Making You Pay For What You Believe is Wrong (Taxation)
Taxation for the purposes of maintaining a military for the sake of safety and enforcement of law seems hard to argue. It is reasonable that in order to live in a country, you pay some sort of fair share for maintaining that country. However would it be ethical to use taxation, rather than say funds gathered on your own or by a political party that supports it, to pay, for example, for birth control options and more contentiously, abortion?
There is tax money used on medical insurance to help pay for birth control and abortion and these are a nonessential part of society, neither maintaining safety or enforcing law.
I've noticed that while there may certainly be political extremists that would ban birth control and abortion options as a whole, a lot of them, mostly Christian, rather simply mind the fact that their tax money goes to funding them. Like being forced to lend a hand to what they believe is a form of murder.
A defense for this could be that birth control and abortion is a right for women and they should have easy access to it. Easy, including financially. But if you don't even want to pay for it, did you really want it?
Would it be a similar scenario if the government built a slaughterhouse with taxpayer money to make highly nutritious meats more available? PETA, Vegetarians and vegans would surely not be pleased with it.
So my question is, can taxation be ethical for purposes other than just maintaining the society's safety and enforcing laws. Wouldn't ANY issue that do not deal with these two things be unnecessary and at least somewhat contentious? And shouldn't organizations and individuals be raising their own funds to pay for changes that they want?
Edit: The "military" I mean here is any organization that uses brute force, which would include the US military as well as law enforcement police. US military operations that go farther than just maintaining safety should not be funded by the public either.
There is tax money used on medical insurance to help pay for birth control and abortion and these are a nonessential part of society, neither maintaining safety or enforcing law.
I've noticed that while there may certainly be political extremists that would ban birth control and abortion options as a whole, a lot of them, mostly Christian, rather simply mind the fact that their tax money goes to funding them. Like being forced to lend a hand to what they believe is a form of murder.
A defense for this could be that birth control and abortion is a right for women and they should have easy access to it. Easy, including financially. But if you don't even want to pay for it, did you really want it?
Would it be a similar scenario if the government built a slaughterhouse with taxpayer money to make highly nutritious meats more available? PETA, Vegetarians and vegans would surely not be pleased with it.
So my question is, can taxation be ethical for purposes other than just maintaining the society's safety and enforcing laws. Wouldn't ANY issue that do not deal with these two things be unnecessary and at least somewhat contentious? And shouldn't organizations and individuals be raising their own funds to pay for changes that they want?
Edit: The "military" I mean here is any organization that uses brute force, which would include the US military as well as law enforcement police. US military operations that go farther than just maintaining safety should not be funded by the public either.
Comments (21)
Quoting RBS
I will consider rephrasing my OP. My question was if taxation to fund policies that are not needed to maintain the society with taxpayer money is ethical.
Is this ethical in terms of the abortion context or the slaughterhouse example? Or just saying that unnecessary spending of tax money could be ethical?
between equally powerful party
This a mighty poor example for a libertarian to use for an attack on taxation. You are worried about the pennies spent on funding abortion, while ignoring the buckets of money spent on many useless military operations. The military depends on a lot of taxation of most of the population who do not receive either safety or enforcement of the law from the funded military activity. [It's mostly local and state police that protect safety and enforce law.]
Who does benefit from world-wide military activity? The military, for one. Major suppliers of goods and services purchased by the military for two; and three, the owners of the companies that do the supplying. Some amount of military force is necessary, but it can be argued that the American military establishment is a grossly wasteful operation funded by the extortion of "threats to the national interest".
Funny I was going to post "there's no 'I' in team".
Meaning the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the slightly less many. We agree to vote, not vote to agree.
If a cause is deemed wrong or offensive the logic behind it should be self-evident when brought up to the public through an action or awareness campaign or committee. However, just because you believe something is evil doesn't mean it's not a lesser evil. That is to say every point has a counterpoint. A popular and powerful one being "it would cost (you) money" such as mandating all food product be organic and cruelty-free or something.
The slaughterhouse yield of military activity in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and numerous other places dwarfs the "abortion slaughterhouse".
I don't think we are disagreeing on much. I should've clarified that when I used the term military, I meant any organization wielding some sort of brute force, so the law enforcement active inside its own country would count as the military. Not specifically the army, marines, and so on. They operate in many ways that aren't solely to maintain safety. The operations going farther than that is wasteful and the same criticisms from my argument applies.
While there is room to argue what constitutes specifically what "maintaining safety" means, any operations that aren't for maintaining safety should be funded by individuals or organizations that support the idea.
I am not talking about whether one thing is more evil than another. Rather I'm saying the taxes we pay to the government should be paying the minimum amount to maintain its own existence, and anything beyond that should be done by individuals. Virtue through the government doesn't work because we cannot agree on the virtue.
I'm not sure you can get agreement on whatever you mean exactly with 'minimum amount to maintain its own existence.'
First, I'd like to congratulate you on having the most intriguing screen name on this site I've come across to date.
Also,
The point of a government is to enact the will of the people using its might, resources, and governmental status. There are things due to the nature of an open society not every citizen can know, operate, or have access to. If the government literally only has the funds to "maintain it's own existence" .. and not do anything else .. well that's kinda not how government works. Why would something that doesn't do anything of purpose need to exist in the first place?
Vice or virtue aside the "will of the people" which is the majority of what people want and need shall be enacted, enforced, and made more easily possible or otherwise brought into reality per statutes of the Constitution.
Of course I speak in the context of a government by the people and for the people, ergo, it is elected individuals doing what the majority of citizens want. Now we can talk about corruption all day .. but that aside, the individual citizen who can't be "unelected" or will otherwise face no accountability for failure or unscrupulous actions or activity isn't deterred by transparency in the same way an elected official who does need to succeed in the court of public opinion to get reelected is.
Having the democratic republic fight over what is the "minimum amount" is more preferable to trying to force in virtue based policies.
Maybe some examples of how it could look?
Sorry, the wording was misleading. I should've said the minimum amount to maintain the country/society. So it would be primarily, if not entirely, law enforcement and national security.
Quoting Outlander
I need to think about that. The true purpose of government. My kneejerk reaction though is that the scope of the government should be kept within what I mentioned previously: some sort of minimum to protect and maintain the country, rather than reach for other policies that would be better done by individuals.
The problem doesn't lie in how much we would be preoccupied about what constitutes a minimum provision, because it will change as time flows, creating a need for reanalysis, and we would always be preoccupied about anything, anyway. The point is that the government is an arrowhead best aimed with it's purpose being a minimum to protect and maintain the country. Every policy is evil, so there is an ethical need to minimize the amount to the necessities.
Quoting Tom Storm
People will have more money from not being taxed, and thus will have more money to spend on charitable causes if they wish. Letting people who want to redistribute money to the poor do so is a better representation of the people's will than taking money from all of them and letting the government hand them out.