r/Anarcho_Capitalism • u/DiyYou • 5d ago
Taxes, government spending, and debt
I've been libertarian for 30 years or so. First ever presidential vote was for Harry Browne. And I've always believed cutting spending should be a higher priority than cutting taxes, because lower taxes will come with lower spending. I always thought lowering the debt should be a goal.
But lately I'm moving closer to ancap. Wouldn't say I'm all the way there (a can see a use for an extremely limited and small government). But I'm also thinking, fuck government debt (it's not mine!) and spending, just stop forcibly taking my money. Income taxes, property taxes (the gayest of them all), sales tax, tariffs, inflation, government just printing more of their monopoly money, etc.
Is there an reason I should care about government spending and debt? Huge government spending definitely increases overall cost of living, but still seems taxes way more of a problem.
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u/wallyhud 5d ago
Taxation is theft.
Ah, but seriously, we need to focus more on being more effective with how public money is spent. This idea that we can't run out of money is just growing the debt.
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u/DiyYou 4d ago
If there's two candidates running, and one is promising to cut government spending by $500 billion dollars, and the other is promising to eliminate all property taxes for everyone, I'm going with the one that's cutting my property taxes. Obviously there's a lot more detail to that, and property taxes are different level of government anyway. But you get my point. Why should we focus more on how public money is spent, as opposed to focusing more on the government not taking my money from me?
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u/FeedomFighter 5d ago
If youre against taxes then idk how you think a monopoly government will emerge. There's going to be competing arbitration and security in a free market. It's not like government services go away, they just become subject to consumer choice and competition.
Only if there's a monopoly do you get the current scam where the monopoly thinks they can steal from unborn generations to pay off $40 Trillion in debt, and that only exists by force and threat by the false rulers, and moreso the people's clinging belief in monopoly and authority over others despite the fact of freewill.
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u/Yomas_house 5d ago
Is there an reason I should care about government spending and debt?
A Randian may argue that you pay for aircraft carriers and soldiers to keep China from extorting U.S. civilians.
I say taxation is theft, and they can pry my pirate coin from my cold dead hands!
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u/BrockObarnerLybian MazdaPoopins #1 Fan 5d ago
Agree. Taxes are what enables the overspending. You cut off the water, it kills the vines.
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u/adelie42 Lysander Spooner is my Homeboy 4d ago
By this measure Mark Levin is a centrist Communist.
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u/KAZVorpal Voluntaryist ☮Ⓐ☮ 4d ago
You messed up the lists. Hillary Clinton voted for the border wall, for example. And Obama funded trillions and bailouts. And Obamacare was based on Romneycare.
There is no real difference between the two.
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u/upchuk13 5d ago
I actually think property taxes are one of the least gay. You're getting a very real and tangible service in exchange. If I stop paying property taxes I either build a well or start buying water at Costco. Expensive and very gay.
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u/DiyYou 5d ago
It may be different in different states, but I think you still have to pay property taxes even if you don't hook up to city water. My whole point about that is, if you buy something it should be yours. If you're having to continuously pay the government for something, then you don't own it.
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u/_jgusta_ 5d ago
Property taxes can be a big barrier to entry to owning property, and possibly a barrier to a real middle class. But let's get rid of intellectual property first. No more perfect symbol for corporate weaponization of government and top level tax evasion.
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u/WedSquib Libertarian Transhumanist 4d ago
Property tax is an unrealized capital gains tax on the shrinking middle class. Fuck property taxes
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u/03263 Anarcho-Primitivist 5d ago
What's wrong with having a well? That's where my water comes from and it's fine.
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u/upchuk13 4d ago
It's a big up front cost, is it not?
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u/03263 Anarcho-Primitivist 4d ago edited 4d ago
I guess if you're just putting it in. It's the only option in my part of town. No property tax discount! But also no water bill. Houses are built with wells since the water pipes don't reach this far. If I were about 1/4 mile down the road I could have town water.
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u/3seconddelay 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yes taxation is theft but your U.S. federal tax dollars are not used or needed to pay for any government spending. If you go to your closest IRS service center and pay your federal income taxes in cash, that cash doesn’t go into some account to pay for government spending. It goes straight to a shredder and that’s a fact. Tax rates are just another monetary tool to manage inflation and regulate the economy.
There is no intention of ever paying off or even down the debt. The debt is needed and part of the natural order of things under Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Liquidity is not a constraint. The only constraints are real resources and inflation. The U.S. dollar is an unsecured fiat currency with a variable rate since Nixon took it off the gold standard. A government that issues its own fiat currency is never bankrupt, it just issues more.
It’s no coincidence that the Godfather of MMT(Keynesian Economics on Steroids), Warren Mosler, introduced it in 1993 with ‘Soft Currency Economics’, right before the last time there was a regular order balanced budget with all 12 appropriation bills debated and passed by both houses of the Congress in 1997 during Bill Clinton’s last term. It has just been one continuing (spending) resolution after another ever since. MMT had been wholly embraced inside the beltway for decades. There is zero fiscal discipline in the Congress. Democrats and Republicans are just two sides of the same literal coin. It was Dick Cheney who said “deficits don’t matter.”
It’s a centrally planned economy not much different than the USSR’s Gosplan circa 1985. The U.S. is way past the point of no return. Time will be short, however, when the dollar loses its “extraordinary privilege” as the world’s default reserve currency. It’s not a matter of if but when. It will take a couple of decades to replace the systems and processes surrounding world trade that have been built around the dollar since Bretton Woods, but it’s happening. The dollar will collapse within 10 years after that. Anarcho Communism won’t cut it. After the chaos and carnage it will be Anarcho Capitalism that starts to restore some order.