Quote:
Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
While I like the tone of the article, I think various answers to this question: "Can a moral case be made for taking the rightful property of one American and giving it to another to whom it does not belong?" would make for an interesting discussion.
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If we're going back to base principles, it's not fair to start in the middle. Before one can get to your question, one first has to resolve the question: "How do we determine that any person has a right to any particular property, or for that matter any property at all?"
You assume there's a "right" to every dollar that an employer pays in your name, but is that true? Does the analysis change if instead of an "income" tax, there is a "employee" tax, i.e. instead of taxing your right to earn money, the government taxes your employer's right to hire people (which has same net effect, but different psychologically, and perhaps different philosophically). From which party does a sales tax take property? If the origin of all land grants is the government (whether top down a la feudalism or through the collective parcelling of the commons), why are property taxes not simply a form of rent?
