From Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:
Letter published in the New Jersey Star-Ledger, March 26, 2018, page 6 (not available online as of this writing):
It’s called paying back to society
To the letter writer who wants to know why he should have to pay for NJ transit upgrades when he doesn’t use mass transit (“Murphy’s taxes will eat up federal tax cuts,” March 23): All the people who do use mass transit could be in their own cars, which would make everyone’s lives more miserable because of the massive increase in traffic and pollution. And why should you pay school taxes even though you don’t have kids in school? Because the kids in school today will be the health care providers and scientists and engineers, etc., who will be running the world that you live in tomorrow. That is what a society does.
Barbara Egger, Lakewood
This is one of the most devious arguments for forced redistribution of wealth.
Society doesn’t “do” anything. “Society” is an abstraction denoting a number of individuals. Only individuals think, learn, work, and trade. The premise behind catchphrases like “paying back to society” is that some people must be forced to hand their money over to the state, so that some politically connected others can use the gun-backed machinery of government to legally force their values on unwilling individuals.