Since the ability of citizens to pay has been pretty close to maxed out, if you need more money for your agency it can only come by eliminating less important agencies.
I think P. J. O’Rourke puts it well when he talks about the four ways you can spend money:
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You can spend your own money on yourself.
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You can spend your own money on other people.
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You can spend other people’s money on yourself.
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You can spend other people’s money on other people.
The fourth option normally leads to bad decisions and waste. It’s exactly what large government does.
I know that taxation and government spending are hugely complex subjects, but I remind myself of option #4 whenever I deal with the government. It explains much.
Well, I’m not at all sure that “the ability of citizens to pay has been pretty close to maxed out.” I imagine that however low taxes dropped, some would still object.
I could easily pay more in taxes than I currently do. In the last election, I was very aware that my vote for president could likely cost me financially. But I don’t vote my pocketbook (at least not solely). As I enjoy my comfortable middleclass lifestyle, never have I bemoaned that I pay too much in taxes. I have however, complained about specific spending choices. Would gladly have paid more taxes for schools/antipoverty/infrastructure/etc if we coulda pissed away less wealth down an bottomless hole in the Mideast, but that isn’t how a representative democracy works. And many folk would claim their ability to pay taxes has been maxed out - as they enjoy their cellphone and cable TV plans, etc… All comes down to choices. Personally, I am very aware of, and supportive of, the considerable services my government provides.
But that aside, I’m all for intelligent spending, within my agency and across government. Hell - make benefits tougher to get, limit eligibility, or any number of other measures. Or simply pay everyone, to eliminate bureaucracy costs. Or any number of sensible choices which could be intelligently debated. But far too often policy makers maintain a bullshit middle path, of not goring any constituency’s ox, and simply allowing services to progressively worsen.
“Less important” agencies don’t need to be eliminated. That is exactly the simplistic type of thinking which causes so much difficulty. So much easier to impose across-the-board measures such as sequester, or hiring freezes - giving the impression that one is doing something, than to actually make meaningful policy choices which would forthrightly and disproportionately impact certain groups. Meanwhile, the line at the DMV gets longer and longer, as we enter pothole season during which the roads will get worse and worse…
When you have the government doing 10,000 things, there’s no way that many of those things will be adequately funded. The simplest way to deal with that problem is not across the board spending cuts, you’re right. It’s to set priorities. That is something government has never done well. Everything is the #1 priority, which means nothing is.
I don’t see how you get to that conclusion. How does item 4 intrinsically lead to bad decisions and waste?
Also, beyond that, Tax money isn’t other people’s money; it’s the government’s money. They collected it. You can argue about how it’s spent of course but to argue it isn’t really their money is a false framing of what happened.
any time I read stuff like this I’m reminded of that guy who refused to pay the city’s fee (tax, let’s call it for what it is) for the fire department, then got bent out of shape when they stood pat while his trailer burned down.
Yup. Those are the welfare states, we pay for all their infrastructure, their public services, their schools. Without federal subsidy they’d fall into a 3rd world condition. That’s pretty much the reason the rest of us keep paying out for them. But they’re good God fearing people so they deserve it, unlike the rest of us paying the bill.