If I were to take $20,000 from your family in order to further some cause I hold to be noble or even essential for my own or someone else’s well-being, would that be right of me? If I were to take $10,000 from your family and $10,000 from your best friend’s family for the same reason, would this make my actions any less wrong? What about $1 from each of 20,000 families?
What if I set up an institution to help others in my position to do the same—to take a small amount of money from all families in the United States? What if I called this institution the government?
Those who reject the premise of taxation on the basis of its morality (or lack thereof) are often thought of as greedy, selfish and uncompassionate. They say that taxation is theft and that theft—and therefore taxation—is immoral. Are they so privileged as to be blinded from the existence of the needy and the less fortunate? How can those who claim to have the moral upper hand reject the institution which provides welfare to the needy and financial assistance to the jobless?
In order to answer these questions, it is important to recognize the nature of the state: Governments merely redistribute wealth—they do not create it. The government does not produce its own goods and does not by itself generate the capital required for the operation of its services. It is the taxpayers who fund each and every thing the government does.
Unfortunately, it is much easier to see the benefits of such government programs than it is to see the millions of people who fund them. Take a look at N.C. State as a microcosm—we see the hundreds of students on our sports fields participating in our Intramural Sports leagues, but the thousands of students who pay $157.18 per year for this program, who may not use the programs, go unnoticed.
Every penny the government spends must first be taken from the hands of its citizens via taxation. And in short, the government does not provide the aforementioned welfare checks and unemployment benefits. Instead, it takes money from one group of individuals and redistributes it to another.
At this point in the discussion, those who denounce the institution of taxation will cry, “Theft, theft!” as if they aren’t aware that the system was implemented by a government of the people, for the people, by the people—as if it still counts as theft, even though it has been institutionalized on a collective scale. As if it’s wrong to strip individuals of their freedoms; to ultimately lock them up in jail cells for refusing to pay the “fair share” of the fruits of their own labor to an imposing collective. As if we should be free to pursue our own lives, liberties and happiness.
But theft is theft whether it is on an individual scale or a collective one. It is not wrong for people to keep their own wealth and manage it as they see fit. The existence of needs does not validate the infringement of rights via the state’s redistribution of wealth. Compassionate people will voluntarily choose to help the unfortunate with their own resources, but there is no altruism found in getting the government to force someone else to do the same. In the words of libertarian advocate and magician Penn Jillette, doing so would be “immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.”
“People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed and sheltered,” Jillette said. “If we’re compassionate, we’ll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint.”
Needs will always exist in any society, but it is up to each person to take responsibility for those needs. Theft should hardly be an option. The state is not the solution.
