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An Analysis of Some Arguments

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The Ethics of Tax Evasion

Abstract

Morality can exist only when there is choice. Stated alternatively, where there is no choice there is no morality. If a commanding officer orders a soldier to either kill someone or be killed for disobeying an order, the soldier is not morally responsible for executing the person who has been chosen for execution because he has no choice.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This latter position has been disputed and we will discuss it below.

  2. 2.

    I am referring to the scandal surrounding Congressional approval to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a bridge from mainland Alaska to Gravina Island, an island that was nearly uninhabited and which already had a ferry service connecting it to the mainland. The main issue was whether taxpayers from Florida, Kansas, and other states should be forced to pay for a bridge in Alaska that was not needed and was pushed by a member of the Alaska Congressional delegation mostly as a means of creating jobs (and obtaining Alaskan votes at the expense of the taxpayers of the other 49 states).

  3. 3.

    www.privatization.org provides a wealth of information, including a database, of numerous cases where functions once performed by government have been successfully transferred to the private or nonprofit sector.

  4. 4.

    I do not know the origin of this example. Marshall Fritz used it in a speech I heard in the 1980s but it did not originate with him.

  5. 5.

    For more on these and other points, see www.socialsecurity.org.

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  1. School of Business, Florida International University, 3000 NE 151 Street, North Miami, FL, 33181, USA

    Robert W. McGee

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    Robert W. McGee

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McGee, R.W. (2012). An Analysis of Some Arguments. In: McGee, R. (eds) The Ethics of Tax Evasion. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1287-8_3

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