Gene Wolfe's Politics

David Stockhoff · 31 Mar 2009, 21:32 · from 2009-March.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:32:16 -0400
Subject: (urth)  Gene Wolfe's Politics
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 [1] the military and everything pertaining thereunto,

There's your "armed robbery" right there. ------------------------------ 
Message: 4 Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:16:58 -0400 (EDT) From: 
brunians at brunians.org Subject: Re: (urth) Gene Wolfe's Politics To: "The 
Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Message-ID: 
<5572.67.142.130.25.1238527018.squirrel at brunians.org> Content-Type: 
text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1

>>> >>> Who do estate taxes get passed on to?
>>>       

>> >> As far as I know, estates are only left by natural persons, that is,
>> >> they are not paid by businesses.
>>     

> > But how do they not work on the rich people who own the businesses?
>   

(A) Whose money is it? My point of view is that it belongs to the rich
people and as their property should be disposed of in the manner in which
they choose. There are other points of view (see below).

(B) Define 'work'. Certainly it does work as a means of limiting social
mobility, but is that the purpose of taxation? To my mind taxation is
armed robbery, only justifiable for the absolutely necessary functions of
government, which are:

 [1] the military and everything pertaining thereunto,
 [2] building and maintaining infrastructure (taxation to support a rail
system would be perfectly legitimate from my point of view) and
 [3] big science, big enough that no private concern would want to do
(space programs and superconducting supercolliders and so on).

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