"Shutting down freedom of speech, indefinite detention, arbitrary expropriation are authoritarian. A non-flat tax is not."
I'm not talking about taxes now. I'm talking about what taxes would be if the left had it their way (much higher), which in my mind, is authoritarian. Take a look at every single hard-left country in Europe: taxes are astonishingly high and the government has much more control over citizens' daily lives.
When lots of people are dependent on the government through large social nets, they will almost never vote against the hand that feeds them.
As you go too far right or left, you meet in the the same place and it's something I really don't want running my life.
Taxes are important, but we need to have a balance.
In politics especially, it takes a constant struggle to keep in mind that words have actual meanings. They're not just matters of opinion, and "authoritarian" isn't just a gussied up way of saying "ewww gross!" about a political matter or position. It is a real word with a real meaning and a real history.
Consider, for instance, the Kirkpatrick doctrine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkpatrick_Doctrine). It's possible to debate the plausibility and soundness of it as a foreign policy principle, but that's because authoritarian has a real meaning beyond "ANTI FREEDOM!! (TM)". It has to do with how the center of political power interacts with its opposition, particularly in contrast to how totalitarian states do so.
Note that the countries which had the greatest amount of government intervention in the economy and actually did take a bunch of guns from people are very explicitly not authoritarian: they're used in contrast to the authoritarian states of (mostly) Latin America, which were hardly high-tax or anti-gun.
It sounds like you would regard any form of taxation as authoritarian. I'd like to know of a system of taxation that _doesn't_ "[force] one group of people to pay more taxes than another..." for one motivation or another.
Though really, higher or lower taxes are in practice beside the point. Whether it's the government, or the employer, most people will never be financially independent and will always find themselves beholden to whichever hand --government or boss-- feeds them.
I argue that if our ultimate goal was financial independence for each and every citizen as opposed to partisan quips about "job creation" and "taxation" and "regulation" then we wouldn't have any major concerns about those things to begin with. They'd be non-issues; ancillary concerns rather than concepts at the forefront of everyone's minds. Precisely because every player has the capital necessary to make a sufficient stand for themselves.
For some reason though I don't think most would approve of such a citizenry.
scarmig is right. Authoritarian does not mean the existence of coercive laws and institutions, it is about how power is distributed and the manner in which is it exercised.
If a given tax regime has democratic support, collecting the tax will be coercive but the institutions that collect it need not be authoritarian.
Only because it goes against your personal views.
"Shutting down freedom of speech, indefinite detention, arbitrary expropriation are authoritarian. A non-flat tax is not."
I'm not talking about taxes now. I'm talking about what taxes would be if the left had it their way (much higher), which in my mind, is authoritarian. Take a look at every single hard-left country in Europe: taxes are astonishingly high and the government has much more control over citizens' daily lives.
When lots of people are dependent on the government through large social nets, they will almost never vote against the hand that feeds them.
As you go too far right or left, you meet in the the same place and it's something I really don't want running my life.
Taxes are important, but we need to have a balance.