Taxation is Theft

​

       

      The tax season is upon us and once again it is time to reflect on the justification of any form of tax. Are taxes, like death, really inevitable? More importantly, even if taxes are inevitable, are they justified? Frederic Bastiat answered this question

almost two hundred years ago. Taxes are justified, meaning that taxes promote justice, only to the extent that they secure our lives our liberties, and our property. All other purposes to which taxes are applied are unjust. This is the conclusion of his now famous book The Law.

     The logic behind Bastiat's conclusion is rather simple--God has bestowed on man his life, his liberty, and his property. Ah, property! This is the essence of Bastiat's insight. Man first has property in himself. This is undeniable. There are only three possibilities to the question of who owns man. Either someone else owns him; everyone owns everyone else, or each man owns himself. The first two options are self contradictory. If one man can own another, who can say who owns who? Furthermore, what is the basis of his claim?

     This clearly is the rationale of all tyranny. If everyone owns everyone else, all action stops. One would have to obtain the permission of everyone else in order to perform the simplest act. I must say that it seems to me that we are fast approaching this horrible condition. Government everywhere is claiming the right to bestow or withhold permission for the individual to perform even the smallest act. So we arrive at the only true solution, which is that man, as a creature of God, owns himself.

     As such man has certain rights that are anterior to any other claim. Our own Declaration of Independence is

perhaps the clearest proclamation that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Man's rights come from God; they cannot be taken away or even given away; the most important of these rights is the right to live, to be free, and to pursue 

happiness.

     Bastiat continues the logic of Thomas Jefferson's magnificent manifesto that man can bestow upon government only those powers that he himself already possessed. Since no man has the prior right from God to take away another man's life, liberty, or property, no organization of men can claim in justice to do the same.  Therefore, any tax that funds a purpose other than the equal protection of man's rights, is a violation of true justice.

     Government at all levels today would be hard pressed to make a logical case that most of what it does fits Jefferson's and Bastiat's definition of just law. I write out checks to the hated IRS and other taxing bodies, but I  do so not out of a sense that it is just but for the expedient of self preservation from the government's wrath. I imagine that most readers, if they are honest with themselves, are doing the same. ■

​

​

State Budgeting Doesn't

Add Up

By William Whipple, III

​

​

     Delaware’s legislature overshot the end of June budget deadline last year, and no one was happy about the last-minute tax increases and spending cuts.  Whatever exactly had gone wrong, there was general agreement that Delaware’s political leaders had “blown it.”  [General Assembly] must do better next year, News Journal, July 9, 2017. 

     “. . . most reasonable outside observers believe the state needs both spending and revenue reform.” Start talking now, no need to wait until 2018. And let the Democrats make the first move by  following through on their agreement to “study ideas like school district consolidation, Medicaid reform, and ways to help the state more responsibly spend its budget surpluses. [They should offer] real plans to save money, and pay the political price of implementing the plans.”