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Pearson's avatar

This seems like a misunderstanding of what chattel slavery and the income tax are. Chattel slavery refers specifically perpetual inherited bondage that allows people to be treated like commodities. Let’s look at the differences:

The United States government is not allowed to buy or sell people.

Tax payers are able to exit this system by renouncing your citizenship, which is definitely pricy but this is not a thing under chattel slavery. The Roman form of slavery allowed buying your freedom, same thing with indentured servitude. These are easier claims to defend but are still wrong however.

Tax payers are not compelled to work, shares of their labor income are taken by the government. This is more similar to either theft or indentured servitude depending on how you want to describe it.

This is probably your worst piece in that it just comes off as incredibly preachy without making arguments for why the object level is true. You make appeals on the meta level but I didn’t notice anything getting into why income tax is a subset of chattel slavery.

The US government taxing citizens who are outside of the country is probably the most ethically dubious part of income tax. It is pretty easy to conceptualize taxes as basically a rent associated with existing on someone’s property(and all land is government property under english common law, people just own perpetual leases to it). This seems to line up with the monopolization of the powers of nobility by governments. You could probably achieve a better outcome by directly charging a land rent(lvt) however.

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Lapenza's avatar

What's your point? Do you think all of government a waste? If not, how should it be maintained? By charity? If by taxes, what makes income tax special? One of your more preachy pieces.

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