| Subject: |
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Re: I support our armed forces, and will offset some of my tax against yours... |
| Name: |
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Simon |
| Date Posted: |
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Jul 27, 05 - 8:47 AM |
| Message: |
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Thank you for your kind offer! Unfortunately I think we will have decline, for the following reasons.
If I follow your argument: by notionally paying our share of military taxation, you would notionally be paying less towards something else, and we would be picking up the bill for this. We'd all be paying the same tax as before, after all. So if you paid the military on our behalf, we'd probably be paying for your healthcare.
Our whole point is that the two are not the same. Healthcare does not involve deliberate killing. Deliberate killing is a matter of personal conscience; it isn't like anything else, and the government has accepted this in principle since 1916 at least.
Secondly, and more importantly, your system doesn't make any difference in the real world. We all end up paying the same tax into the same pot.
Several peace tax systems have been suggested. The details aren't strictly anything to do with our case in law, but we're interested in them. They tend to involve getting more real money away from violence, and/or towards peacebuilding: making peace by peaceful means.
Violence by itself tends to lead only to more violence. If there is a real-world alternative to that, then it's worth taking seriously, and it's worth funding seriously. You don't have to be an absolute pacifist to see the sense of that. Many people who are certainly not pacifists do see the sense in it. On that point at least, we are in agreement with them.
Simon |
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