Alias wrote: ↑February 24th, 2019, 9:05 pm
GE Morton wrote: ↑February 23rd, 2019, 2:44 pm
[Do the people who will/may become recipients contribute?]
In some cases, yes, but their benefits typically far exceed their contributions.
Which ones, how and why?
Well, for example, a single mother of two kids who works as a housekeeper for a motel chain, makes perhaps $22,000/year. She will pay no federal income tax, but she will pay perhaps $1000 in state sales taxes and perhaps another $500 in other taxes. In return she receives perhaps $1500/month in child care subsidies, perhaps $800/month in rent subsidies, perhaps $200/month in food stamps. Plus Medicaid benefits which vary with health status. So in exchange for her annual $1500 in taxes paid she receives at least $30,000 in benefits.
By a "free lunch program" I mean any government program which seizes, by force, money from those who have earned it and hands it over to someone else who did not, regardless of the rationale for that theft.
"The theft", and "seizure", I presume is the collection of democratically legislated tax levies, which, in most actual cases, is rendered voluntarily.
??? Voluntarily? Really? Then why doesn't the government scrap the withholding and penalties for failure to pay? HINT: If penalties are imposed for failing to comply with some edict (issued either by government or a street mugger), it is because otherwise there would be widespread non-compliance.
Now, to whom it is meted out:
- ordinary citizens currently, for some reason, unable to earn
- financial institutions that have gambled and lost money entrusted to them by those who did earn it
- business enterprises that are failing or have failed to compete
- agricultural blocs that, for one reason or another, are deemed to merit a subsidy
- tax rebates/exemptions/deferments for enterprises that are expected to contribute to the society
- foreign and domestic grants/stimulus programs/obligations/membership fees
- servicing the debt: interest on its bonds, bills, etc. (the biggest holder of which, btw, is the Social Security Trust Fund)
You're absolutely right. And dozens of others you could have mentioned (e.g, subsidies for Amtrak passengers, local police departments, sewer/water systems, transit systems, local schools, subsidies for radio/television stations, dance troups, theaters, museums, and scientific research on the mating habits of dung beetles and numerous other questions of zero value to most taxpayers).
That theft is immoral is the judgment, not of a "business-oriented value system," but of anyone who concedes that all agents in a moral field are of equal status: none are slaves of others, all are entitled to enjoy the fruits of their labor and talents...
Ah yes. But the orientation of a society's value system determines the definition of "theft".
Er, no, it doesn't.
Theft is the taking of another's property by force or stealth, without right or permission.
"Steal: 1. To take (the property of another) without right or permission."
https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=steal
That is the definition given in virtually all dictionaries and understood in virtually all cultures, since time immemorial. Of course, every thief would like to re-define that term so that it excludes, by some sophistry, his own thievery. Theft is theft, regardless of how noble the thief considers the purposes for which he will use the loot, or how popular those purposes.
For example, a community-oriented value system would regard the collection of excess goods/funds for redistribution at need as "pooling resources".
And that it would be, were what is considered "excess" determined by each donor, and surrendered voluntarily. Taking another's property by force is not "pooling resources;" it is robbery. You're indulging in Newspeak.
Many individuals and organizations attempt to contribute less than their allotted share - or nothing at all - but no entities, private or commercial, refuse government services.
People who evade taxes proportional to the benefits they receive from government services are also thieves.
..., and none have any a priori obligations to others --- obligations they they have not freely assumed, via a contract or promise, or incurred through some other act of their own.
That may be an article of faith, but it doesn't happen in real life. Sea turtles, yes, but no human infant leaps out the womb and starts making its own money and signing informed contracts.
No, he doesn't. But that fact does not burden him with obligations to everyone who happened to precede his arrival in the world.