the roads that the other monkeys paid for and the monkey received it's education on how to get it's banana from a school that the other monkeys funded.

If you live on a farm off the grid have solar power, collect your own rain water and don't ever leave your plot of land fine don't pay taxes. But if you want the niceties of civilisation don't expect to get it for free.

"If you live on a farm off the grid...."

I agree, the monkey that does what you described shouldn't be forced to pay taxes.

But I am still confused as to why the monkey and his family can't attend private schools, drive on private roads, receive medical services from a private doctor, and donate any bananas he voluntarily decides to contribute to right the wrongs of his monkey island :)

In my opinion, the other monkeys that are trying to force him to subsidize other monkeys' consumption habits are just trying to collect rent from him!

And private police, private military, private customs & border security... You cannot live in a modern nation and not rely on services that are paid for by taxes.

Why is the average able bodied citizen unable to protect himself the local and national level?

Why don't the concerned citizens pool their funds together to pay for their own defence?

If we must pay taxes for these things, why must their be so much corruption and fraud (think of the expensive fighter jets and missiles that government agents purchase at inflated prices, from companies that funnel profits to a very select few rich individuals, who funded the campaigns necessary to get the government agents in power?)

The concerned citizens do pool their funds together to pay for their own defence, they do this with a system called "government".

You are correct. So then why do those same citizens yell at me to pay my taxes, when I am not concerned as they are, and don't want the sub-par and expensive defense services they are providing me :)

Because you're benefiting from those sub-par services anyway. They're still better than none at all.

There is always an option to unsubscribe from living in a society - it's called "renunciation of citizenship".

> Why don't the concerned citizens pool their funds together to pay for their own defence?

Sounds like the purpose of a tax system to me.

Because all those private services that you describe in turn use public services.

Unless all these private services band together so that they become truly widespread and form something that makes paying for them easier. Maybe to make it fair the people that use them the most and profit the most from them should pay the most. Maybe we could call such a banding of public services a nation and call the usage fees taxes....

If the monkey expects other poor bananaa-less monkeys to behave in same standards as his educated ass deserves , then he better his bit to help progress the society which allowed him to have all those said benefits .

The monkey may buy his "private banana peeling education" , but failing to remember his anscestor monkeys and community monkeys who kept improving art of banana peeling and publishing it freely lead to the said monkey to live in era of "modern banana peeling" is a crime.

There is no price for education than helping others receive it , paying your bit to improve the overall condition of monkey kind is the only way to repay the debt

When the banana production facility is predicated on the collective effort and value that all of the monkeys provide, then refusing to pay taxes is tantamount to sealing from the society. Since the society provides for the common good, including the production of bananas, it follows that the individuals must honor and provide for that social function--which in the end serves _them_.

I appreciate your POV, but why is this monkey not able to produce his own bananas from the trees and the soil?

Okay, so the monkey produces all he needs for himself. And all he ever needed? That would be 10k bananas for previous monkey education. Monkey may pay them over time.

Why is the monkey being forced to pay for services already rendered to him that were paid for by taxes? Is there a budget shortfall somewhere?

This is like saying I need to pay Oracle $10,000 for all those years that my drivers license info sat on an Oracle database :)

Because there's no way to opt-out of the benefits of a well-educated, well-protected society with good infrastructure. If we could send everyone who wants to opt out of taxes to some island somewhere, we would.

And if you could allow them to leave without taxing them 50% of their wealth on the way out the door, a lot of them would go. You pretty much hit the nail on the head in 2 directions. People are not given the option to vote with thier feet or their dollars. I know I wont ever need social security (if it even still exists by the time I want to stop making money) and yet I can not opt out of it. Why? The reason why is I'm not paying into my own retirement at all, I'm funding someone elses. I'd even happily give up everything I've already paid in if I could just stop paying in the future.

Also this notion of a well protected society is total bunk. I could have paid $50K in taxes last year as a self employed guy, but if my business collapses this year and I don't have a wife or children there is no safety net for me. The government isn't going to swoop in and pay for my rent and bills while I get back on my feet. Something I could have easily accomplished for myself with those same $50K. The federal safety net pretty much excludes childless single men entirely.

You're talking about the US now right? The US is a special kind of fucked up. No way I'm going to defend that, I'm Swedish. We have safety nets and self-funded public pensions (you can even choose the investment).

Indeed I am. Good catch. Yeah Sweden has a better deal all around. And you guys even have decent pervasive internet!

And if this monkey could emigrate to Sweden tomorrow and pay much higher taxes for much more collective benefits, you bet my monkey tail I would.

If only Sweden were in the tropics... this monkey not into freezing.

Luckily: Snow Monkey :)

If you look at many factors Sweden is way more livable than the USA. Perhaps that explains why culturally they don't mind paying higher taxes. I've worked in the US and Canada. I pay more taxes in Canada but the social services and health care are much better here and I can go to great public facilities like gyms and pools that I had to pay for privately in NY

Fully public facilities like gyms and pools are just one brand of soda, as it were. Some people don't like Pepsi, they'd rather drink Coca Cola, or put more plainly at least go to gyms and pools where the people have an appreciation of the cost of good things. There is the central difference between the American way of doing things, people have more freedom to choose what they spend their money on. If you are subsidizing everyone's pools and gyms, and you don't care to go yourself, money is being stolen from you in a sense, or to use the soda analogy, you're being force fed Pepsi when you really want something else.

> There is the central difference between the American way of doing things, people have more freedom to choose what they spend their money on.

