I had a distinct Randroid phase where I thought it was almost a moral obligation to avoid taxation. Now things are fuzzier for me.
I make a truly decent wage. Not an earth-shattering one but a wage that beat the hell out of anything my mom made while I was growing up. I am a very fortunate man.
Heinlein wrote a thing about freedom:
"In terms of morals there is no such thing as a ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free, because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything that I do."
In my case, I find taxation to be tolerable. It finances things like education for people with fewer advantages than I have right now. Ideally, a much bigger proportion of my taxes would go there. It also finances stupid things, like the TSA and DHS, and that's unfortunate. It financed military adventure in Iraq, which I find repugnant.
But I want to live in a society where you're not screwed based on the number you draw in the ovarian lottery. Where you can be taught useful skills to make the most of the opportunities you find. Where you don't have to pay for this privilege – until later, when you pay taxes. I'm not aware of any scalable solution to this that doesn't involve taxation of my earnings.
So I tolerate the imperfect because it's what I've got. Until there's a better way to ensure that the next generation isn't screwed by bad luck, I can't avoid that taxes are how I can do my part for the moment.
Meanwhile, Google is free to break or bend the rules, too. If they share my values on this subject, I'd hope they'd do their part in some other way. But that's up to them.
Why don't you spend some of your own money directly on the causes that you like? About 1/3 of American taxes go to the military, and another 1/3 goes to non-means tested social support programs (not necessarily benefiting the poor). The amount going to better education opportunities for poor people is absolutely negligible, especially since the sitting government is hostile to school choice.
I make a truly decent wage. Not an earth-shattering one but a wage that beat the hell out of anything my mom made while I was growing up. I am a very fortunate man.
Heinlein wrote a thing about freedom:
"In terms of morals there is no such thing as a ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free, because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything that I do."
In my case, I find taxation to be tolerable. It finances things like education for people with fewer advantages than I have right now. Ideally, a much bigger proportion of my taxes would go there. It also finances stupid things, like the TSA and DHS, and that's unfortunate. It financed military adventure in Iraq, which I find repugnant.
But I want to live in a society where you're not screwed based on the number you draw in the ovarian lottery. Where you can be taught useful skills to make the most of the opportunities you find. Where you don't have to pay for this privilege – until later, when you pay taxes. I'm not aware of any scalable solution to this that doesn't involve taxation of my earnings.
So I tolerate the imperfect because it's what I've got. Until there's a better way to ensure that the next generation isn't screwed by bad luck, I can't avoid that taxes are how I can do my part for the moment.
Meanwhile, Google is free to break or bend the rules, too. If they share my values on this subject, I'd hope they'd do their part in some other way. But that's up to them.