And you can do the same thing by moving to another country.
I have yet to see a workable a la carte form of government.
But your rate does gfo up because your naighbors are bad drivers.
Gee so even the free market hasn’t been able to solve this problem? I must be unsolvable.
And who enforces those limits? I bet the folks who are most in need of that enforcement don’t actually want it and wouldn’t pay for it if asked.
So wait, perhaps all taxes aren’t theft only those taxes that are used to pay for things you don’t want to pay for? I think I’ve seen this thread before.
Sorry I am working my way through the posts. I never know how to approach an intersting thread that is already several days (and pages) old.
I skipped a handful of pages (when I realized that my posts were duplicative of other posts) but this sounds like you have mellowed your position on taxation and theft a little bit.
But what if I never use the library? Why aren’t libraries like roads?
Does medicare and national highways fall into that category?
Because dvds are for whatever reason consdered to fall outside the category of stuff that should eb abvailable to all regardless of ability to pay.
My point was that you are probably uninsurable.
Are you saying taht we should be taxing insurance companies for the fire department? Doesn’t it make mroe sense to tax the hom,eowners through real estate taxes to cover the cost of fire departments the way we do right now?
I think it depends more on whether you have thought about what makes sense. Like i said, I’m not goi9ng to defend every government expenditure but I spend a lot of time looking at the federal budget and I have trouble identifying the enormous amounts of government waste that peopela re talking about.
Exactly and in poor neighborhoods you would see the garbage pile up and there would be health concerns. In that case, why shouldn’t the city run garbage collection?
The alternatives are in fact more expensive in other countries and yet they subsidize their mass transit more than we do.
But I drive my hummer into work every day and pay tolls for every inch of road I drive. I never use mass transit, why are you stealing my money to pay for the mass transit of all those poor people?
Yes, it would, exactly my point. Having the tax reflect the usage is self sufficient, and discourages the harmful effects.
Yes there are. UHC for one, represents a way that we all enter into a nation wide group health plan that dramatically lowers individual costs, improves health, and makes everything better. The fact that a handful of people get it for free vastly outweighs the alternative.
I also mentioned earlier how a system of employment insurance could be used to fund periods of unemployment, just like disability insurance. If it makes sound economic sense to do this nationally through a government run program, so be it. I see no reason why it can’t be something that people pay into, and then draw from.
As a general rule unemployment hurts us all, the problem is to find a system that benefits us, without indirectly rewarding gaming the system.
The current system of income tax has a tendency to encourage people to either not work, or stay in lower income brackets, which is exactly what we don’t want.
Exactly. By allowing a system where the majority can agree to tax the minority is a recipe for disaster. A politician that stands up and says, “I’ll reduce the taxes for 95% of Americans, by increasing the tax for 5%” is destined to win. But it doesn’t produce what we want or need. All the incentives push politicians to use pork barrel spending to buy votes.
Right now, the top 1% is paying 95% of the taxes. What incentive or power is there to change that?
That’s right, it’s not free. We need to figure out a cost, and then decide if we can afford it. In addition to the WWII windows, we also have widows from a more recent war. But nobody bothered to fund it.
If the government passed around a collection plate before going into Iraq, and had a system where those that wanted the war could pay for it, we’d all be a little bit happier. Did the war in Iraq benefit any of us (other than the people getting defense money)?
That war will continue to show up on our federal income tax until the federal debt is zero.
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Sorry for the break. I hit the reply button accidentally and the edit function was expired.
Now, its starting to sound like its oK to steal my money to apy for health care for poor people as long as you think its a worthy cause.
I think thats called a savings account rather than insurance.
Yeah, most of the problems youa re talking about arise whenever we talk about insurance or colective action. everything from freeriding to moral hazard to self selection.
how so? I would think that there is almost always an incentive to be make more money. BTW, are you familiar with the welfare reform act of 1996?
Oddly enough that is not how it worked in 2000 and 2004, instead the politician that stood up and said i will lower taxes for 100% of Americans (especially the top 5%), which will pay for itself because of… ummm… supply side economics and stuff (but actually by running a deficit) won.
We or you?
