levy

I wonder why the shops that sell these don't put a sticker on them saying something like 'two out of the seven Euro are a levy'.

If I lived in a country where the "pirate" levy was in place I would feel justified in copyright infringement because I would feel I have already paid for it.

It would really help encourage tourism into the USA if the USA didn't levy a freaking tax on entering the USA to subsidize the ailing Florida tourism industry.

That's just how democratic government begins.> have the money stolen from me by forceThis is a dishonest characterization of the authority of a democratic government to levy taxes.

Personally, I do actually want the government to be able to levy taxes to pay for public services, to be able to trace corrupt payments, to be able to seize the assets of fraudsters who have convicted under a fair judicial process, to be able to nudge the value of a currency to pursue wider macro-economic aims, and so on. Ultimately, living in a society means being subject to its laws.

There's a lot standing behind 'your' money that isn't yours, by any reasonable measure.> while people pretend it is moral because it is called "taxes".A democratic government's authority to levy taxes does not derive from the name, nor from the force that it can, in extreme cases, use to collect them.

It's a very fine piece of writing, and there are a lot of interesting details that most Americans either willfully ignore or fail to notice:- Safety is mentioned in the first paragraph as a reason for government to exist.- Many of King George's offenses will sound very familiar to us as things our government does today: maintaining standing armies, levying taxes, etc.- Many of those offenses also have the phrase "without our consent" in them, which tends to be missed by people who bring up that second point.- One of the offenses listed is limiting immigration.