(I'm not a fiscal conservative, but) Do more taxes pay for more and better civilization? Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
The question should usually be about the right level of taxes. The problem is that the feedback cycle is often really long. So we are still coasting off of the large investments and projects of the past like the interstate system, dams and waterways, electric grids, etc.
In the short term, we could ignore them (and mostly have), and lower expenditures, and everyone wins! Until it all starts falling apart (which is starting to happen) and we must make huge and costly investments all at once to fix them.
Charlatans are selling short term snake-oil and leaving out the last bit.
Eventually it would be nice for everyone to realize there is a cost to the level of civilization we enjoy. We do however need to be sure we are getting our tax dollars' worth.
The big question is whether our electoral system/voting population can be convinced to elect realists.
Taxes are good, they pay for civilization and the platform we all operate within :)
I know people hate hearing that, but it is the truth. I am frustrated with how high they are on some things, bad spending, etc. But at the end of the day look around at what we have built as a civilization. That is from the collective pooling of money to build the entire system.
The interesting thing about the discussion on taxes is that usually what gets discussed is how much we pay and not what it is used for. "We should pay more taxes" doesn't really mean anything to me until you explain the context which with those taxes will be used -- of course the grand elephant in the room is that it is preferred we not know or discuss the specifics of that. It is a great irony that voters have much more control in how many taxes they will pay, but rarely in how they will be used. Whether through electing a president who promises to raise taxes on the wealthy, or one that promises to lower taxes dramatically, or an initiative to increase sales tax -- it is almost never known what will be affected, even when a new tax is given a "purpose" it is almost always in the small print that it doesn't necessarily have to be used for that purpose. And so our system allows us to often end up with the worst of both worlds:
1. Citizens perceive waste and thus push for lower taxes, yet there is no guarantee the "wasteful" programs are reduced, and thus often it is the important programs that are hurt.
2. Lack of funding in important programs is used to convince citizens that higher taxes are needed, but there is often no guarantee that the higher taxes will be used for those programs.
Notice, for example, that there are certain "blessed" government programs that there seems to always be money for. Yet it is always the roads or education that will suffer catastrophically if taxes aren't increased.
All the things I think are worth taxing for constantly seem to be underfunded. We seem to have plenty of money for the things I think are wrong.
If you're the government, you can always spend the money on stuff you want but your constituents don't want, and then tell them you have to raise taxes to pay for the things they want.
I see taxes simply as the price of civilization. I would obviously prefer to have more wealth, but not at the price of having to create and defend everything myself!
Second, taxes don't disappear into nothingness - they pay for civilization. It is clearly beneficial to everyone to live in a society where people are well cared for and have healthcare, public education, welfare, etc.
Or, and that's another possibility we should consider, taxes disappear into the pockets of bureaucrats and a handful of rent seekers with very little effect on civilization.
Before arguing for additional taxes, one must first show some evidence that we're getting reasonable ROI on what we're already paying, and https://transparentcalifornia.com/ shows exactly the opposite.
I am 100% in support for public healthcare, for example, but it will continue to look like a financial absurd as long as a knee MRI is 3x of any other country. Same thing with the higher education, public housing, etc.
Hold on: I have to calm my shivering nerves after the intimidating meaningless jargon and threat to evaluate "the science", whether or not you actually have the ability to do so.
I'm contending that you putting words in my mouth is garbage rhetoric and that you should know better.
That higher tax revenue is not an absolute good; primarily because those who impose taxes are incentivized to do so via variously legal and unethical pay that diverts tax funds from their supposed intent back to these people. To the point that the supposed intent should be assumed to be often false until otherwise proven not only by funding but by results.
And that the economic system in general is inherently flawed to the point that there is no solution that will satisfy most people either via trickle-down economics nor via heavy taxation. A slave system is not fixable by free markets, socialism-communism (old school if militant feudalism hidden so that low-wits can get behind it), nor by anything else.
I'm not saying that I have a better solution as far as maintenance of civilization is concerned, but only that the system of money is fundamentally a people-ownership system that inherently cannot offer solutions, either, and out of which no ethical nor practical justification for high taxation is possible. Unless the goal is explicitly to create wealthier feudal lords that do absolutely nothing but to extract taxes to support themselves.
Everyone should pay their taxes.
No one has to accept the lie that more taxation is good taxation.
You're right. Completely right. Citizens should understand and think about tax increases in terms of their longer terms use. Whether that's increased security, infrastructure, education, etc.
Some taxes are the price of civilization. I don't know how anyone can look at our current taxation scheme and how it is spent and make the argument that what we're subject to in the US is civilized. Just look at how much of taxes go to government largesse in Washington DC and bombing people that don't look like us abroad.
