posted
More dishonesty. It's just amazing that people like Reid can get away with this kind of idiocy.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Sure, if I say pay your rent or I'm evicting you, I'm forcing you to give it. If I punch you and take the rent from you, I'm taking it forcefully.
Doing something forcefully implies... the use of force!
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
Taking away someone's life, liberty or property is an act of force. Fining someone is force. Imprisoning someone is force. Killing someone is force. If any of those are the threat offered to someone for not doing a thing, then the thing is not voluntary.
You might as well say that being mugged is voluntary. After all, you can refuse to give your money to the mugger. Sure, you might wind up dead, but that's your choice. The process is voluntary.
And you wonder why this country is so screwed up.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Some goodies: ==== Jan Helfeld: …if the government is in the business of forcefully taking money from some people in order to provide welfare benefits to others, how will the people whose money is being taken feel about the government?
Harry Reid: Well, I don’t accept your phraseology. I don’t think we “force” people…
Helfeld: Taxation is not forceful?
Reid: Well, no.
Helfeld: It’s voluntary?
Reid: In fact, quite to the contrary. Our system of government is a voluntary tax system.
Helfeld: Oh… if you don’t want to pay your taxes, you don’t have to?
Reid: Of course you have to pay your taxes ====
Helfeld: Can the taxpayer decide not to pay his taxes if he wants?
Reid: He can… He can not pay his taxes if he wants.
Helfeld: What will be the…? What will happen?
Reid: He’ll be subject to civil and criminal penalties. ====
Helfeld: You can decide not to pay taxes? In the United States?
Reid: I mean, I really don’t understand what you’re trying to get at. If you’re… What… the point of the matter is…
Helfeld: Because you objected to my phraseology. You said that… you say that the government isn’t forcefully taking money from some people to provide welfare benefits to others, and, in fact, that’s what it’s doing, because all taxation is forceful. It’s backed up by physical force. If you don’t pay your taxes, the government will intervene with you forcefully. So you don’t have a choice. It’s not voluntary. You can’t decide not to pay and not suffer consequences. If you don’t pay, you’ll go to jail. So: you’re forced to pay.
Reid: You don’t… you don’t go to jail. Some people go to jail. There are all kind of civil penalties if you don’t pay your taxes: you pay interest and you pay penalties. The fact of the matter is, our system is a voluntary system. ====
Posts: 571 | Registered: Mar 2001
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Also: Seeing the actual transcript, I see where the confusion arises. This is one of those interviews in which the interviewer is solely there to bait the interviewee.
What is established in this interview? That people in America are bound by law to pay taxes. That is some investigative journalism right there.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I watched the video. It is very clear that Senator Reid is not saying, Lisa, what you think he is saying. In fact, Harry Reid and the interviewer are in complete agreement on the subject; they only differ on the language used.
Reid is quite correct when he says that paying taxes is voluntary. One doesn't have to pay taxes. There will be consequences if you don't, and he forthrightly says so, but to pay or not to pay -- the responsibility lies, at least initially, with the citizen.
They are having a totally semantic argument in this video. On the facts, processes, and consequences, they are in absolute agreement. There is no dishonesty here.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Taking away someone's life, liberty or property is an act of force. Fining someone is force. Imprisoning someone is force. Killing someone is force. If any of those are the threat offered to someone for not doing a thing, then the thing is not voluntary.
You might as well say that being mugged is voluntary. After all, you can refuse to give your money to the mugger. Sure, you might wind up dead, but that's your choice. The process is voluntary.
And you wonder why this country is so screwed up.
I wasn't arguing that payings taxes is a voluntary act, just that the interviewer was purposefully throwing in the term "forcefully" to colour the question and catch Reid out.
Of course, Reid is an idiot to be caught out so easily, and an idiot to try and argue that taxes are voluntary. While there is technically a choice to be made, it's not a realistic choice.
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
We really have come to a total lack of nuance and depth of thought in this society. The fact that these two men even split the hairs necessary to have that conversation is what concerns me.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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There's not even a choice to be made. Unless you're dishonest, you can't choose between going to jail or paying your taxes -- you get to choose between paying your taxes or going to jail and paying taxes.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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It seems like the other way around. The Obama appointees have had to pay their taxes. Is the ones in much the same situation but who haven't gotten that focus who are most likely getting away with it.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Teshi: What is established in this interview? That people in America are bound by law to pay taxes. That is some investigative journalism right there.
posted
"As they go about their lives, people seem to suppose that it is logically possible to be coerced into making an agreement. Those who set out to force others to enter agreements presumably find their project feasible. They may not assume it will succeed, but they do not see success as ruled out from the start. Again those who complain in such terms as ‘She forced me to agree’ presumably think that they agreed. Otherwise it seems, they would rather say, with relief: ‘She forced me, so I didn’t agree!’ Finally those who refuse to agree presumably see themselves as choosing one of two available options. Such a person might well say, ‘He tried to force me to agree, but I refused’ implying that pressure might have effected an agreement, though it did not." - Margaret Gilbert, Political Obligation pgs 77-78
Now a very small excerpt from a paper I wrote. In part of it I comment on this.
"It seems that this means that a forced agreement does entail obligation to obey that agreement, as ordinary language dictates that it is a true agreement. Though the agreement may carry a weaker obligation than an agreement in which there were absolutely no form of coercion, it does not mean that there is no obligation to obey it. Gilbert’s argument relies upon the idea that though the entering of an agreement may, to some extent, be involuntary , it can still be intentional, thus morally binding a person to the agreement, as it would be immoral for A to intentionally deceive B, with whom A is making the agreement, though the initial coercion may have been immoral as well. Simply because an immoral action is performed does not mean that an immoral response is necessarily justified; and even if it is justified, it does not mean that the response is not immoral: it is simply justified immorality. When I say “justified immorality”, I mean it in the same way that I explained earlier, that one may be obligated to do something and obligated not to do that thing in different respects."
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: There's not even a choice to be made. Unless you're dishonest, you can't choose between going to jail or paying your taxes -- you get to choose between paying your taxes or going to jail and paying taxes.
That's a really big unless.
Trust me on this one. I see all kinds of tax returns. And get told about being paid "under the table" (a practice that disgusts me).
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Which part of multiple reiterations of "I disagree with your phraseology" don't people understand?
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Taking away someone's life, liberty or property is an act of force. Fining someone is force. Imprisoning someone is force. Killing someone is force. If any of those are the threat offered to someone for not doing a thing, then the thing is not voluntary.
Being murdered; probably not voluntary. Paying a fine is. Going along with the people imprisoning you is. You can choose not to drop those things, and accept the consequences of that choice. [/quote]
quote:You might as well say that being mugged is voluntary. After all, you can refuse to give your money to the mugger. Sure, you might wind up dead, but that's your choice. The process is voluntary.
It absolutely is. You can refuse. You can walk (or run) away. You can fight. You can scream. You can commit suicide. You can attempt to mug the mugger.
quote:And you wonder why this country is so screwed up.
Nope. Because it's full of people. And people have not gotten any better (or worse) than they ever were, thousands of years ago.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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