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From: kfl@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Taxes
Message-ID: <12268566847.17.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Mon, 5-Jan-87 15:50:30 EST
Article-I.D.: RED.12268566847.17.MCGREW
Posted: Mon Jan  5 15:50:30 1987
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    ...  I'm rather suprised you would designate taxes as being like a
    contribution!  Taxes are coerced out of people, it is not at all
    like giving food to the poor.  The IRS will not take away your
    house if you don't give food to the poor. -CWM]

  Taxes are not voluntary contributions.  However, since tax rates are
set by the people we elect, the amount of tax money that goes to a
given cause is usually roughly equal to the amount that would go to
that cause if the contributions were truly voluntary.
  For instance if half the people think that the space program should
get $100 per person per year, and the other half think it should get
$200 per person per year, the government (if truly representative)
would spend about $150 per person per year on the space program.
  This is unfair to those who don't choose to spend that much.  If the
space program were to be financed entirely by voluntary donations, it
would receive the same amount.
                                                           ...Keith

[ I find no real proof of this.  I don't buy that people would take
their tax monies, turn right around and spend it on exactly what their
taxes would have gone for.  (Not to say that I favor the current
system of taxation.)  -CWM]
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