Lions and Eagles

A reddit user asked a question tonight about why "taxation is theft", whether there's more behind the phrase, and how governments could be expected to function without taxes. I'm rather pleased with the answer I gave: I'll answer with a couple of quotes from Lysander Spooner, one of the philosophical giants that Libertarians love: "If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized." And: "Taxation without consent is as plainly robbery, when enforced against one man, as when enforced against millions; and it is not to be imagined that juries could be blind to so self-evident a principle. Taking a man’s money without his consent, is also as much robbery, when it is done by millions of men, acting in concert, and calling themselves a government, as when it is done by a single individual, acting on his own responsibility, and calling himself a highwaym...

Last time I did one of these voting guides, I had some friends say, "Thanks, but we need one page we can just print off and take to the ballot box!" Well, here you go! Here's the quick list (along with links to get back to my reasoning, just in case you want to check my work).

Part three of this November's voting guide, now we tackle the ballot questions! Two Constitutional Amendments, one Tax! Unless I decide to wade into the Presidential race at some point later on, this will be the last of it. Please read on....

Now for the next race on my November ballot: Fayette County Board of Education:

I voted today! Have you voted yet? Here's just a quick one-page cheat-sheet version of my voting guide, I printed this out and brought it to the ballot box this morning: Public Service Commissioner 1: Chuck Eaton Public Service Commissioner 2: Pam Davidson House of Representatives: Kent Kingsley Sheriff: Barry Babb Tax Commissioner: George Wingo County Commissioner 1: Charles W. Oddo County Commissioner 2: David Barlow County Commissioner 3: Randy C. Ognio Board of Education 1: Barry Marchman Board of Education 2: Mary Kay Bacallo State Court: Carla McMillian Magistrate Court: Jason B. Thompson Gambling: No Ending unlimited gifts: Yes Gun licenses for young military: Yes Closing primaries: No Personhood: No T-SPLOST: No Package sales: Yes

Quick update to my voting guide, I'm changing my vote for U.S. Representative. Details below.

Last part of my voting guide. In this one, I tackle the issues questions. As a bonus, I've looked at both the Republican and Democratic party ballots. Then there are a couple of really important Special Election Referendum items that are going to be on both ballots.

The county and local races can get very contentious. Just a standard disclaimer here, I don't know any of the candidates personally, and I don't have any connection to any campaigns. All that I have to say is based on wading through news accounts, campaign web sites, and other easily available information. I'm judging the candidates based on what they have to say about themselves, and what others have to say about them.

A Facebook poster made this comment on a discussion about "health care as a human right": Rights are something that emerge over time, but only after a fight of one kind or another. Consider the right to vote, for example. We have expanded that right over time, at least in modern industrialized countries. With regard to healthcare, the argument is whether we as a society are ready to acknowledge (or grant if you prefer) that right for every person. We can certainly afford it. It is only a matter of priorities. I was inspired to give this reply: Judith: You and I have different concepts of what rights are and where they come from. I'm not saying this to pass judgement, just to point out that we are going to come to different conclusions from our different starting points. I underst and that you believe rights are something created or granted by society, or government. From my perspective, rights are something transcendent, something intrinsic to what it me...

Big businesses are just going to take unfair advantage of the new tax code. How do we know Warren Buffet and Wall Street won't just cheat the new system? There will always be people who are trying to game the system. But trying to cheat the system right now is like trying to cheat at a game of Monopoly with real $5000 dollar bills: The stakes are high, and the game is complicated enough that a clever player just might get away with it. Switch to the 9-9-9 plan, and you've lowered the stakes, and made the rules as simple as tic-tac-toe. Sure, you just know someone is going to try to cheat, but it's harder to see how they'll get away with it. You just want to help the rich, and step on the poor. Cut that out, we're trying to have a reasonable conversation here. Nobody sane wants a tax code that helps the rich at the expense of the poor. But that doesn't mean that the only other choice is a system that punishes success. Let's have a simple tax code with a ...

