Comments about ‘Letter: Government taking agency through taxes’

I would like all the money back that are being paid for unnecessary wars and all the money being spent to rebuild I-15 in utah county and generally all the taxes that fund anything outside of Salt lake county.

Well Kim, what do you propose?

No one likes to pay taxes. That is understandable.

So, are you suggesting that people should get to "choose" what they give money to? Can we select which wars we think are just? Should we get to choose which roads we will support financially? Can I decide whether or not to fund schools?

Many people seem to forget that not everyone has family and other community support in times of need.

Many people are not surrounded by people who have the financial ability to help other out.

It is much easier to throw out a high level view, but how about providing an alternative?

I suspect that everyone can find something that our tax money should not be spent on. And there are far too many things that our govt does (thanks to the Republicans and the Democrats in our congress)
that they should not be doing.

So, please detail out what you are suggesting.

You may find that it is much more complicated than "allow the good people of this country the freedom to choose what they do with their own money."

"First, because free agency is a God-given precondition to the purpose of mortal life, no person or organization can take away our free agency in mortality.

Second, what can be taken away or reduced by the conditions of mortality is our freedom, the power to act upon our choices. Free agency is absolute, but in the circumstances of mortality freedom is always qualified.

Freedom may be qualified or taken away (1) by physical laws, including the physical limitations with which we are born, (2) by our own action, and (3) by the action of others, including governments."

Dallin H. Oaks "Freedom and Free Agency"

Kim, taxes are an essential part of the social contract that binds this nation together.

Taxes provide you with the roads you drive on, the police, firefighters and paramedics you call in emergencies, the clean water you take for granted that comes to your home, the trucks that haul your trash and clear snow off your roads, our public schools and libraries, the inspectors that ensure that the food you eat and the drugs you take are safe, maintain the parks you enjoy for recreation, and a myriad of other services that make being an American in the 21st Century a pleasurable and profitable human condition.

If you want to exercise your "agency" then take the time to become better informed about all the things that go into making the society of which you are a part function and the public services, paid for through taxes, that are essential to the life you enjoy as an American.

If you want to argue about the uses of tax dollars - that's fine. That's a good discussion to have. But to argue that taxes are somehow depriving you of your "agency" is just downright naive and unhelpful.

I am sorry, but this is ludicrous. How will we pay for all the things the writer wants and uses without taxes? Defending our borders, providing roads, operating schools, police, and so on. This is such unthinking nonsense that I wonder if this letter is a joke.

Though I have some contrarian opinions regarding taxation, I would like to concentrate on just one issue.

Voting in a free society is an exercise of moral agency. How can voting then be taking away that gift (unless we are giving away the actual right to vote)?

I agree that taxation can be burdensome and that spending can be misguided. But since we vote for our representatives every 2, 4 or 6 years, I simply do not see how this is actually voting away agency.

God given free agency..pre-conditions of mortal exsistence..all a lot of high faluten gibberish describing a little trick nature has played on you called consciousness. Consciousness is a wonderful thing but it's also a tricky little devil. Because you can consider yourself, you determine you are something other than what you are considering.

You are what you appear to be, which includes a citizen of a nation, and within the bounds of that nation, you have choices of how to consider the functioning of that nation. If the nation is to function it needs resources (money). That money comes from the nations economy and becuse in most nations, including ours, the money produced by the economy passes through its' citizens the government of the nation gets its money from the citizens. There's nothing spiritual, or magic about any of it..it's simply civics. Needs and choices.

@Kim A. Skinner;

So you're opposed to taking away "agency" by taxation, how about taking away "agency" by voting on the rights of your fellow American citizens (amendment 3, prop-8, etc.)?

I'll bet you supported those acttions. That is what we call "hypocrisy", Kim.

Personally, I don't support voting on the agency of your neighbors, and I do support taxation. I voluntarily pay taxes because I want to live in a civilized society. Sure, there are things that I wish my tax dollars weren't used for, like subsidizing religious organizations through tax exemptions for instance, but there are so many things that we can't rely on others to provide through charity. Others have provided lists so I won't, but you get the idea.

"Let government run on someone else's money; I exercise my agency to take the benefits without paying for them."

Kim's attitude is pure selfishness, hardly something I believe God would endorse.

Life 101.

1. Group effort most often exceeds the sum of individual efforts.

2. Private charity doesn’t work for the group.

3. In this world, God gives us life and nothing more. No promises, no guarantees, no rights and no freedoms.

4. Individual greed is the prime mover in every human being. Only in an organized group can it be controlled to give us the good and suppress the bad.

5. This life is a temporary condition. And we have no evidence of any other.

We can all find things our government spends money on that we object to. What I believe the letter writer was talking about is the unprecedented growth in government. With every new program, regulation, and increase in taxes the government takes more and more choices away from the average citizen.

