Today's Chronicle-Tribune ran a story with the headline 'City Losing More to Caps', a reference to Marion once again hitting the state imposed property tax caps. But I prefer the positive spin: Citizens of Marion Keeping More of Their Money. Instead of money being transferred into the hands of thieving parasites such as Wayne Seybold and the rest of the career criminals that make up the city government, it will remain in the hands of the citizens who earned it. They will be able to freely choose to save, spend, or give this money away. They will use this means to help them reach a more satisfactory end.
When the government -any government- takes your money, it is a violent act of one party against another. They take by force what you have earned through peaceful trade. They then proceed to spend this money in ways that are satisfactory to achieving their goals; not yours. Their goals are typically political and are attempts to gain more personal power. They take "public" money to use for their own private benefit. What is taxation if not a transfer of wealth from the relatively powerless to the relatively powerful?
You've been taught -in government schools, no doubt- that taxation is the price of government. You have been raised to not even question the need for government, and therefore taxation. But a price is something that comes about voluntarily in the marketplace. If I go to Wal-Mart and purchase a copy of the incredibly entertaining motion picture Fight Club for the equally incredible low price of $5, it's because I value a DVD copy of that fantastic film more than I do the $5. Wal-Mart values the $5 more than the movie. Both parties to the exchange win. If Wal-Mart put a price tag of $40 on this item, I would decline to purchase it. I need that money for bourbon. Wal-Mart cannot make me buy it.
Let's contrast the above paragraph with how the government acquires its funds. They set a "price" that they call property tax, or sales tax, or estate tax, or income tax, or whatever the tax might be. If I say, "No. I shan't be purchasing your services at that price", they will take the money anyway. Should I resist sufficiently, they will send armed men (armed men that I paid for, mind you) to kidnap me and lock me in a cage. If I should try to defend myself, they claim the right to kill me. There's a word we use for this sort of financial transaction. It's called "robbery".
So, now we can see that the less money the city of Marion is able to obtain through taxation, the less the citizens it preys upon are robbed. I, for one, am always in favor of less robbery.
