St. Paul and I Agree...
Taxation is not theft: "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves." -- Romans 13 The key idea implicit here, and the one that turned me on the subject of whether or not taxation is theft, is that "every soul" owes obedience to the "governing authorities." Now, if that is a debt I truly owe , then, when those authorities levy the taxes they need to do the job of governing, I owe them those taxes, and attempts to collect them certainly do not constitute acts of theft. And obviously it doesn't matter at all, from this point of view, whether or not I "signed" any sort of "social contract." (In fact, the history of political thought since the Reformation can be read as an attempt to find a secular rep...
I generally go grocery shopping every 2 days, but it's just me that I'm buying for. I do this for mainly three reasons: when I buy enough for the week a lot of food tends to go to waste, I live on the top floor of an apartment and hate making more than one trip carrying in the groceries (though I can probably carry twenty bags in one trip if I really wanted to), and I like to be spontaneous with my meals (I'm always experimenting in the kitchen). When it comes to stuff like TP, soap, deodorant, toothpaste, scotch, etc, I usually just buy in bulk so that I only have to buy more maybe once or twice a year.
ReplyDeleteObviously, with a multi-person household this may not work as well (esp. when it comes to children).