> The idea behind taxes is that you use some public resource and you pay for that service.
That's pretty clearly not the operative principal behind most taxation. Even the examples you gave mostly contradict it: if the point were to make people pay for services they use, then public schools would just charge tuition. As for gasoline taxes, I mostly hear politicians discuss them as an environmental measure; it never even occurred to me that they could be a fee for using roads. And that's not to mention things like income taxes, where the the poor, who use the most public services, pay the least.
> The other theories of taxation is that it should be used to raise revenue from the best means possible. I disagree with that framework…
This seems like a very radical position. "x should be done by the best means possible" is almost a tautology. Can you explain what you mean?
I think that France should levy any taxes that would benefit its people. Some taxes are bad, because eg. they hurt the economy enough to outweigh the benefit of increased revenues. In other cases, it's the reverse. In any case, what matters in the end is the public welfare. Do you disagree?
That's pretty clearly not the operative principal behind most taxation. Even the examples you gave mostly contradict it: if the point were to make people pay for services they use, then public schools would just charge tuition. As for gasoline taxes, I mostly hear politicians discuss them as an environmental measure; it never even occurred to me that they could be a fee for using roads. And that's not to mention things like income taxes, where the the poor, who use the most public services, pay the least.
> The other theories of taxation is that it should be used to raise revenue from the best means possible. I disagree with that framework…
This seems like a very radical position. "x should be done by the best means possible" is almost a tautology. Can you explain what you mean?
I think that France should levy any taxes that would benefit its people. Some taxes are bad, because eg. they hurt the economy enough to outweigh the benefit of increased revenues. In other cases, it's the reverse. In any case, what matters in the end is the public welfare. Do you disagree?