Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
Statements like this just scream, "RULE ME!"
|
Absolute monarchs and dictators rule; I live in a country where we are governed.
Getting taxed is not lending the government your money; it's not giving them power of attorney to spend your money; and it's definitely not tyrannical extraction of your money. Thinking you still own that money once it is in revenue is tinfoil hat stuff - do you have a say in what happens with the money you've paid the bank for your mortgage? Do you feel you have the right to ask Toyota to use the money you spent on your car specifically on engine research? No? Then why do you think that once you've given the government money, you should have a further say in where it's spent just because it was
- was, as in used to be -your money?
The right to question government - and by extension, where it spends its money - comes from citizenship and its attached democratic rights, not from how much money you give in taxes, or even whether you pay any at all. The pernicious idea that money buys you influence in what the government does is how lobbyists and corporations distort the processes of democracy; it is this that endangers our freedoms now, not government in and of itself.