And people which don't have money have less freedom and no choice about it. Maybe the problem is that you decided that freedom is dead presidents printed using green ink.

>And people which don't have money have less freedom and no choice about it

So, what are you proposing? That everything is funded from taxes, so that people who make less money could enjoy the same things as people who make a lot?

This is called communism, and has failed miserably (see Venezuela, Cuba, etc).

There is an acceptable level of sharing (healthcare, defense, police), but swimming pools? What about spas?

Equality is all about equality of opportunity, not equality of consumption.

Public swimming pools can also be found in most european countries, and western europe is not exactly a collection of failed communist states.

There is a nice ring to the ideology of freedom, but practicality beats purity, and when it comes to the social cost vs reward of public institutions, the cursor in the US is way off.

If swimming pools are out of the question for you, free education and health care are an easier starting point.

How are you being forced? You're free to leave the country and live somewhere else where there is no health care for the poor. It sounds as if the Swedish people are fine with the system. It works for them. It works remarkably well indeed.

And that is how you end up with a country full of poor obese people, who drive up healthcare costs for everyone.

The American Way: Cutting off your nose to spite your face.

> One monkey says to a group of other monkeys,

A monkey can live for himself, in a modern society no human is an island. You need extremely complex systems on place: Communications, education, law, law enforcement, infrastructures, etc.

Millions of human beings in a complex society are not 5 monkeys. I understand your point, but I think that it doesn't apply at this scale.

I greatly appreciate your accurate and civil response!

I think it is achievable at some scale. The right number of course is somewhere between 5 monkeys on an island, and 7 billion monkeys on a planet.

You could conceivably take your money, buy a boat, load it up with 20 years worth of solar panels, greenhouse materials, medicine, guns, etc... and you can boat out to a cold desolate rock in the ocean like Bouvet Island, and you can live a complete life of anarchy and no taxes, etc etc.

But this is an extreme example, and shouldn't be what you have to do to live a life that is 100% free of being coerced into paying for the systems that are present in modern society.

An equally extreme situation, though, is being forced to pay an ever-increasing portion of your income in taxes, fines, levies, fees, and surcharges to the government... so that it can subsidize the wrong technologies and human behaviors.

> You could conceivably take your money, buy a boat, load it up with 20 years worth of solar panels, greenhouse materials, medicine, guns, etc... and you can boat out to a cold desolate rock in the ocean like Bouvet Island, and you can live a complete life of anarchy and no taxes, etc etc.

And over time, the panels will deteriorate and break, medicine will run out, guns will rust, explosives in ammo will go bad (assuming people haven't already used it all up trying to kill each other). Then, the Anarchy Island will quickly revert to hunter-gatherer/early agrarian level of advancement and quality-of-life.

I understand that you'd love not to pay for things you disagree with, but what alternative do you propose? I think America itself is a perfect example showing that education, security and healthcare do not work well when privatized.

"Then, another monkey from the group refuses to give up one of his bananas. How is this refusal equal to stealing?"

You're leaving out the veterinarian who accepts a payment of bananas equal to the number of monkeys within the group. That'd be fine if the refusing monkey didn't go on to accept healthcare from said vet. But since he does, the other monkeys must chip in more banana to meet the required payment since not paying would force the vet to stop working for any of them, period.

"But since he does..."

This is a fatal assumption to make ;) I personally pay income taxes, do not have health insurance, and on the off times I require medical/dental care, I go to a private medical practice.

It is therefore immoral to force me to pay for a service I am choosing not to use :)

> It is therefore immoral to force me to pay for a service I am choosing not to use :)

Only if you define moral as "everyone for himself, weaker ones be damned" and sure that's your privilege to hope (and vote) for, but not a society I'd want to live in.

> everyone for himself

I think it's also relevant to point out a sort of butterfly effect.

For example, John doesn't ride the public bus, but Sally, the after-school-care provider, rides it to and from work each day. John, is a single father and can't afford a private daycare so he relies on the public school's after care provided by Sally. Sure, John could vote to abolish the bus system, and save a few dollars in taxes each year, but then he's cutting off his own nose to spite his face as he no longer can afford after care for his children.

I've heard that Westerners misunderstand the "socialism" of Nordic countries. More than one person has posited that the majority favors free and public healthcare and education systems because they are better for the individual; it ensures their family, regardless of personal circumstances, are taken care of and have the backing of an entire country. Not sure if this is true, but I hope it is.

"How is this refusal equal to stealing?"

Because he is going to eat up from that salad. In nordic countries everybody actually uses the resources enabled by taxes.

All the monkeys only got the bananas because they were transported to them on public roads paid for by taxes, etc. Wait, you mean your example doesn't really fit the problem at hand?

That other monkey is free to leave and go far away, and not reap the benefits afforded to the group of monkeys when they pool their assets.

I 100000% agree! The only issue is that on this Earth, far away = Antarctica, Bouvet Island, a barge in the ocean....

Surely there needs to be some middle ground where I can live in a relatively hospitable place without having to worry about being placed under surveillance and being forced to pay large income and property taxes ;)

Those places are called tax havens, but they still operate on taxes paid by the regular citizenry, which is unfair.

You are unfortunately stuck sharing your respective country with other people, and if you ever use a road, a doctor, an emergency service, have a standing army or series of power stations and central banks that keep the economy chugging along, you should absolutely pay what the people consider a fair share of taxes.

Maybe, just maybe, if there is literally nowhere on the earth that you can go to find your ideal society, that your ideal society can't exist? There are hundreds of countries and 7 billion people. If none of them have the system you want, that might suggest it isn't workable in practice.

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