What would happen if the population stopped paying taxes?

Could the government arrest everyone?

 

The nation would quit functioning so you would have a lot more to be worried about then just getting arrested.

 

The government might quit functioning but not the nation.

 

No nation can function without a government.

Hunter gatherer tribes could not function without a form of government.

 

"Everyone" will never stop paying taxes. If you could somehow get 50% of the people to stop paying taxes, then yeah, the government would go after the other 50%. That's just the way our government is going these days.

Nah man, if you want to stop paying taxes you're going to have to do more than just stop paying taxes.

You know about tarring and feathering, yes? You know about the scalding tea? They used to pour that down the tax collectors' throats so they couldn't talk for a month or so. If they couldn't talk, they couldn't collect taxes, 'cause they couldn't tell anyone how much they owed. Clever lot, those colonists....

 

The government couldn't arrest everyone, but they would use a lot of force to bring the most prominent people in line in some way.

The government will not take no for an answer, and will use force when necessary to keep people in line.

 

I think it's a myth that for civilization to exist it requires an institution called government that is exempt from the moral standards that everybody else is taught in preschool (don't hit, don't steal). If government suddenly collapsed tomorrow, we certainly would be screwed. But that's not due to the virtue of government.

 

A government is not for civilization, but to keep order and protect it's people.

 

Sure it can just because someone tries to exercise power over others does not mean it is needed

 

It is certainly needed. One of the immutable laws of nature is that the first hungry person who comes along is going to try to steal your food. And there are people who are hungry for more than just food, and sometimes they get together in large numbers, and when that happens it is very natural for the well-meaning citizens of the town to organize themselves also, and elect a leader, and bestow some power on the leader to protect their rights and their property and their families. It is a tautology that no nation can function without a government, however it is also true that no society can function without one. There is not a corporation on this planet that doesn't have leadership (in spite of the utopian pipe dreams - in reality no such thing exists). There is no nation without a government (except very temporarily). The exercise power is absolutely needed to maintain a stable society.

 

A corporation won't kill or kidnap you if you defy them so their leadership is very different from political leadership. As for safety, there is an obvious market demand for that from people across the economic spectrum so it's pretty easy to imagine groups voluntarily pooling resources to obtain a service to satisfy that demand.

 

If the people all the sudden were to become anarchists, they're definitely going about the wrong way of trying to dismantle the state. Instead of just stopping to pay taxes out of the blue, which would likely lead to the police and possibly military trying to force them to pay, they should elect anarchist to power and THEN dismantle the state. But then, anarchists are not famed for their wit are they?

But what would happen would be that martial law would be proclaimed, and people would be forced. I'm sure that most people would stop with their silly anarchist nonsense if they might get shot for it. That is of course, unless the leaders and people in the state are also suddenly converted to anarchism, but that would be a silly scenario wouldn't it.

 

Nothing so far as the government goes, they really do not need taxes anymore and haven't since we stopped backing the dollar with gold and silver. Taxes do not support the government, they are simply a method of controlling the wealth of the people and thereby inflation.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...kYKIBA&usg=AFQjCNGyKgvUAC9j9nNQvIrZLfABWSZ1CQ
In this link there is a speech by Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the Federal Reserve back in 1946 explaining that taxes for support of government were obsolete. They do however need to control your income, because after all, if the average person were able to retire at say 30, then who would do the work? They have to keep you needing income so they can keep you working...

 

You are joking right? Government is the tool by which the wealthy control the working class. The government does not give a damn about its people except as a commodity to exploit.

 

They would implement MARTIAL LAW and start filling those 800 concentration style FEMA CAMPS strategically placed across the whole Nation and they could have a reason to start using that 160 billion rounds of AMMO they're hoarding. More Ammo than all our troops have used in the last 10 years !

 

Government has created systems of privilege such as land titles, patent and copyright, bank charters, licensing, corporate charters, taxi medallions, sugar quotas, etc. These are arbitrary made-up regulations that government writes in order to concentrate income into the pockets of fewer people. Virtually every rich person holds at least one of the privileges mentioned above. By writing regulation that shifts most income into the pockets of a small percentage of the population, government has protected itself from a revolt of the taxpayers, because under this system most people don't have enough income to have to pay any federal taxes anyway. In other words, the system insures that a relative small group of people get most of the income, and government finds this convenient because it is easier to collect a lot of taxes from a few people, than it is to collect few taxes from a lot of people. I'm going to repeat this one more time: government creates regulation that shifts most income into the hands of a few people in order to make tax collection easier, while also making the masses believe that government is “on their side”. The problem arises when people like you ignore the privileges the rich hold, the privileges which make them rich to begin with, the privileges which government has created and issued so that only a few people have most of the income, which allows government the efficiency and convenience of collecting taxes from fewer people. So stop defending the rich. The government made them rich in order to make tax collection easier, and if we don't follow through with the plan, and tax the rich heavily, then that efficiency that was designed into the system cannot be realized.

 

Horsecrap.

Why is it with you people and your false dichotomies? Why can't I ever present to you another point of view ons something you people without saying anything other than "you're defending the [people I hate]"?
Saying it either has to be this or it has to be that is an extremely limited way of thinking.

Secondly, you really don't understand what a right is and furthermore you don't care. Every citizen in America has rights, and the same rights, and all rights must be applied equally or they are just not rights.

That mean rich people have their rights too.

Thirdly, it is not the government. But my face will just turn blue trying to explain things to you on how things really work because you are locked into your beliefs and can't see anything else.

People will see only what they want to see.

And that is a shame.

 

To answer the OP - see "Greece".

 

"What would happen if the population stopped paying taxes? "

America as we know it would be no more

 

We would become insolvent like Greece. Greeks tend to not pay taxes.

 

At least at the local level, people not paying taxes is not uncommon. What happens is that a lien is put on your property. If you keep not paying taxes, eventually all you property is lost to the town. I am not sure if the federal government can also put a lien on someone's property or future earnings in the case of failure to pay federal taxes?

 

Really? Corporations won't kill people? I would recommend looking to the history of mine strikes in the early 20th and late 19th centuries of the stuff Coca Cola has been doing in South America in just the last couple decades.

 

"Asps...very dangerous.....you go first"----Sallah "Raiders of the Lost Ark"

- - - Updated - - -

Or look up how coal mining companies hired goons and got state militias to break up strikes....with machine guns.

 

All the stupid libertarian fantasies are BS, with no government, what you hvae is people living in a Mad Max movie, stupid **********s holed up in a root cellar with canned goods, ammo and guns shooting at their neighbors.

 

Half US Federal Tax filers, don't pay anything, to start with and most of them receive a check above whatever was taken from the paychecks. Why fight a gift.