Since I wrote my first article , I've had some questions and concerns posed to me about my example. I like questions and concerns! It gives me a reason to do more writing! My friend John wrote to me: Another problem lies in the sales tax structures of the various states. An erroneous assumption in your calculations is that Georgia does not charge state sales tax on groceries. Only local sales taxes are charged on groceries and I believe pharmaceuticals. Florida has no sales tax charged whatsoever on groceries or prescription drugs. Varying state tax structures, to me, infinitely complicate the whole picture of whether 999 is good or bad when integrated into the existing taxes that will not go away. Here's the good news: Unlike Obamacare, we don't have to pass this bill to know what's in it. We can research, we can calculate, and we can prove whether this undertaking is really complicated beyond measure. My first task will be to research existing sales tax struc...

But aren't all sales taxes regressive?   Funny, I never hear anyone bring this one up when the state or local governments are trying to get us to approve the SPLOST, or penny sales taxes, or any of those other "temporary but somehow never dying" sales taxes to pay for all of those local projects they love. When politicians want to put a new sales tax on us, the word "regressive" is never heard. It's only when someone proposes getting rid of a complicated income tax system that no one likes anyway that this word even comes up. Anyway, I want to be careful with this topic. "Regressive" is a politically-charged word. Let's make sure we establish what it means, first. According to Investopedia , a regressive tax is "a tax that takes a larger percentage from low-income people than high-income people". It may be just me, but that doesn't sound like a very precise definition. A larger percentage of what? Does this mean that, in a...

Test 2: But what about that 9% income tax? Won't that hurt poor people who aren't paying income tax now? One concern raised is that the flat 9% income tax will hurt people who aren't taxed right now. Let's try those numbers out, again keeping the assumptions of the tax calculator intact. Let's take a household of 4 (same as mine), earning and spending at the poverty level. That is, every dollar they earn in a year, they have to spend. Just to make it worst-case-scenario, let's say that everything they buy is new, so everything they buy is taxed. Most sensible families at the real poverty level are buying used wherever they can, which means the tax doesn't touch everything they buy, but let's take this worst case just for the sake of argument. The latest data I have says that in 2005, this family would have earned (and spent) $25,660. Let's say that this family lives in a state with 0% sales tax, just to keep that part of the math simple. Finally,...

By now, most everyone's heard about Herman Cain's 999 Tax Plan. Some love it, some love to bash it. But who can you trust? It seems everyone's got something to gain. A lot of the negative statements about it have come from other candidates who see it as a great target, or from tax lobbying institutes who depend on the complication of the existing system to justify their existence. But then, even though I like Cain, I don't want to risk trusting his math blindly, without checking it out myself. I mean, sure, he's got a degree in math, another in computer science, and he used to calculate rocket trajectories for the Navy, but he could be wrong this time, right? So, here's a little experiment. I ran across a 999 Tax Calculator  web site, not affiliated with or funded by the Cain Campaign, which lets you plug in numbers and see the effect of the new tax plan on prices. The best part is, you can see the calculations and check them for yourself. Will the poor pay mo...

Heard on the radio this morning: Police officers unhappy with their pay and benefits may go on "ticket strike" by cutting down on number of traffic tickets issued, cutting into municipal revenue. When your employer is strapped for revenue, and can't pay what you want as a result, how does it make sense to protest using an action that will leave them even more strapped for revenue? As a government, how does it make any sense to pass a law, then build your budget on the expectation that people will break that law, giving you income from fines? How does that fit with the idea that we are supposed to be a free society? I'm just saying....

My letter to the editor sparked some interesting debate and comments. Mostly encouragements, good to hear. There were a few folks who didn't necessarily disagree, but who think that we'll never get people to be personally responsible for themselves on a large enough scale to ever solve the problem.What can I say? If you start with a low expectation of people, they'll satisfy that expectation. It's like the epidemic of low expectations in majority-black schools these days: If you tell students that they can't learn, then they won't try, and if they don't try, they won't learn. Likewise, if you create policy based on the expectation that people won't try to plan for their own future, you'll make it harder on people who actually do plan for their own futures. On the other hand, if we expect that there will be people who are responsible, and that there will be people who are charitable to those in need, then we might actually get people who are ...