Its not politicians that are buying votes, its their votes that are being bought.
First I think your numbers are wrong and second there is a major political party in this country that has been winning elections on reducing the relative tax burden on that top 1% and getting lots of campaign contributions for their effort (see Mars fortune heirs and campaign contributions to congressmen that supported repealing the estate tax).
I don’t think we can afford not to have it, everything you presume for your economic philosophy depends on it.
While I agree that we were deceived on the cost of the war (the war that would pay for itself), I don’t think we can have a workable system where war efforts are based effectively on contributions.
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The way we achieved that after WWII was with marginal tax rates in excess of 90%
Sorry I’m trying to catch up.
Not universally.
Agreed, but I was comparing a system without public schools versus a system with public schools.
DC is experimenting with a novel approach. Paying students in poor inner city schools to attend class and not cause trouble. It seems to have a significant impact on the teaching environment, graduation rate adn test scores, apparently being in class and not starting fights does wonders for the learning process. They are also throwing a lot more money at teachers (who can make 100K+) in exchange for the city’s ability to fire you if you suck.
Its not taht you don’t have a point, its that you take it too far.
Yeah but the system youa re proposing sounds like something we have already seen (around the 1300’s)
Imagine how frequently it would occur without the regulations.
Nope, I have every idea what you are talking about. I have lived in countries where public education does not exist, the private sector simply does nto step in to fill the gap and people don’t limit their procreation to those they can afford to educate. Most poor kids are taught in Catholic missions or Islamic madrassas, the quality of the education is not bad but it can carry a pretty heavy social price tag.
If you want to talk about charter schools, fine, there is an argument there, if you want to talk about elminating government’s role in at least funding schools through taxation then I don’t know how you can win the argument.
You need to walk a mile in their shoes before you get too preachy.
Not really sure what you are referring to.
Taxes are not our punishment for political apathy after all taxes are hardly bread and circus. Teh tyranny of the minority (special intersts) is our punishment for political apathy. If people only knew the sort of stuff that goes on around here, they would get really pissed off before they sat down to watch Survivor (or whatever people watch these days).
Holy crap there is no way I can respond to all of that, you have won.
BTW the dvd reference was to the tv show Rome. The final story arc dealt with the issues of grain supplies from Egypt.
“[cue generic and overly dramtic rebuttle]Those people making minimum-wage would also love a new iPhone and matching iPad, should we the tax payer subsidize that for them too?”
You’re points are excellent, and if I wasn’t running out the door I’d address them in more detail, but I wanted to look at this one.
It would be nice if the government could make that determination, and this is where the “we are the government” fits into the equation.
Our current system of “spread the love” encourages bad behaviour by both the politicians and the voters. Military bases can’t be closed because the local town needs that revenue stream. Planes and tanks are built to excess for the same reason. Bread and circuses. A politician that can bring government spending to his constituency gets rewarded with another (2,4,6) years at the trough. That same town would riot if their politician said, “The town of Lima, Ohio, now has an extra 5% income tax to offset the money coming into your town from that factory.”
The final problem is that democracy is based on a majority vote, so 95% of the population can vote to raise taxes on the other 5%, and lower their own taxes. How do we justify having deficit spending, when people in the future are going to have to pay for what we enjoy now, plus interest? It’s easy for that 95% to vote for something they don’t have to pay for. Ask your kids if they want a puppy, the vote will be 4 to 1 (assuming you have 4 kids) meaning you lose, AND you get to pay for the puppy, oh, and you’ll have to clean up the shit too.
The government in effect steels our money, then gives it back to us. In return we’re happy. But hey, things are better than they were 100 years ago so why complain?
Is this where you point out the flaws inherent in a democracy. Where people will vote themselves low taxes and hogh geovernment services until the whole system fails?
That is not how things work. Things haven’t worked like that since at least Reagan and probably since Kennedy. Remember we used to have marginal tax rates as high as 92%. Kennedy dropped them to about 70% and Reagan dropped them first to 50% (which made sense) and eventually to 28% (which made absolutely no sense, at least from a fiscal responsibility persepective).
Its one thing to complain, its another thing to call taxes theft.