The world belongs to all of us and none of us

If taxation is theft, then so is profit and property. That’s because private ownership of the means of production is protected by the capitalist state, and we as regular working citizens are coerced into accepting this arrangement under which we are exploited for profit.

That’s a pretty radical idea, and you don’t have to accept it. But my point is not that you should simply accept that property and profit are theft, but rather, if you were to believe that “taxation is theft” — because it’s maintained through force of government — then you’d also have to believe capitalism itself is theft, since private ownership is maintained through force of government.

So let’s get past that right-wing argument of “taxation is theft,” because it has radical, unpleasant implications for the right-wing, all the way up to the abolition of capitalism. Instead, let’s talk about the social benefits of, and political justifications for, taxation.

After we have gotten past the tempting but facile argument that “taxation is theft,” there are at least two big reasons why progressive taxation is not only justified, but a good thing for everyone — yes, even the rich — even if they have to pay a lot of taxes.

The first justification is a matter of “giving back.” To whom? To those who made your wealth possible. The truth is that people do not become millionaires or billionaires in the middle of a barren desert. This accumulation of wealth requires a civilization, which was built and funded by many others.

Millionaires and billionaires would not have their wealth if it weren’t for the publicly-funded roads, education system, government research, national security, police force, environmental protection agency (and the list goes on). Individual prosperity is not opposed to collective prosperity; individual wealth is only possible through a collective effort.

Thus, we have the idea of a progressive tax on wealth and income. The more income someone “earns” — and the more wealth one has acquired — the more this person owes back to the society which made their wealth possible.

And on the flip side: the less wealth you have, the less you have used society to accumulate wealth. So, the less you should pay society back in taxes.

The second justification for taxation expands on its potential benefits: we look at the benefits of taxation to the rest of society, not just society’s contribution to a certain individual. Taxes are not just reparation from the wealthy individual. Taxes have the potential to be wholly beneficial to all.

Public funds allow for vast infrastructure to be planned, built, and then shared by all. It’s all of ours: the libraries, parks, schools, fire department, and beyond. Private enterprise cannot do this on its own.

Through public funding, we can efficiently create and maintain what otherwise would have been much more difficult, or even impossible. Healthcare systems are a great example. All universal healthcare systems around the world have shown that a publicly-funded healthcare system is more efficient than a for-profit system, and I am not aware of a single exception. The same thing, in other words, is cheaper. And most of these systems actually have a higher quality of health outcomes, with more healthy and satisfied patients, longer life expectancy, and less stressed-out health care workers (since they can focus on healthcare and not finance).

Taxes, and the progressive tax more specifically, maximizes the ability of a society to pay for whatever we want and need.

Of course, tax money does go to waste. But this is a problem with anti-democratic politics, not the concept of taxation. Think about who decides the budget, and how they decide. That the federal use of tax dollars is wasteful is not a problem with pooling our money to pay for public goods and services, but a problem of how the money is allocated, and who made those decisions.

Finally, taxation is not a full solution to inequality and injustice. Even in a hypothetical “full communist” utopian society, without social class, nation-states, or paper money, there would be some form of public pooling of the community’s resources. But in that utopian world, it would be more voluntary. In our world — due to the extreme inequality — it is necessary.

Taxes are not only a matter of good will, or “giving back.” They are the bare minimum of what should be required in a society with such vast inequality of rights and resources. Progressive taxation is not only a good idea for the sake of infrastructure, but should be demanded by those who have gotten the short end of the stick. It is the privilege of the wealthy — not their right — to profit off public infrastructure, and the labor of their employees.

After all, if taxation is theft, then what would we call five people owning as much wealth as the bottom half of the world population? That’s where we are, right now. The least these super-rich folks can do is give a lot of it back. And we are certainly justified in demanding it back, for their wealth was not a mandate from the heavens. It is a product of the planet’s natural resources — and our labor.