Taxes are (ideally) what we pay for the state to do that it can do better and/or more effective and efficient than individuals or companies. (And with better I mean for the whole society.)
The welfare state is certainly not necessary and costs way too much to be worth it anyway.
For society as a whole it is better if people have a security net they can rely on if they get sick or lose their job. Even Otto von Bismarck realized that more than 150 years ago.
The people who truly need it, and there wouldn't be that many in a free market since it would be easier to find employment or start a business without worrying about taxes, red tape, and retarded rules about needing "permits" and "licenses" for simple jobs like being a fucking cab driver, those people could turn to family and charity.
Are you kidding me? Take a look back at the age of industrialization. Men, women and children had to work for wages barely high enough to keep them living, often in dangerous circumstances, without any protection if they get hurt. And let’s not even get into stuff like company towns, where you practically worked the whole day and still could end up owing your employer money! Do you think this regulations and protections we have today came about in a vacuum? No, they had to be created because capitalists (Not all, by the way. There were industrialists who cared for their workers and tried to look out for them.) abused the lack of them before.
What about people without family (for example if the rest of their original family died in industrial “accidents”)? What if they live in an area where there is no charity available? That is exactly what I meant with something the state can do more effective and efficient than individuals. It can (again, ideally) provide welfare (if needed) to anyone, regardless of family, religion, age, gender, etc.
Denmark for example essentially takes 80% of what you earn once you combine all the taxes (income, VAT etc.), in what moral universe is that justified, tell me? (I don't use Denmark randomly, Bernie Sanders wants to emulate Nordic countries) How am I free if out of an 8 hour work day I work over 6 hours for the government and they get to decide how that money is spent?
I don’t care what percentage my tax rate is. Honestly. What matters is my net wages and how much I can buy from it, i.e. how high are the costs of living in my state.
And the Nordic countries have standards of living as least as high than the USA and managed to weather out the last financial crisis better. So maybe Mr. Sanders is onto something.
The fact that you have to ask that proves just how much the culture in the west has degenerated. Only someone who has 0 respect for the institution of the family can write such nonsense, but I'll answer you anyway:
By family I meant the nuclear family which is husband and wife, committed to each other for life, who raise children together.
I just wanted to be clear. Because what you call the nuclear family is a quite recent development. In pre-industrial societies the family usually consisted of at least three generations, further padded out by domestics or servants. The way I see it, the concept of family changes and adapts as society does, too. So complaints about the decline of something that’s barely a century old sounds kind of hollow.
Please spare me the nonsense.
Again, please take a look at the age of industrialization to see a free market without regulations (yet). It lead to abysmal living and working conditions for almost everyone, except the factory owners.
You're simply digging your own hole and giving the government a license to also heavily regulate and tax what you do, even if you're poor. Denmark's VAT is still 25% whether you're rich of poor, which means instead of paying 1$ for food you pay 1.25. How does that help the poor buddy? Tell me that.
1. It helps them because that money is used (again, ideally) for things that profit them, too.
2. Some countries have different VAT rates, higher ones for luxury items and lower ones for essential stuff like food.
3. That’s actual a good argument against flat taxes and for progressive tax rates. I agree with that.
Often times regulations prevent individuals and small businesses from competing in the market, you'd be surprised how many regulations work only for the benefit of big business, because they have the resources to cover the costs.
And even more often these regulations keep people from abusing and exploiting other people or from damaging common goods, like the environment.
I for example can't just get a car and become a cab driver, I need a license for that, and I certainly can't become a prostitute either, no not even in Nevada which although has legal prostitution does not have a free market when it comes to it.
I don’t know enough about taxi licenses to argue about it, but I know I would prefer to be sure that the person driving the car I sit in has a driving license, hasn’t been working for the last 10 hours or more, isn’t drunk or on drugs and hasn’t a history of reckless driving.
I agree that prostitution should be legalized, but only if it is licensed and therefore supervised by the government! That’s the only way to ensure that everybody involved, be it the prostitutes or the johns, is safe, healthy and not exploited.
But that’s two specific issues and you can certainly argue their details, but that doesn’t mean that the whole system needs to be demolished.
A small business probably can't, which means it's not going to hire people who are either inexperienced or low/no skill and might not even exist at all.
Sorry, but what advantage would it bring these people if they could work for wages that wouldn’t pay enough for them to make a living? What should they do, go to some charity or soup kitchen to get something to eat? Wouldn’t that just transfer the burden from the employer to the charity? Why can’t we say if a company isn’t making enough money to pay its employees a decent wage, they are not fit to be on the market? (And I am saying this as a citizen of a country that has minimum wages only for a few very specific jobs.)
One last thing. To come back to your point of “property rights”. I am German. We have a principle in our society that’s even codified in our constitution: “Eigentum verpflichtet.” It translates to “Property entails obligations.” This principle helped my country to come back from the devastation of WWII as one of the biggest economies in the world within a few decades. And it has served us very well.
