Why "It's Not Your Money!"

Now consider a modern society based on private property and free enterprise. Instead of gathering berries, I work for a large corporation that makes automobiles, much appreciated all over the world by those who can afford them. The corporation's stock is listed on the national stock exchange, and it financed its modern factory by issuing bonds. For my labour, the corporation pays me a wage, on which I pay taxes. Let's say my wages are $1,000 a week, and from that I pay $200 in taxes. If an opponent of this rate of tax were to point to the $1,000 check and say "It's your money!" that claim would be even more difficult to defend than the parallel claim about the berries. For the corporation could not make its cars without a legal system that fosters and protects mining rights, private ownership of land, an accepted currency, systems of transport, the production and sale of energy, the existence of an educated labour force, corporate oversight, the protection of patents and the prevention of monopolies, judicial resolution of disputes, national defense, and the protection of trading routes. Even if it could make them, without security and at least a moderate degree of prosperity, few people would buy them. In other words, without taxes, the corporation would not be able to pay me $1,000 a week - and if, somehow, I did get paid, the money would be of little value because I could not be secure in my ownership of anything I bought with it.

Peter Singer "The President of Good and Evil"