No, that is not taxation. Taxation is taking money and paying government employees to provide a service for everyone. Not taking from person A to give to person B who provides nothing in return. That would be wealth redistribution, aka, slavery.

Taking money from people to provide the following is taxation: military, police, roads, schools (for everyone equally), healthcare, etc.

Some could argue that some of the above examples (for example, healthcare) should not be a government thing, that it is still wrong because it is taking from people disproportionately to provide disproportionately (aka, a rich person pays more for the army because the army protects more of his assets, but by paying more to cover other people healthcare he is getting nothing extra...)

But this is not here nor there... what you are calling taxation is way way WAYYYY beyond mere socialism and into the realm of pure theft and slavery.

If you take money from people against their will to give to: The nobles, the poor, the white skinned people, the black skinned people (zimbabwe) or any other group. You are engaging in slavery and theft. It is the worst form of wealth redistribution. It is apalling that you could say "nothing is wrong with that", that things have gotten so bad that people actually condone that. The serf system had money taken from the serfs to give to the nobles, the nobles provided nothing in return. That is why we had revolutions, they called it taxation, but it wasn't. it was indirect slavery. (compared to direct slavery, such as the owning of blacks in the USA, in direct slavery the slaves have no money; in indirect slavery they are allowed to make money, then you take it and give it to their lord).

No, but not surprising you are so ill informed.  Government taking money for the common good is just.  Government robbing peter to pay paul is slavery.  You are forced to work for another for no benefit to yourself.  Learn the difference or you will never be able to discuss it intelligently.

well... back in the days of serfdom the serfs were all slaves, bound the land, owned by the lord. The lord would "tax" them... he would not provide a service, he would just take from them to give to himself. However the governments of that age called it a tax. Despite me oppsing the stupid remarks that "it is just taxation", I am left wondering, what exactly IS the definition of taxation.

wikipedia (I know, bad source...) says: A tax is a financial charge or other levy imposed on an individual or a legal entity by a state or a functional equivalent of a state.

If you look up state and so on, you get that basically a tax is when whomever controls an area / people (by means of might) takes money from everyone else it is a tax. (so if say, ghengis khan conquered your city and decides to loot it, it is technically a tax, since he is the effective government at the moment).

Anyways, does calling something a tax make it one? Would calling slavery a tax make it one?

The biggest issue is what is being represented. The argument that "it is just taxation" is evading the actual question. Rather then addressing the issue at hand, it attempts to deflect it by saying "this is just a tax, taxes are ok, therefore this is ok", and sparks a debate about exactly what is the defintion of a tax. (because there ARE very real examples of people referring to slavery as taxes).

So the question should be... what is this in of itself?

A. Taking to provide for everyone - public works. examples: army, police, roads...

B. Taking unequal amounts to provide in unequal amounts - socialism (taking from a few to provide for many)/corruption (taking from the many to provide for the few)... examples include: government provided healthcare, or tax payers funding a project that benefits a specific corporation thanks to corrupt politicians.

C. Taking to give to someone else - slavery. examples: serfdom, wealth redistribution from rich to poor.

BTW. Unemployment CAN be B or C, depending on how it is structured.

I thought UI was something you paid into along with your employer .... after all is it not insuranc?

It is something EVERY employer must pay for by law, employees never pay into it directly (aka, you don't see a deduction on your income for it), and should you become unemployed, you claim it directly from the government.

So it is an insurence run by the government paid by all employers by law on behalf of employees. Not exactly the "typical" defintion of insurence.

But in a way its still insurance right?

See I didnt know what my taxes pay. I know I get FICA.... and not sure exactly what it is and never got a clear answer when I asked.

FICA is Social Security and Medicare.

Social Security is matched by the employer, but anything including UI is factored into the value of labor--nothing is charitable.

This is a very good point.. after all you can only get UI if there is a legit reason for getting fired ( Ive had to collect when I got fired for taking 2 days off in 5 months both for specailist apointments out of town for my kids, didnt have the FMLA so pretty much because it didnt fall under FMLA ( need 1 working year by law ) I got the UI ) so I guess your right ... you do have to work in order to qulify and on top of that you need to make enough money to get it

It is all factored in.  A company has X dollars to pay for work.  Every hidden tax (and the employer side of FICA, Medicaid, UI, etc. are hidden from employees) is factored into the equation.  So they pay you less based upon what they have to pay the government.

It's a bit more difficult than that.

What the company pay a given employee is a sum X between two values A and B, with A being the least amount the employee is willing to work for (or minimum wage) and B being the highest amount the company are willing or able, whichever is lower, to pay.

Hidden taxes lower B, but do not lower A. Hence they might or might not lower X, depending on the situation.

It's possible that hiddex taxes are bad for employees who are good negotiators and who are therefore more likely to have a wage higher than their A.

One extreme case is hidden taxes lowering B below A. But whether A would simply follow the lead or not, I don't know.

And with taxes it's even worse.

At the federal level is that the community comes together and decides that some people, but not themselves, will be forced to donate.

I like Robin Hood but people don't remember history. He wasn't robbing from the rich to give to the poor. He was robbing from the tax collector and giving it back to the people.

Re: Slavery

Forcing one individual to work for another individual is slavery.

Taxation, on its  own, isn't evil.

The issue is how those taxes are used.

If taxes are used to provide services that everyone uses to some extent (roads, schools, police, fire, etc.) that can be argued to be reasonable.

If those taxes are used to give money to specific individuals, then that is evil because the money that was taken in taxes essentially means that person worked for that other person.  

To use the little old widow example, if society decided that the government was going to start providing lawn care for all Americans, I would vote against it but there's nothing inhernetly evil about that because we all can potentially make use of this service.

But the government giving the little old lady money directly to hire someone to take care of her lawn is evil.