That’s easy. Print some money and give it to the states to hire back all those people they have fired. Spend more money on infrastructure improvements. Force the banks to deal with the underwater mortgage issue, which will encourage more spending for those who are scared about owing more on their houses than they have. That might also free up people to move to look for work.
It would be nice to have an interest rate policy that keeps the current low interest rates for money actually being invested, but hikes them for money sitting in non-productive “investments” - but I have no idea how that would work.
We know what not to do. Output in England is tanking again, as it is in much of Europe. Austerity does not cut it. England is a good case, because it is not tied directly to the woes of the Euro.
None of this is particularly new or original, of course.
We could offer him a deal - no taxes, but he is not allowed to make any use of government services. He can’t go to court. He can write contracts, but they cannot be enforced in the legal system. Maybe the Virginia Republican Party would offer him money for his wisdom.
Apparently, in the effort to play class warfare or anohter round of “conservatives-teh-suxx00r”, we forget the simpler reasons. There’s a lot of money from Argentinians, Brazilians, Venezuelans, Mexicans and other people who wake up every morning without any idea if the taxes will go up 30%, or their companiy is going to be seized by the government.
My dad had, for while, 100k in the Caymans at a time inflation was 25% a month and the governemt had just taken possession, for a “fair” price, of all the banks. He wasn’t an evil conservative hiding money so that more kids would die.
I’m not sure your distinction has a difference in the end.
I assume you are not suggesting that people decide for themselves what they should pay or that the government send them a bill for services (which would be near impossible to calculate).
Doubtless the government spends a lot of money that an individual may disagree with. They may see a lot of it as unnecessary or wasteful. Though what one person views as waste another may not. This is not to say there is no waste but one has to be careful here. Is a bridge built with federal money in Illinois a waste to someone living in Virginia?
In the end, even today, we do “discuss how much to tax and what to spend those taxes on”. Thing is one person wants one thing and another person wants another thing. Collectively, via our representatives who we vote into office, decisions are made.
The government is certainly not saying, “All that money you make it belongs to us and we will let you keep some of it.” They are saying though that as a resident of this country you have some obligations to meet and paying your tax bill is one of them.
This is true of lots of businesses. If the oil companies did not make gasoline I could not get from my house to my job. I would be fired and my kids would starve. Therefore everything I have is due to the graciousness of oil companies and if they would like to charge me 50% of my yearly income I should happily hand it over while thanking them for letting me keep the rest. The same is true of the corporations that make my car, my clothes, and my food.
Just like these corporations government provides an essential service. That does not mean they should get to charge whatever they want for it. They should charge what it is worth and no more.
Business and corporations make a profit off of your use of their products. There’s no need for you to support them with taxes. Its already a mutually beneficial arrangement as is.
The government does not profit off of the citizens from the services it offers. That’s why the government has to step in, because no business is going to offer a service that does not yield a profit. So how does the government make the revenue it needs to keep the country going and keep the things a lot of people treat as givens if people don’t pay their taxes. Or refuse to pay their fair share.
If you think that taxes are too high for the appropriate level of government service, then be honest and specific about what services should be gotten rid of and what the correct tax rate is for your ideal economy. If you don’t have specifics, then you are not offering an alternative plan and your posts are just really a whine and nothing more.
What should be gotten rid of are the Department’s of Education, Energy, and Commerce, end all farm subsidies and corporate welfare, cut the defense budget by two thirds, means test social security and medicare, replace all forms of welfare with a 50% negative tax rate, dramatically reduce the EPA and FDA, disband Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Those are the big things.
The correct tax rate is about 15% so I would an X tax that was equal to a 15% tax rate.
If we want to go this way, we can say that individuals, associations,and businesses predate governments. Governmets (should) serve people, governments are not justified by themselves
OK, good, now try to sell this plan to the electorate and see how far you get. Hint: Nowhere near a majority. I doubt you’d get 20% that go for this plan.
Having a court system, and defending ourselves from foreign attack do not justify themselves at the very least? Very few of even the most hard core libertarians would share this view of government with you. It is quite extreme don’t you think?
Do you really think the idea of government is unjustified? So what, we should not have one at all?
You too, go ahead and try to sell the idea of no government to the electorate and see how far you get. Oh, wait I guess there wouldn’t be any elections if we just have anarchy would there?
Libertarianism is not anarchy, because, magic.
Not clear of businesses predated governments, not in any real sense.
But in a democracy if the government truly did not serve the people the people are able to disband or change the government. That a small group of malcontents think the government does not serve them and are mad at the vast majority who are happy with the general structure of government is of no matter at all.
Since “no government” or “governmet is unjustified” are not even remotely what I said, I cannot see why I should sell them.
Court systems don’t justify themselves because they can’t exist on their own, they are justified because they serve society.
Governmets build roads to connect people, not to build roads per se.
Barter existed before governmet above the village level existed.
A small group being mad at the vast majority is par for the course for a democracy, in fact, if there are no malcontents, somethig is going wrong.
Well, I don’t really understand your point then. You seem to be saying that anything the government does should have a purpose aside from just existing to exist. Well what does the government do that has no purpose?
The only reason the rich have this money is because of the government in the first place. The capitalistic society gives these men the playground to play on. The government supports the endeavors, or gives you the privacy to cheat others out of money and break rules. They protect you from up rising and being over thrown. They build nice roads for your cars. They make sure the food you buy is clean and healthy.
Countries with totalitarian governments also provide those things. How come people don’t succeed there unless they are part of the ruling party?
Liberty is the difference. America is great because of what our government doesn’t do, not for what it does do. What it does do is what all governments do. If that was the reason we had so many rich people, then you’d have just as many rich people in Cuba.
Yes, lower the tax rate on the rich and they will pay more into the system. That makes a lot of sense. I’m sure someone who hires an accountant to figure out how to pay the absolute minimum in taxes every year will willingly pay more if his tax rates are just lowered a little bit more.
If you get rid of all the deductions and have an 18% rate, as the Erskine-Bowles commission recommended for high earners, the rich would pay about what they do now. So if you want to get more money out of the rich, rather than raising the rate to 39.6%, wouldn’t it be smarter to just eliminate all the deductions and lower it to 23%? That’s a tax increase on the majority of rich folks. 39.6% won’t affect more than a minority of rich people, because all tax increases produce frenzied Congressional lawmaking to create loopholes specifically for the use of Congressmen themselves and their political allies. Then they act all outraged and stuff when people who they didn’t intend to use the deductions use them.
Giving squash to my neighbors and having them watch our house isn’t a business. I’d suspect primitive tribes were a lot closer to socialism, with each member giving in return for food and necessities. And in any case, we know what the oldest business was.
So their presence does not in any way indicate a change in government is required.
I’ll repeat my example The “Ministry of building roads” cannot build justify its existence by building roads from random point A to random point B, that would be existin to exist. That is the problem with many established bureaucracies is that they end up existing unto themselves.
Taking my squash to the village 10km away, exchanging them for pottery, and them coming back and exchanging the pottery for a llama is business.