One little side note...

[avevale_intelligencer]

My definition of "my money" is fairly narrow, confined as it is to that money which is at any given time actually in my possession. When I pay for a thing or a service, I regard the money I pay as no longer mine, and what the recipient does with it, while it may cause me some concern, is not something over which I expect to have any control. Similarly with taxes, which I regard as the price I pay for living in a country which is to some extent governed (though I've remarked before that it seems to be taking them a demnition long time to beat that devil Bonaparte). I pay them, the money leaves my possession, and while I am convinced the price is too high and the service substandard in the extreme, there is a lamentable lack of competition in the governing biz, and it is, in the time-honoured phrase, the only game in town.

I mention this because I am (I confess it) a little amused by the outraged fulminations of various people about the government using "their money," sometimes millions of pounds/dollars of "their money," to bail out the banks. I agree with the sentiment entirely...it's just the way it's expressed that gets me. I mean, whose money are they supposed to use? As far as I know, government's main if not only source of actual funding is taxation. All the rest is borrowed, and you can't use credit to pay for credit.

It would be nice if the government, instead of demanding outright payment, had to borrow money from its citizens, and return it with interest on demand (given a suitable period of notice, and of course a minimum term). If you kept lending them more and more and left it with them till retirement, that would be your pension taken care of. But then, I suppose, how would the government come up with the extra?

It probably wouldn't work...but at least then there would be some reason to refer to one's paid taxes as "my money."

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Well, they haven't used millions of any currency of my money (except possibly reckoned in Yen or Turkish Lira) because they haven't taken that much from me. However, the point is that if they use (say) 2000 pounds per person of taxes to pay for something then that money has to come from somewhere, and where it comes from is by taking that money from people by some means, basically taxes. So yes, it is indeed our money which is being taken from us to pay for other people's mistakes (and greed).

Also, if something is taken from me without my consent[1] (the usual word for that is 'stolen') I still regard it as mine. If that thing is then used to commit a crime then I have a right to be annoyed about it.

[1] Taxation is without my consent, I have no option to say they can't have the money. My only option would be to earn nothing (OK, so I am currently exercising that option!), if I earn and don't pay then they use force to take it from me and/or imprison me.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Certainly if you live in this country and earn money you have no option but to pay taxes, and it's possible to look at it as coercion if you want to. As I said, I prefer to think of it as me paying the government's wages, because that way I can get incensed because I don't think they're earning them. If they're stealing the taxes from me, they don't have any obligation to do anything for me. Also, when something does work properly, like a road or rubbish collection or the police or something, I can think "that's what happened to those taxes I paid" and feel glad that something I paid towards works for other people as well.

But in any case, once the money is taken, whether it's stolen or paid willingly, it's not ours any more, in any meaningful sense. We can't spend it or save it or do anything with it, unless it gets given back. I've found that it's best to accept these things and move on. And I'd certainly rather pay taxes than live without maintained roads and rubbish collections and the police and so on.