Lol, that must have been a huge sum of money you paid in taxes back in Czechoslovakia if you did not even bother to remember how much it was. Let me remind you - it might have been 1% or 5% of your income but no more than that. It was a very insignificant amount and you know that better than I do. Your communist/socialist government robbed you blind, put you in jail, stole your freedoms and liberties but one thing they did not do - they did not overtax you by any stretch of imagination.
It was a very insignificant amount and you know that better than I do. Your communist/socialist government robbed you blind, put you in jail, stole your freedoms and liberties but one thing they did not do - they did not overtax you by any stretch of imagination. I love your logic. You are right they didn't overtax me because there was so little to tax. They robbed me blind but they didn't overtax me. You are funny.LOL
There are two very simple concepts that have massive reprecursions to all political philosophy: 1) Freedom to choose. 2) Cheap access to natural resources and shelter. These two are like conjugate variables, currently and the entire history of human societies whose study in isolation is meaningless without taking into account the other at the same time. Paradoxically, it is also important to seperate poltical philosophy and economic philosophy as much as possible, which are the two sides of the coin that 1) and 2) represent, as they have been intermixed in all of human history up to this point, they need not be. Democracies (most of which are Capitalists or some Capitalist hybrid) only solve 1) and makes an attempt at solving 2) by assigning a monetary value to commodities and by monetizing peoples time - perhaps the "root of all evil". Socialism and Communism only solve 2). As a thought experiment, imagine that countries can set themselves up with any form of government they wish, but with one condition, that people are free to enter or leave that country at will (Freedom to choose). Then you have people voting with their feet, instead of being imposed a political or economic philosophy upon them simply because they were born in one place instead of the other. Notice people will almost always choose capitalists economies, which by default currently they also get a "Democracy" (in quotes for complex reasons). This has been our choice now and in the past in most of our history. But, also give them 2) as well as 1), an experiment that I think has never been run in human history (except on small scales like in Israeli Kabuts etc), and the choice of which political philosophy they subscribe to becomes much harder and less clear imo. Solve 1) and 2) both at once, and you have Utopia. It is only hard because natural resources are limited, and peoples time in extracting them is hard labor. Talking about "taxes" and how it affects politico/economic philosphies is putting the horse before the cart. nitro
You can't pay taxes on something you don't own. In socialist economies you own NOTHING. Literally everything is taxed at 100%.
Picture a country that did not have Roosevelt with his own brand of socialism that lifted this country out of depression, and elevated the strong middle class to a position where they had the wealth to be able to drive the US economy into becoming the greatest nation on earth. Workers had the best of both worlds...the security of retirement and other social benefits, and the American dream of capitalism running concurrently. It is very often that we see the right wingers suggest that if liberals don't like US foreign policy...that they move somewhere else. So why are the resident whiners about taxes moving somewhere else? You can trade from anywhere in the world...
My reaction was to somebody who said in socialism we didn't have to pay taxes somewhat suggesting we were better off. Of course it was comletely irrelevant there at those times. The person was arguing about technicality and that's why in my first post I didn't say we paid tax but I said we were taxed
I suggested nothing like that and it was not a technicality either. I suggested that paying taxes (in american sense) has nothing to do with becoming a socialist country as the title of this thread and the first post implied. Other criterias define whether a country is socialist, taxation is not one of them.