The government (at all levels) now takes over 50 cents of every dollar I earn. Someone besides me gets to decide how that money is spent. Yes, I want roads, police protection, schools, and some other things government provides but it has gotten completely out of control. The government should be less than half the size it currently is.

I understand that it offends some people that if I only had to pay 25 cents to the government for every dollar I earned, that I might spend the extra quarter on something for me or my family instead of giving it to some worthy cause they support, but it is my money after all. Isn't it?

If you don't think it is, then the letter writer is right.

Kim, your free agency isn't taken away. You still have the agency to not pay taxes...

But having free agency doesn't mean that you get to pick your consequences.

If you don't like having the free agency to pay your taxes, then please, move to a different country.

JC2: "What I believe the letter writer was talking about is the unprecedented growth in government."

You do know that's not true, right?

Annualized growth in government spending (per capita) under Obama has been about 1.3%. Under Bush2 and Reagan it was 2.6%. That's right - government spending under Obama has grown at _half_ the the rate of the Bush2 administration. It's also half the rate of growth under both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, and it's 60% of rate of growth of the Bush1 administration.

The only president to have held annual per-capita growth in government spending to a rate lower than Obama was Clinton.

Seriously - those are actual facts you can look up for yourself.

But do facts matter to you?

What an odd letter. Does the writer not understand the Constitution? We elect officials who decide things like who gets taxed and for how much and what that money gets spent on. If you dislike their choices, you're free to vote against them, and try to persuade others to do the same. Twin Lights is right on this subject. Taxation is not theft. It's the price we pay to live in a free society.

You fail to understand that the government is smarter than you are. You are not competent or justified in spending your own income. Send it to Washington DC and they will create green jobs like Soyndra, monitor expenditures so no one will be foolishly spending your income on lavish conferences in Las Vegas, give aid to Pakistan, provide guns for drug smugglers, spend everything and borrow $0.40 of what they want to spend, ad nauseam. You must have hope, yes we can!

Let me make it clear. I hate taxes. I hate fees. I pay taxes. I pay all those fees. Quit complaining because you are all paying less in taxes than anytime in the past 50 years. If you aren't then it indicates you are successful and you are just repaying just some of the subsidies the rest of us have contributed to help make you successful, whether it be your education or as customers, or maybe giving you a summer job during high school or college. None of you did it on your own. Besides someone has got to pay for CEO bonuses.

To "Blue" so what does a meaningless statistic like that even mean? Does it matter if the growth in spending per capita is 1% or 500% if the percent of people in the US that are working and paying taxes is decreasing?

That per capita spending fails to take into account population growth, taxes collected by the government, unemployment numbers, and countless other things. For example, During Reagan's term he doubled the tax revenues. If he doubled tax revenues, isn't is understandable that the amount of money spent per capita could increase more than under Obama where tax revenues have decreased, and budgets are tighter? Another thing to think about is this, if I double revenues and increase spending debt levels can be maintained, if I have lower revenues and increase spending slightly that has a bigger economic inpact.

Come back when you have some real information.

If you had said that under Obama that Deficits have gone up by 200% to 300%, then we are starting to see something that actually has merit.

The Constitution tells us exactly (not generally) what federal government can do, and states that powers not so delegated by the Constitution are retained by the people, or the states.
So this letter makes a good point. We can do many things without the dubious "wisdom" and rationales of politicians.

If all politicians were good, wise people it would be expedient that we should be ruled by politicians - I guess, but, since they are not all either wise or good, and rarely both (most people apparently now conclude that most politicians were elected on their false pretences) it is better that we bind them down "by the chains of the Constitution".

Blue: Your statistics don't even pass the smell test. The government went from deficits of around $300B per year under Bush (a terrible number in my opinion) to around $1300B per year under Obama. An increase of nearly a trillion per year.

Liberals want everyone to think that this deficit explosion is mostly due to all those horrible "Bush Tax Cuts" that Obama has kept in place, but in fact revenues (i.e. tax receipts) are only down slightly due mostly to the recession.

Government spending has exploded to around $3.6 Trillion per year. There is no way it got there on a mere 1.3% growth rate as you claimed. Check your numbers again.

Gilda is exactly correct. Section 8 of Articleaq 1 lists the seventeen duties that we have assigned to the Federal Government. Six of those duties deal with the military. We,as a people, have agreed to pay for those seventeen duties. All other duties are to be performed by the States or left to the people.

When government decides to "handle" duties which are not assigned to it, they take away the agency of the State or of the people.

In our own households, we decide what we will eat. The government does not deliver food to us - yet. We know best what foods our family likes, and, if we are wise, we know best what foods make us healthy. Some would have the government dictate food choices to us. Some would have the government step on our agency to "help" us.

We have not delegated that duty to government, just as we have not delegated MOST duties performed by government to any level of government.