And why exactly should the government (ie those of us who pay tax) subsidise someone consuming drugs and alcohol?

Because the cost of the management overhead to enact your petty vindictive moralising would be far more than any possible savings.

The benefits system is not there to provide a lifestyle, it is there to TEMPORARILY provide the bare essentials until you find another job. People should have to work if they want any kind of luxury items.

The assumption being there are jobs for them to find. Which, given the western world abandoned full employment as a social and economic policy goal decades ago, is quite possibly untrue.

The amount of people on long term benefits, who have all manner of luxury goods is absolutely sickening.

Not nearly as sickening as the things the super-rich waste their money on.

Take two

If you are in the 40% tax bracket in South Africa, you are earning R617,000+/yr. As an aside, this puts you comfortably in the top 5% of earners.

Your annual tax is around R167,501, which represents about 27% of your gross income. Since I’m sure there are numerous deductions available, that’s a worst-case scenario.

For you to actually pay “close on to 40% in personal income tax leaving your with 60% to spend”, you’d need to be earning upwards of R3,120,000/yr. Good on you if you are, but with an income 6x the typical white SA salary, complaining seems a little churlish.

Ugh, apologies, scratch that above I was using the wrong currency code.

I said "progressive income tax tables applies". If you want to know what that means see wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. In brief, it means that only money in a certain bracket gets taxed at the rate for that bracket. It's clear from your other postings in this thread that you didn't know that. In any rate, my workings were given above, as you asked.
I'm well aware of how progressive tax brackets work.

You claim to pay "close on to 40% in personal income tax leaving your with 60% to spend".

What I suspect you actually mean, is that your income is high enough for you to be in the 40% bracket - ie: over R617,000 (which, in itself, probably puts you into the top few percent of income earners in the country). Because if you really are paying "close on" 40% (let's say "close on" is at least 37.5%) of your gross income in tax, then your gross income is ca. R250,000 (=USD72,000) per month.

I think you need to work on your understanding of how tax brackets function.

Nice straw man. Those things don't require almost half of my income.
Please show your working as to how your tax amounts to half your income.

That said, a truly progressive taxation would be a fixed percentage otherwise. 20% of $1m is definitely going to be greater than 20% of $100k, so the rich actually would end up paying more, and literally their fair share of the overall governmental burden. The more you make, the more you pay. Anything else is objectively punitive, as it punishes success - we want to incentivize success.
The point of progressive taxation is not to punish success, it is to place a larger proportion of costs on those a) most able to afford it and b) who benefit most from the services a stable Government and society provide.

If you were truly interested in having everyone pay their "fair share", you'd tax a flat percentage of all income above poverty level, with no loopholes, deductions, or credits.

But, nobody would go for that - even the most left-wing and right-wing ideologues would both decry it.
Actually, right-wing types cheer on a flat income tax all the time. It suits their internal myths about "all men being equal" and "the self-made man". It's also relatively easy for corporations and the wealthy to dodge simply by moving their income to somewhere with low (or no) income taxes.

To get the right-wingers to decry a flat tax, you need to propose a flat tax on _wealth_. Then they're screaming from the rooftops about how unfair it is - even though (or perhaps because?) they're quite efficient and have low deadweight losses - because suddenly it's the wealthy who have to stump up a proportionally larger chunk of their stash.

Few works over 50 years old generate significant revenues, [...]
The limit should not be decided around when a work has stopped generating significant revenues, but by when it has made the creator a reasonable return on their investment [of time].

That way it actually works as an incentive to keep creating.

Further, there should be a distinction between copyright for the purposes of acknowledging a work's creator (which should be automatic, and not expire), and copyright for the purposes of commercialising the work (which should be opt-in, and short). (I believe EU copyright already makes this distinction to some degree.)

See Edward Snowden [wikipedia.org].
Last I checked he'd left the USA.

