Yes the expression “legal theft IS a contradiction in terms.

If the definition of theft is”the ILLEGAL taking of someone else’s property, then “legal theft” translates into “the legal, illegal, taking of someone else’s property.

Sort of like Sir Humprhey Applebee’s reference to “an unstable kind of stability”.in discussing the security of St George’s Island with the Minister.

For a mostly clear thinking and fair minded person like yourself I am surprised that you would resort to such word games.

Socrates, I do not presume to abolish transfers or welfare (although, welfare would be restricted to the disabled and indigent). By eliminating vertical fiscal imbalance and allowing states greater autonomy to derive their revenue, the majority of government services and transfers would be adequately provided via consumption taxes.

Also, regardless of your theorising about the “social obligation”, the reality is that if there did not exist a legal sanction for taxation, it would be classified as theft.

I’ve always found it somewhat amusing that people like Menzies were technically traitors – they owed their primary allegiance to a foreign country – the UK – rather than Australia

Of course the reason Menzies gets so much flak is that its easier for modern nationalistic Australians to caricature Menzies as an anachronistic buffoon then to accept the painful reality that many Australians had the belief that they were British

If the consent is not freely-given (i.e. without fear of retribution or adverse sanction), how can it be characterised as proper consent?

LOL, a theory does not change the reality. I suppose you were equally slumberous in Law 101 when they explained that the law is incongruent with morality.

Those views sound fine until you do the maths. The trouble is that even with churn, most societies would need to have a GST of about 30% or so to do away with income tax. It also assumes that the user can pay, always having the money needed to pay for a service at teh time they need it. That is rarely the case, hence societies are always assisting some groups, at the expense of the more productive.

There would also be a real difficulty with accomodating the many transfer payments burried in our current system. Many of those transfers, despite right wing rhetoric, go to their supporters, not the unemployed. Farmers and most rural businesses are a prime example. We probably spend more on farm support, rural infrastructure support, and rural services, as the entire farm sector contributes to our economy (less than 3% of GDP).

Even in principle, tax is not theft. It recognises the social obligation we all have to support the nation we belong to, and the institutions that feed, heal, protect, and educate us and the systems that sustain the businesses which employ us. As philosphers from Hobbs onward recognised, tax and governments are necessary and the alternative is really far worse.

Adam, I will repeat: tax is legalised theft.