Monday, January 07, 2008

If Taxes Are Membership Fees, How Do I Resign My Membership?

I actually heard someone try to reframe taxes as “membership fees” the other day. What a bad analogy. If I don’t want the benefits of a club, I can quit and stop paying membership fees. If I stop paying taxes, people will come and kill me or kidnap me.

I can think of several more apt reframes for taxes. “Taxation is theft” is pretty dead on. Taxation as protection. Taxation as rent. Taxation as the price of civilization gets bandied about a lot but I don’t reckon it’s very persuasive if you dig into the analogy to any depth.

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