Taxation is Extortion

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:58:27 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Suppose a man called you on the phone and told you to send him 20% of your income or he would kidnap you and put you in a cage. Suppose that he identified himself as working for a criminal gang well-known for keeping their promises about such threats. Most people would pay him. Most people would also rightly call his threat extortion.

Somehow it's different, though, when the gang well-known for keeping their promises about such threats calls itself "the state". They routinely demand 20% or more of your income, and threaten to kidnap you and put you in a cage if you refuse. They call this demand "taxation". They call the kidnapping "arrest". And they call their cages "prisons". This newspeak somehow makes what is clearly extortion OK with most people. Calling taxation by its true name, extortion, makes them angry. They are convinced that questioning taxation in any way is a bad thing, that it is a threat to civilization, that refusing to pay really IS criminal. Calling arrest by its true name, kidnapping, is so off the map for most people that they can't even get angry about it.

Well I'm here to shout it from the rooftops.

TAXATION IS EXTORTION!

ARREST IS KIDNAPPING!

I'm still paying the extortionists in the United States federal government, and my local state government, so that their goons won't kidnap and cage me. I still hate it.

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