Debunking Socialists

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Bank robbers also get a little miffed and try to change the subject when people call them criminals in polite conversation.

You've never questioned my arguments to the effect that there really is no such thing as a pretax income in the U.S.



Are you brain damaged? I question it every time you mention it, and you give the same handwaving answer every time.

Is there any such thing as "money in a savings account"? When you go to the bank, you can't identify the particular dollar bills that belong to you. Your savings account balance is just an accounting figure. Do you have any right to that?

And EVEN IF we allow that the income earner has no right to the pretax income, you haven't shown that government, or anyone else, does have a right to it. If the "it's just an accounting figure" argument works against ownership by the earner, then surely it works against others who claim rights to that arbitrary number.

All income is pretax income before taxes. Since the earner has no right to any of it, why do you allow him to keep any of it?

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Until you do, since people can't 'own' something which doesn't exist, it can't be 'theft' because theft presupposes ownership.



How can you distribute something that doesn't exist?

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You guys just assert it over and over, following the old and cheap political tactic of 'tell a lie enough times and eventually people start to believe it', without ever demonstarting that anybody legitmately owns pre-tax income in the U.S. today.



You haven't demonstrated anything to any other effect.

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Example: How you think this when the very dollar bills that the economy runs on are printed by the government is a good question. (How can you own what the government produces, btw, if the government can't own what you produce?) Try to imagine participating in the economy without using public roads, publicly funded communication infrastructure, publicly educated employees, publicly funded electricity, water, gas, and other utilities, publicly funded information, technology, research and development -- it's absolutely impossible. The only way to avoid public goods and services is to move out of the country entirely, or at least become such a hermit, living off the fruits of your own labor, that you reduce your consumption of public goods and services to as little as possible.



This is the same old "government has invaded every corner of your life, therefore the government is legitimate" argument. If someone moves into your house with a gun pointed at you all the time, but he makes you some scrambled eggs in the morning, is his intrusion legitimate? Should you have to leave your house to get away from him?

The fact that you feel it necessary to isolate anyone that doesn't go along with your plan, and that you will prevent those people from working together on their own shows how authoritarian you are, and how much you fear the results of people working together voluntarily.

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Or this:

Suppose the gang of ten men had helped you buy a car, pitching in with a loan that covered 40 percent of the sticker price (which is about the percentage of the GDP devoted in the United States to taxes). And suppose they simply wanted return payment. By not returning the favor, it is you who become the thief. If you want a car that is 100 percent yours, simply pay the full price of one.



Government won't allow me to buy a car without getting a loan from them.

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Of course, by accepting the loan from the gang of ten men, you were able to buy a better car than you could afford in the first place. The same is true with all government services: they helped you in ways we can't imagine to earn income.



I can imagine. I could probably have gotten a loan with a better interest rate from a free market; since government forces me to take their loan whether I want to or not, though, I can't afford to take out the better loan in addition to the required one.

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People who make arguments like this are big on taking these goods but short on seeing why they need to pay for them.



The fact that government provides something does not indicate that they provide it *well*.

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It doesn't matter that they believe these public services should be privatized -- the point is that the government is nonetheless producing them, and they need to be paid for.



This is the labor theory of value talking. If a private firm produces stuff that is shoddy, poorly designed, and that doesn't fill a market demand, they can't force anyone to buy it, no matter how hard they scream that those goods "need to be paid for".

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Ultimately, any argument against paying taxes should be compared to its private sector equivalent, and the fallacy will become evident.



True. The fallacy does become evident. The fallacy is always in the government action, not the market action.