Comment by saghm
7 hours ago
> The government doesn't need to oppress innocent people to pay your salary
Pretty much everything a government can do is going to qualify as "oppression" if you use the term so broadly that's it includes levying taxes, so that's pretty much a meaningless characterization.
Let's put it in more concrete terms: if the US government passes a law to raise taxes to fund UBI, that probably wouldn't even make the last of the top 100 most oppressive things it's done to innocent people in the past year. If the strongest objection to this policy would be "I don't want to pay taxes to fund things for other people", it's in pretty good company.
> Pretty much everything a government can do is going to qualify as "oppression" if you use the term so broadly
Yes, and that's why great care and respect should be applied to how the government uses the tax money which they have raised from oppression.
Paying somebody to work for free for a giant corporation is not a justified use of that money. Those corporations should pay for their labour themselves.
I can't think of any worse oppression than taxes, bare forced labour. When it's done to pay for an army to defend ourselves against enemies, for the justice system to protect all citizens, or for healthcare to save lives, then that's palatable. As well as for a myriad of other things. But to pay a programmer so that he can make server infrastructure so that Amazon doesn't have to pay him? That's not palatable.