Funding for the levees kept getting cut & cut. I don’t know if it would’ve mattered, but its definately not a good thing. This is a result of a society that calls for endless tax cuts, the fact that infrastructure has to come down and crumble to pay for all those tax cuts. We are currently running half a trillion in deficits a year.
So is it time to start developing new attitudes towards taxes? I don’t want to pay 50% of my income in taxes, but at the same time I don’t think its responsible for me to endlessly call for tax cuts when they will ruin infrastructure and leave the nation extremely vulnerable.
There is a book called ‘don’t think of an elephant’ that talks about frames and how they relate to political debate (frames are how you represent a subject, ie the estate tax vs the death tax). They claim the frame on taxes that is widely held is largely conservative, and taxes are considered an evil burden to the point that even progressives and liberals call for tax cuts. The progressive view on taxes is that they are a necessary, albeit undesirable chore and pre-requisite for living in a representative government, no different than homework is a pre-requisite for an education. Nobody likes it but trying to get out of it is not a good idea either. Besides, you can pay for things with taxes or you can pay for them privately, but in the end you still pay for things. If roads were private you’d still pay for them with private tolls, healthcare is largely private and although we save some money on taxes compared to other countries, we just pay more privately so it all evens out.
Maybe my whole view on the subject is wrong though but from what I see our frame on taxes (that they are an unnecessary burden) is not helping us out. We are ruining infrastructure and running massive deficits due to it and its time to start developing more responsible views on taxation.
Back to the ‘we’ll pay for it anyway’ school of thought, to my knowledge the vast majority of tax money goes to 6 things.
Healthcare $800 billion
Education $850 billion
Social Security $550 billion
Interest on the national debt $300 billion
Military $400 billion
judicial system $200 billion
These aren’t expendable priorities, and if you don’t pay for them in taxes you just pay for them privately. I hear some people brag that ‘we pay less in taxes for healthcare than places like Germany’. Yeah probably, but we pay more privately so it really doesn’t matter. If I pay $400 in taxes and $400 privately instead of $700 in taxes & $100 privately that doesn’t make me a winner or a loser.
If we lived in a libertarian world with no financed education, social security or healthcare (and no national debt as we’d have small budgets) we’d just end up paying for that stuff privately which could cost just as much if not more than if we do it publicly.
There seems to be a mentality that tax money is just flushed down the toilet, that paying taxes is the same as burning money. Its not, its just paying for things you use daily via public funds instead of private. Everyone uses at least 5 of those things and every developed country except the US uses all 6.
At least for the Bush 43 administration, I don’t think it is accurate to blame spending cuts on tax cuts. Total (federal) spending has only gone up, by leaps and bounds.
I looked it up for you. I was actually surprised that tax receipts went down as much as they did (I had thought that in spite if the cuts, receipts weren’t down really that much). From 2000 to 2004, although receipts were down from 21% of GDP to 16.5% of GDP, this is down by only 7% in monetary terms (don’t know if this is nominal or constant dollars). Spending, however, was up by 28%!
That’s certainly not my view! I think taxes are a great bargain for the freedoms and civil society that they buy us in return. Things that couldn’t be achieved in any other way. The more taxes, the better… that is, in theory.
However, the crucial thing is what the taxes are spent on.
Here’s how I think the attitude toward taxes should develop. It is time to deemphasize the quantity of taxes and government spending, and start focusing on the quality.
In practical terms, paradoxically, I am actually rather close to some of the extreme right wing posters on this board. Cut taxes, cut government spending. Why? With a couple isolated exceptions, which I have been very fortunate to witness first-hand, government today is not nearly at the level of quality it should be; the level that we deserve for our hard-earned tax money, considering our present understanding of organizations and human society. Solution? Cut government budgets (except transfer payments) in half. Nothing forces organizations to shape up better than giant budget crises. (Exception: IT spending. This should be cut by 90% rather than just by half. Believe it or not, many failing IT projects have in fact been rescued that way.)
What kinda taxes are we talking about here? For instance, you note 850 billion dollars of tax funding for education that isn’t “expendable.” If that figure represents federal contributions to state run public schools, every dollar of is is expendable, by my view.
Total taxpayer investment in K-12 education in the United States for the 2004-05 school year is estimated to be $536 billion…In addition to the K-12 money mentioned above, taxpayers will spend an estimated $373 billion for higher education in the same school year.
I honestly don’t know what percentage goes where aside from whether it goes to higher education or lower education. Apparently its higher than $850 billion though, its $900 billion.
But there is some overlap between these 6 categories. Teachers and LE officers get healthcare from the government since the gov. pays for their jobs, and military personnel have their educations subsidized, etc.
By not expendable I mean people will pay no matter what. People can either pay through taxes for education or pay privately, at the end of the day the money comes right back to them. And even if you did cut the ‘fat’ out of these 6 categories I doubt it’d make a gigantic difference, maybe as a guess 10% or so.