Alex Broadhead

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• October 4, 2002, on Welfare Reform:

  I'm familiar with the Marxist/anarchist maxim that, "Property is theft," and understand and occasionally sympathize with the arguments that underly it. But I'm completely blown away by the several posters here who seem to feel (generally quite strongly) that, "Taxation is theft." I don't get this line of thought at all, at least not under a democratic form of government such as we claim here in the US. I presume that most people recognize that they benefit to a greater or lesser degree from the programs, infrastructure, laws, etc. provided by the government, and that the things we agree we need (via voting) we need to pay for (via taxes). (It might be interesting to try to run a government on charitable contributions [public broadcasting, anyone?]; for now pretty much everyplace uses taxes, though.) Futher, I don't get how people can be surprised or horrified at the concept of redistribution of wealth, especially under a mostly capitalist economic system. Do people not see tha...