It's 2023. We have the technology to run more and more parts of the government in a way that we pay directly for the things we use so that each need currently met by government is forced to be more efficient if people saw how much they are paying for that. Locally, I pay a separate fee for trash pickup. That's awesome. If all government services moved to a fee based approach, you could literally pick and choose what parts of being civilized you want and what parts you don't want.
Yes, and I agree we need to raise taxes (putting me in a very small minority of libertarians). But as to the question of how much government needs to spend in order to have a functioning society, the clear answer is "much less than it spends today".
Taxes don't always need to be slower or more weighted to lower income (e.g. property taxes). However, they tend to be gamed more easily and sometimes have unintended consequences.
Regulation and taxes go hand in - how are you going to pay for regulatory enforcement unless you dip into some general fund? Answer: a tax.
The biggest lie about government is the one that claims all taxes are bad. Without taxes, you get Somalia. Someone is going to run the roads/commerce and enforce a tax to do so - do you want it to be the local strongman or an elected official (where you may be able to vote on how taxation works and/or vote someone else in)?
I didn't vote you down - but I suspect the downvotes are because that is the often repeated "taxes are bad" argument. All I would offer to counter your argument is:
Do you ever think that maybe politicians are missing the boat here? With most Americans paying about 75% in total taxes (when you count sales tax, gas tax, property tax, etc etc) it seems we are always just a tiny downturn away from disaster.
If you want your people to spend money and buoy the economy, perhaps instead of making it easy to borrow what they don't have you should try NOT TAKING SO DAMN MUCH from them in the first place. Listen carefully: Money you take from the people and spend in Iraq is gone, mmkayy?
Constantly trying to balance on the razors edge of economic collapse and then issuing even MORE credit (and measly tax rebates) when you've gone too far can't possibly be the optimal implementation.
I see you have a bottomless appetite for taxing more and lots of imagination on how to do so. Do you have any answers on how that taxed money will be spent? How we can ensure that it's not just lining the pockets of the politicians and bureaucrats in charge of disbursing the money? How we measure the successes and failures of any taxpayer-funded program, so that we can be reasonably confident that the money is being put to good use? How all of this would play out over generations, knowing that the less money (and therefore power) the people have and the more money (and therefore power) the politicians have, the more likely it is that we will slip into authoritarianism?
Yes, here were are because it turns out that modern societies with their amenities depend on taxation. What's the problem with that? If it were such a humongous deal you'd have more people voting for tax cuts.
More money == things are better is just too simple of a model to make a decision like this. You add more money to the system and where does it go? It's not automatically allocated to your causes, some of it gets siphoned off in administrative overhead. Some of it gets reallocated. Some of it is just used for cronyism or lost in the bureaucracy of doing business (e.g. paying lawyer fees to fight NIMBY's who are using environmental review to prevent the development of transportation or public housing).
On a tangential note, there is nothing stopping you and a group of like-minded individuals from just paying more taxes to the government.
The problem here is that your reply is also demagoguery: no amount of taxes would be too much. No matter what the tax rate was, you could ask if folks like living in a modern society.
Very, very rarely do I find people who want no government or crippling taxes. The question, as you point out, becomes "how much is too much?"
So can we please stop describing other people's opinions in extreme ways? (I mean that for both sides)
I'm in favor of allocating a certain percentage of GDP to various governments. Say 15% to national, 5% to state, and 2% to local governments. Let the governments themselves decide how to collect it.
This does two things: it gives a real number instead of a bunch of arm-waving, and it puts government on a budget. Historical records show us that you're not getting much more than 20% out of a population anyway (and that's forgetting the Laffer curve)
You can always argue for more or less government and taxes. Both positions are perfectly fine. What's not fine is making this out to be socialism versus anarchy. It's really much more a conversation about finding compromise and being able to spend as much as you tax, instead of having politicians vote for programs nobody can afford and then pointing their fingers at the other guy when the bill comes due.
As for your question about living in a modern society, I'd argue we're paying about 20x more than we need to for these services, mainly because there's no choice involved. As governments continue to clamp down with taxes and more "help", there will be less and less choice, thereby making the multiplier even higher.
There's nothing wrong with believing that yes, we need these things, but no, this is not the way to have them. Doing the wrong thing with good intentions and a good goal is still the wrong thing. :)
The question should usually be about the right level of taxes. The problem is that the feedback cycle is often really long. So we are still coasting off of the large investments and projects of the past like the interstate system, dams and waterways, electric grids, etc.
In the short term, we could ignore them (and mostly have), and lower expenditures, and everyone wins! Until it all starts falling apart (which is starting to happen) and we must make huge and costly investments all at once to fix them.
Charlatans are selling short term snake-oil and leaving out the last bit.
Eventually it would be nice for everyone to realize there is a cost to the level of civilization we enjoy. We do however need to be sure we are getting our tax dollars' worth.
The big question is whether our electoral system/voting population can be convinced to elect realists.
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