 States’ agential capacities aside, there are several reasons to doubt whether states have the primary intention of benefiting their subjects and whether states actually sacrifice in granting the benefits they grant (Simmons 1979: 185–188). In the first place, the fact that states receive taxes from their citizens in exchange for the benefits they confer seems to undermine the claim that beneficence is a state’s primary intention, and that states make sacrifices in order to benefit their subjects. Defenders of the link between (1) and (2) might point out that many states spend more money conferring benefits on their subjects than they take in from taxes. They might also note that many subjects receive great benefits from the state despite paying few or no taxes (Walker 1988: 209). Critics, however, point out that every tax-paying subject—even those who pay minimal taxes—is forced by the state to pay them (Klosko 1989: 354; Wellman 1999a: 73). Someone who forces benefits on me, and forces me to pay a share for them, may thereby undermine his desert of gratitude. Finally, it might be argued that even if the state provides some benefits to its subjects, and provides them intentionally, the state may still lose its claim to gratitude if it subsequently harms those subjects, which many states do through unjust laws or other types of repression and persecution.