Meaning all that has to happen is a Federal LEA decide you're a person of interest or "under investigation" - no charges - and you can have your ability to enter another country eliminated.
And in what situation are you expecting this to happen en masse so the whole country is locked down ?

The question raised was what to do if you don't want to "interact" with a Government you disagree with. You know, something similar to deleting your social media accounts.

Finally, if you're being genuinely persecuted by your Government, you can seek asylum in another country. No need for a passport to enter. Most countries have land borders to multiple other countries, so it shouldn't present an insurmountable obstacle.

And when said Government decides to revoke your passport? A corporation cannot stop you from traveling; the Government can.
Passports are required to enter countries, not leave them.

What's your scenario for a Government revoking passports ? I'm sure I can come up with something equally corner-case for private industry behaviour.

I urge you however to look into Walter E. Williams and Milton Friedman.
Already have.

Evidence on how destructive these systems are is overwhelming.
Evidence on how destructive unrestrained private industry can be is pretty overwhelming as well.

Which is irrelevant since the origin poster explained the scope - "in America".
That post was a reply to mine.

On top of which, the whole discussion's scope is about attitudes outside the US.

The original poster's point was that they weren't.
The posts I see are trying to compare shopping for groceries with elections and using that as an argument against Government. What posts are you looking at ?

Keep in mind that this quote was in reply to your post on the alleged futility of shopping around.
I made no comment about the "futility of shopping around".

What I actually said was that it may not be possible to "shop around" if you don't have any alternatives within easy reach. Note that just because two stores might have different names on the front, doesn't mean they're not both owned by the same parent company.

No, it's about the relative power of corporations and governments. Sure, you can contrive a situation (as you did) where it is somewhat difficult to avoid a particular business's machinations, but that's not true in general and it ignores that governments have considerably more power to interfere in the lives of their citizens than the business does.
But Governments have substantially less incentive to do so.

So you're saying that I'm immoral for not giving money to someone who is holding a gun to my head because they are providing me with a service?
No.

I'm saying if you're immoral if you want to benefit from publicly funded services without paying taxes.

If you do not want to pay taxes, there is a perfectly moral avenue to take - emigrate and leave the system entirely.

I am assuming here that you think you should be able to benefit from publicly funded services without paying taxes. I struggle to see any other interpretation of your assertions that incarceration for not paying tax is immoral, and that taxation is theft.

Wow. Not sure how to respond to that.
Try staying away from straw men and other fallacies.

You're the first person who's ever proposed to me that the person from who the government is stealing from is the one who is immoral.
Taxes aren't stealing. Stealing is when you take something from someone who has no choice in the matter and receives no benefit in return.

That's like saying it's immoral for slave to refuse to pick cotton because the master is providing him with food.
No, it's nothing like that at all. A slave is not free to leave his slavery. You are.

You may, however, struggle to find somewhere you actually want (and can afford) to live that doesn't have any taxes.

Unsustainable. Great way to reduce the number of customers. It'll never work.
Your theory is noted.

In practice, media companies seem to be doing OK.

In addition, this is usually done with the help of government by using the government police and government jail.
Government does not force anyone to sue anyone. Companies choose to sue their customers of their own volition which is, I believe, counter to "pleasing your fellow man".

Or are you trying to argue that Government shouldn't be enforcing the law ?

Unsustainable. How long do you think that will last.
Long enough to kill more people. Again, I believe, against the spirit of "pleasing your fellow man".

Government pollution through war dwarfs all other pollution.
This is what we call a red herring fallacy.

Of course corporations will use government to do their dirty work.
I'm glad you agree it is corporations who instigate the action. Once more, I believe, actions that aren't focussed on "pleasing your fellow man".

When governments disappear, so does lobbying and the guns.
Of course. Without Governments there to protect, there's no need to get them to attack on your behalf - you can do it directly.

If monopolies are bad and the government is a monopoly then why do you think governments are good?
This is what we call a straw man fallacy.