Read the relevant part again: "All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition."
What Franklin is saying is that property in surplus of what a man could acquire in his savage state is the result of society and therefore society is entitled to direct its disposition as it sees fit. The only moral limit to the amount of taxation, according to him, is the point at which society takes away what the man would have had in his savage state (i.e. he is made worse off by the existence of society and its taxes). Taxing someone making hundreds of thousands of dollars at 28% is of course nowhere near that limit.
Indeed, the change in the economy since Franklin's time cuts in the opposite direction, under his reasoning. Today, people have far more property in surplus of the subsistence level than they did in Franklin's time. Taxing a middle-class farmer of Franklin's time 75% might have taken him below the subsistence level, and have been immoral according to Franklin, but that would not be the case today with a middle-class programmer.
Of course it's probably not, from a utilitarian standpoint, the best idea to tax everyone to the subsistence limit, in a world where people can vote with their feet and countries can compete on taxation levels, but under Franklin's reasoning there is nothing morally wrong with even very high levels of taxes, as long as no one is worse off by virtue of the existence of society than they would have been in the savage state.
The error in the reasoning of this excerpt is the assumption that the government can justly create any law that it wants, short of taking away a person's bare necessities. By this logic, slavery is fine as long as the slave has food, water, and shelter. The slave has no right to complain as long as he's better off than he would be in the most primitive state of nature.
The declaration of independence expresses a better view: we are endowed with liberty by our Creator and it is the role of government to protect that liberty. Under this view, government's actions can be judged.
A slave's participation in the system is not voluntary. Your participation in society is voluntary (i.e. complain about taxes before you get rich--don't complain about the bargain after you've seen how it plays out!)
Also: if you assume God exists, then there is a moral framework that's externally imposed which makes arguments like these moot. But whose God are we talking about that creates these endowed rights? And where in the Bible does it talk about taxes?
Read the relevant part again: "All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition."
What Franklin is saying is that property in surplus of what a man could acquire in his savage state is the result of society and therefore society is entitled to direct its disposition as it sees fit. The only moral limit to the amount of taxation, according to him, is the point at which society takes away what the man would have had in his savage state (i.e. he is made worse off by the existence of society and its taxes). Taxing someone making hundreds of thousands of dollars at 28% is of course nowhere near that limit.
Indeed, the change in the economy since Franklin's time cuts in the opposite direction, under his reasoning. Today, people have far more property in surplus of the subsistence level than they did in Franklin's time. Taxing a middle-class farmer of Franklin's time 75% might have taken him below the subsistence level, and have been immoral according to Franklin, but that would not be the case today with a middle-class programmer.
Of course it's probably not, from a utilitarian standpoint, the best idea to tax everyone to the subsistence limit, in a world where people can vote with their feet and countries can compete on taxation levels, but under Franklin's reasoning there is nothing morally wrong with even very high levels of taxes, as long as no one is worse off by virtue of the existence of society than they would have been in the savage state.