Taxation is theft

[SpontaneousOrder]

But you've still got to pay it. I like having roads and the NHS.

So you'd be happy to pay for it then. What's the problem?

I like roads too. I'd pay for the ones I like if someone owned ones I wanted to use.

I don't like the NHS. I would't pay for that.

i don't think we need nuclear submarines either, so I wouldn't pay for those.

[SpontaneousOrder]

The law of the land is the correct one because it can be imposed on you by force. Their police force is bigger than yours, and, ultimately, their army is bigger than yours.

So "the land" is defined as the biggest mob? I'm fine with that - we just need to be clear with our definitions.

(you don't have any legislation, that's just being silly)

How many people are required before it ceases to be 'silly'?

because it's backed by people with guns.

So, again to be clear, you hold that the definition of theft, murder, etc is dependant on the subjective opinion of whoever holds the most guns?

So if the United States invaded and forcefully had sex with and then killed every woman in the UK, by your definition, there would have been no rape or murder? Again, we just need to make sure our definitions are clear.

[Sysman]

What possible incentive can rates of 98% and 99.25% create?

For 98%, 2p of every pound you earn is yours, and at 99.25%, 0.75p (1.8d) in every pound is yours.

I remember Alan Whicker doing a programme on top rate tax payers.

Ian Fleming would get 50K for a Bond film script, of which he saw 7K.

If he did two in a financial year he'd get 100K, of which he'd only see 8K, so he wasn't going to do that.

The bastards therefore deprived us of the chance of more than one Bond film a year.

[stek]

Is Pitt the younger the one Blackadder screwed over?

Wasn't that Pitt the Embryo? Or Pitt the Glint in the Milkman's Eye?

[SpontaneousOrder]

Wasn't that Pitt the Embryo? Or Pitt the Glint in the Milkman's Eye?

I'm going to have to put the DVD in later

[Sysman]

The effect on us standard rate payers

The highest rate of income tax peaked in the Second World War at 99.25%.

It was slightly reduced after the war and was around 90% through the 1950s and 60s.

In 1971 the top-rate of income tax on earned income was cut to 75%.

A surcharge of 15% on investment income kept the top rate on that income at 90%.

In 1974 this cut was partly reversed, and the top rate on earned income raised to 83%.

With the investment income surcharge this raised the top rate on investment income to 98%, the highest permanent rate since the war.

This applied to incomes over £20,000 (£176,477 as of 2014).

In 1974, as many as 750,000 people were liable to pay the top-rate of income tax

What possible incentive can rates of 98% and 99.25% create?

For 98%, 2p of every pound you earn is yours, and at 99.25%, 0.75p (1.8d) in every pound is yours.

When Thatcher got in and cut the top rate of tax to 60% I made a back of a fag packet calculation that our MD probably saw a rise in his take home pay equivalent to my gross salary. Good luck to him, he was a dynamic sort full of ideas, didn't sit on his derrière and deserved rewarding.

However I later discovered that he was taking a pretty low salary, as were lots of folks in his sort of position, because there were other more tax efficient ways to pay themselves.

In practice, those salaries taken were imposing an artificial ceiling on the rest of us.

[doodab]

I'm a legislative body.

Poppycock. You don't have the power to legislate or to enforce it, which is ultimately what it's all about.

So what is "the land" ? Again all we're doing is pushing the question back a level each time which will go on forever so long as you can think of more abstractions and euphemisms for things which don't really exist.

At the end of the day, there is a prevailing system of rules in any particular region of the earth. That is the law of the land. Whether you like them or choose to obey them or not, they do really exist. How they get there varies from place to place, sometimes it's majority/mob rule, at other times such rules are simply imposed by powerful minorities.

If stealing and taxation aren't objectively definable actions (i.e. if they are dependent on legislation), then what sense does it make to state in an objective fashion that anyone can steal but only people with authority (where does this authority come from? I have the authority to not be taxed. How do we proceed from here?) may tax.

You don't have the "authority not to be taxed" though. You might have the desire not to be taxed but it's not the same thing.

All you're doing is saying that you can fit a square peg in a round hole because you and your pals have written a law that states that a square peg will indeed fit into a round hole.

It's not "me and my pals", it's the prevailing social order. You may not like it, I may not like it, but unless you have the power (political support, army or whatever) to overthrow it and put something else in it's place there is piss all you can do about it. Making up an "alternative" set of rules counts for tulip all unless you have a way to persuade society to adopt them.

[eek]

[SpontaneousOrder]

It's not "me and my pals", it's the prevailing social order. You may not like it, I may not like it, but unless you have the power (political support, army or whatever) to overthrow it and put something else in it's place there is piss all you can do about it. Making up an "alternative" set of rules counts for tulip all unless you have a way to persuade society to adopt them.

So in that case I'd ask you the same question I asked NotAllThere regarding the US invading the UK, forcefully molesting and then killing every woman in the UK. As they are in the majority with the forceful power to enforce their own ideas of what is law, then would no rape or murder have taken place?

[doodab]

So in that case I'd ask you the same question I asked NotAllThere regarding the US invading the UK, forcefully molesting and then killing every woman in the UK. As they are in the majority with the forceful power to enforce their own ideas of what is law, then would no rape or murder have taken place?

The US idea of law makes it quite clear that the crimes of rape and murder would have taken place.

Even if it didn't, many observers or historians might conclude that rape and murder took place based on their own definition of such things.

You ask some very ill thought out and melodramatic questions. How old are you?