Here in Massachusetts we are trying to get rid of the income tax. I pasted this from a person on a bostonherald.com comment page.
“Not to be elitist, but I am an educated person, having spent thousands on higher education for myself. Nothwithstanding, I must say that Carla Howell and Michael Cloud s###. Are they even from Massachusetts? The Massachusetts constitution ought to be amended to say that only people who really care about Massachusetts ought to be able to come up with voter referendums in Massachusetts. You know who the original Libertarians were-- cave men and cave women. There were no taxes whatsoever in the neolithic period. As soon as there was civilization, however, there were taxes. Selflish people hate taxes. People who want to have a Massachusetts for the rich support this lousy referendum. If you’re poor or middle class or even upper middle class, you’re going to find that you have been dependent on public benefits in your life time. No one makes it alone. Even if you, or your mother, or your mother in law has never received a dime in Medicare or Medicaid, you may have gone to a public school. Anyone who has gone to public school has benefited from America’s successful experiment in a socialist experiment. You don’t like socialist medicine? Well you’ve had socialist education for decades. For a reason: education is essential to the success of democracy. With no State government, what if you become incapacitated from working? What if you have a special needs child? Carla Howell and Michael Cloud expect you to live in the wilderness like a “cave-person”. Good luck. Think twice at the polls…”
I am not selfish or rich but I hate taxes. What is so selfish about keeping your hard earned money? I would rather be selfish than a crook who tells me how much he can take from my paycheck every 2 weeks. The same old strawman, if their is no income tax, government and civilization would end as we know it. From what I have read, if Massachusetts abolished the income tax, it would roll the state government back to 1995 levels, oh the horror of living in 1995, we wern’t civilized back then!
People who are willing to use force to coerce you into their hare-brained schemes are more like cavemen than voluntaryists. The bulk of that post is emotive hysteria. Not worth reading.
I am selfish and, according to the government, rich. I feel that money that I earned in a mutually benificial exchange of my time for my employeers money is mine and not due to my over-lords. There is nothing wrong with the self. It is welfare/warfare statist propganda to feel that the armed robbers of the local, state and federal governments are actually helping anyone.
As for the “benifits” of taxes. There are none. Prior to income taxes, mostly socialized medicine and socialized education the US had the healthiest best educated populations in the world.
Just a question - isn’t the point of this ballot initiative voting on whether or not your money will be stolen? How does the initiative end the process of people voting on who gets to control my money?
In the future, pelase link to the source of the quote. 1) it’s poor form to quote without credit, 2) we can all pile on the socialists and statists and pro-state pro-tax trolls and agent provacateurs by dispensing some sound free market logic.
If I read your intro correctly, you were only trying to get rid of the income tax. So he read you completely wrong.
Also he has absolutely no arguementitive skills when it comes to history, simply because there were no taxes during the Neolithic era implies nothing, except for that everyone had such little sustainance that even a minute tax would have been virtual murder, it remained this way during the medieval period also, since indeed taxes could not go to high, otherwise your peasants would starve, or simply revolt. Also that the bandits and social parasites that made up the state had not yet technically emerged by this time. He uses several straw men, including the classic “NO one makes it alone.” arguement, which I have never understood.
Indeed, I am seeing the effects of a socialist educaiton system in a democracy. It produces people who cannot think logically or coherently.
And how does he propose “we” determine who cares about Massachusetts?[:@]
The article was more of a hit piece on the woman who started the petition to end the income tax. Some of the comments that people wrote supporting the income tax were good for a few laughs!
That is a lie. Cavemen were not “libertarians” by the furthest stretch of the imagination. Superstitious, hard-headed, and brutish, they demanded whatever they wanted and were accustomed to getting it by force. If you were to tell a cavemen that he should acquire goods and services only by peaceful persuasion, or mutual, voluntary exchange, he would laugh in your face before crushing your skull. So in a sense, there were taxes in the neolithic period. It is a fact that the first states and empires had their roots in stone-age barbarism.
No, as soon as there was civilization, there was slavery. Slavery was accepted for eons because “after all, roads and temples and aqueducts and bridges aren’t going to build themselves, right?” And for eons, slavery was accepted because it was useful (for the conquering tribe). Useful, however, is not the same as moral.
Right, because taxes penalize the rich for the benefit of everybody else? In reality, taxes benefit the crooked political class at the expense of everybody else.
The pro income tax groups are starting to run ads and the main theme is that cutting the tax is “reckless”, which it is and I have no problem with that. It will always be too “reckless” or the economy will be in turmoil. I guess the American revolution was too reckless for some, new ideas are always reckless.
