The original reason for the Church tax exemption is to protect religions from radical anti-religion Governments.
If the BSA is going to tell me I have a moral obligation to smile while being stolen from, then yeah they should too.
Irrelevant to the subject at hand.
Yet similarly on the individual scale the taxes taken from me provide for the state apparatus to infringe on my and others civil liberties.
Yeah, but we are a government of the people, for the people. All taxes are used (in theory) to protect individual citizens. Taxes is how the citizens pay for that protection. Additional services are possible from government to government, but the basic, fundamental purpose of taxes is mutual protection - to pay for a militia, military, police, prisons, fire departments, etc.
As I said, the people in the Church do pay taxes.
Are you accusing your own Church of hypocrisy?
No, it is relevant, because the argument you used to support your contention that the Church should pay taxes is that so the Church can do something for the common good, just like a taxpayer. Therefore it is extremely relevant to point out that the Church is already doing a tremendous amount of work for the common good - work that would fall on the government if the Church did not do it.
The Church itself absolutely does not.
Any entity that says “Submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to pay taxes, to exercise the right to vote, and to defend one’s country.” while not paying taxes would be guilty of hypocrisy in this one matter by anyone with even rudimentary critical thinking.
Hm? I said “taxation is theft”, not “the Church should pay taxes is that so the Church can do something for the common good, just like a taxpayer”.
Yes, it allows government to pick winners and losers, distorting markets accordingly. And government has a wonderful track record in deciding what is “good” or “bad” too.
One kind of tax is levied on individuals. A different kind of tax is levied on corporations - (many of which pay no taxes at all due to deductions, etc). It is not hypocrisy for the Church to state the individuals are morally obliged to pay their taxes. The Church is not an individual. Now if the Church said that the Boy Scouts of America are morally obliged to pay taxes, but we aren’t, that would be hypocrisy. As it is, the two things you are trying to compare are not comparable.
As I said, theft is taking what you are not entitled to take. The government is entitled to levy taxes. Ego it is not theft.
A much better track record than anarchy.Yes, it allows government to pick winners and losers, distorting markets accordingly. And government has a wonderful track record in deciding what is “good” or “bad” too.
The difference is where the government comes in. In a sales tax, I choose when and how much I pay. With an income tax, the government chooses how much they let me keep.
Sales tax, properly implemented, is the most “progressive” tax, because it is based only on what you spend. Wealthy people tend to spend more, not only in the number of things they buy, but also the price of the items. Under a sales tax, the wealthy pay far more in taxes than the poor (admittedly, that is also true today with the income tax), particularly is a cost-of-living reimbursement for everyone is in place.
Agreed.
Is that a difference that causes one kind of tax to be theft or immoral and the other kind to be moral and not theft?
Yes, when properly implemented.
Actually, a comparison of the Church to corporations is appropriate. The people who make up the Church pay taxes. The people who make up a corporation - stock holders, management, employees, customers - do indeed pay taxes.
I didn’t intend to imply that corporations don’t pay their fair share. My point was just what you said above, that the Church and Corporations are comparable. Therefore it is not hypocrisy when Church doctrine says that citizens are duty bound to pay their taxes.
So consent does matter to legitimacy. I’ve read polls that say a majority of Americans think Congress is doing a bad job. Does that make the US government illegitimate? Or is consent mere submission to that government? Grossly undermining the common good is a pretty wide open term. I’d say forcing same sex ‘marriage’ is grossly undermining the common good. I’d say forcing the legality of abortion on society is as well.
I don’t think it is so clear cut. Corporations are legal constructs which give the entity some of the same powers as an individual. This is what allows a corporation to enter into contracts and own property. Without corporate bodies it would be individuals who owned Church property, made incomes, and purchased goods. If I tried to do everything (own property, earn income, purchase goods) as a non profit corporation I’d be in legal trouble, unless I was certain people. Would you consider it immoral for me to attempt to avoid taxes by carrying out a plan where I use a non profit corporation to conduct my economic activity?
No, it just means a majority of Americans want a change in who goes to Congress. It doesn’t mean they want the Congress to disband. (Well, some do. But most do not.)
Do you think it rises to the level of justifying a revolution by force of arms? Read the Church guidelines on when such action is moral and see if you think SSM meets those criteria.
Yes, it does.
Nonsense. Democracies and other forms of representative government determine communal consent all the time. Elections are one way of doing it, but perhaps not the only way.
There will always be difficult borderline cases. But some cases are clearly legitimate and some cases are clearly not legitimate. The US government is clearly legitimate, regardless of what you think about hypothetical borderline cases.
Well, most people do see value in that.
In view of the fact that the outcome of the current election will be either Hillary or Mr. Trump, many people are dissatisfied with the present system of governing the USA.
That is all true, but it does not make the US government an illegitimate authority.
Is it legitimate for a government to sanction the murder of millions of unborn children?
It is the people themselves - mothers and doctors - who are killing those babies. Not the government. If anything is illegitimate, it is them.
True, individuals must take responsibility for their own actions. The freedom to do something does not imply the virtue of doing it.