Sso you're operating under the (incorrect) assumption there would be no taxes? Don't you get tired of being wrong?
Tell you what, since you don't seem willing or able to look for yourself, here you go, straight from the web site of the libertarian party.
Next time, do your homework before making such a foolish statement.
Taxes Are the Issue
By Tonie Nathan
Political advisors often talk about the necessity for candidates to emphasize "bread and butter" issues. In layman's language, they mean they want their candidates to deal with issues that affect their constituents' pocketbooks and well-being -- those issues that affect voters personally. There is no issue that better fills that requirement than a tax issue.
We libertarians need to reach as many voters as possible. However, except under unusual circumstances, we are unlikely to capture voters' attention with discussions of special interest legislation such as women's rights, gun control, drug laws, etc. Only tax laws affect almost every special interest group sufficiently to capture its attention. From the minimum wage earner to the corporation president, from gay rights groups to gun lobbyists, taxes are a concern. For this reason, it is important for potential libertarian candidates to give careful and serious thought to how to handle tax issues.
I have campaigned four times. I think I have learned a lot, sometimes by trial and error, about being effective in stating my ideas. Campaigning nationally as the LP's first vice presidential candidate, then on a statewide level, then in a congressional district, and door-to-door in a county commissioner race, I honed my skills in discussing the issues. Increasingly I found that two principles stand out in guiding my approach to every question and have been the most helpful in dealing with any issue, including tax issues:
On any issue, start where they are and lead them to where you are.
Ask yourself how you can solve the problem presented without using government or public funds.
When discussing a tax measure, decide if the net effect of the measure will be to increase government revenue. If it is, we libertarians must oppose it, even though the proposed tax is for attractive and necessary programs such as economic development, new libraries, school improvements, roads, parks, etc.
Using my first principle, a candidate can usually agree that the program is necessary or worthwhile. ("Yes, I agree with you that our roads are in need of repair.") Then immediately point out that the proposed tax doesn't provide any additional revenue for road repair; the tax just changes the decision-making power. The person earning the money gives up his/her right to decide how or where his/her money will be spent and turns that power over to a bureaucrat.
In cannot overstress the above point. If you can persuade your listeners to recognize that taxes do not add to the wealth of the nation but instead deplete its wealth, you will be changing viewpoints in a very fundamental way. For some reason, most people act as if government has a separate source of money which only has to be doled out to the right people for the right things. We need to point out continually that all the nation's wealth is created in the private sector and that the more funds are removed from the private sector to the public sector, the less wealth is created for use by anyone -- including government. Most people know this, but don't like to admit it, possibly because they fear losing their place at the public trough.
The next question is sure to be, "But if this tax should be defeated, who will repair the road?" Or "who will pay for education?" Or "...?" Here is where you use the second principle.
I usually state the principle first by saying that we libertarians know, as most people do, that government is very inefficient and wasteful in providing any kind of service, so we like to find ways to solve social problems without resorting to taxing the public. I would then qualify my remarks by stating that, although we libertarians oppose all taxes in principle, being reasonable people, we don't expect government to privatize everything overnight. So we try to find ways of reducing taxes by providing alternative solutions.
At this point you must have some good examples of private road building, private planning, private education, on hand. (See "Fiscal Watchdog," 1018 Garden St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101, for many useful references.) But don't be afraid to come up with your own creative solutions. ("After all, people who use the road want it in good repair, don't they? Perhaps the property owners along the roadway could get together and hire a road repair crew. That's all the government does anyway; it solicits bids. The problem is that many times the repair contracts are awarded as political favors to contractors who satisfy only the bureaucrats, not us. Wouldn't taxpayers be better off making their own spending decisions?")
You'll notice I ask lots of rhetorical questions. It stimulates the questioner to consider my argument. Many times I am amazed at the affirmative responses I get in the form of stories about waste and inefficiency. I always pull out a notebook and take these down to use at subsequent meetings with the permission of the storyteller. It is flattering to the storyteller and useful to me.
Some tax issues are not tax increases, but rather tax switches. A sales tax is increased to reduce an income tax or property tax. Or a tax can be distributed or levied in new or different ways. Libertarians may differ on the approval or disapproval of such tax proposals, but if the net effect of such a proposal is more equitable and lessens the cost and extent of the tax, I believe it is possible to support it. However, one should be sure that a new bureaucracy is not being created and that the overall effect of the proposal is either less tax or less control. I must confess I have yet to find such a tax proposal (with the possible exception of a flat tax). All tax switch proposals I have encountered increase the power or the cost of government or lessen an individual's control over his/her income.
While most Libertarian Party candidates have their own approaches to tax issues, I think it is important to constantly reiterate the aforementioned argument that any increase in government revenue is produced by a transfer of money from the productive private sector into the non-productive public sector. No new money is being created, but the less money the private sector has, the less it can invest to produce goods, jobs, and services, and the more control the government has over all of us. Further, the cost involved in collecting and redistributing taxes reduces the amount of funding available for the particular program for which the tax was designed.
In short, taxes do not provide anything that cannot be provided better and less expensively, without coercion, in the private sector. The constant reiteration of this point avoids discussing the tax measure itself and there is no reason why it should be discussed. No matter what it proposes to do, or how it proposes to do it, any tax measure can be opposed by the above arguments alone.
It is tempting to take the position of tax resisters who remind us that the best way of doing away with government excesses is not to fund fund government. However, this is an argument for libertarians, and is not calculated to win votes from those who are still striving to pay their "fair share" for services they deem desirable and who regard tax resisters as "cheaters."
Put yourself on the side of those who sincerely desire better roads, schools, and health care and then show them how to obtain their goals without tax levies. Thanks to numerous libertarian writers, periodicals, and books, there is now an increasing acceptance of privatization as a way of supplanting new tax and bond proposals. Discussing such libertarian solutions to tax issues will enable our candidates to provide hope and encouragement to an overtaxed populace.
Tonie Nathan, former national LP candidate for Vice President of the United States, was the first woman to receive an electoral college vote. She is a freelance writer who is active in the politics of Lane County, OR.
http://www.lp.org/lpn/8602-tax.html
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You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers
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