People need government services, the government needs money to provide them. If corporations don't pay enough taxes, individuals and small businesses need to be taxed higher. Taxes are a burden on them. We shouldn't do that.

> Why isn't government overspending ever a problem?

It is, like all the time. When is the last time you heard something like a pre-election debate that didn't bring up government overspending?

This wording makes that seem passive and that's a key gap in understanding the problem. Almost everyone has high expectations for government services — they want great schools, smooth uncongested roads, safe water, responsive police and fire departments, support for their elderly friends and neighbors, etc. The problem is that fewer people are willing to pay what it takes to actually provide those services, and an entire industry of people misdirecting attention for political reasons — e.g. you'll hear a lot about wasteful spending for stuff which is like 0.1% of the budget but trips someone's political agenda, and they won't mention that you could cut that entire program and it'd fund 2 extra prisoners in jail or a block and a half of street.

The other problem is that a lot of our taxes aren't indexed for inflation or have been actively cut. Things like the gas tax used to pay for a higher percentage of road construction, and the massive tax cuts given to rich people have removed a lot of general revenue, and that means that a lot of what was previously covered by that revenue now has to be paid for in ways which are very noticeable to the average voter: property taxes, use fees (as a Californian, the example I use is that the UC system had free tuition until the 1980s — that shifted the cost to the students which made it FAR more noticeable since it went from what you could do with a summer job to the price of a new car annually), etc.

All of that tends to mean that a politician who runs on a platform of needing to raise taxes to pay for the things we all use will likely lose to the one saying they can cut the mythical “waste & abuse”, and it has to get bad before that changes.

That’s definitely an issue, but I would be happy with the government just spending less of it. Like less than is brought in as revenues. Excess can be rolled over with equivalent tax cuts or moved to an endowment or trust with an independent, non-partisan management structure that pays an annuity. Failure to stay under revenues would come directly out of public servant salaries, campaigns, benefits, and retirement programs.

This is what happens to retail politics when the population is trained to think for the short term. After all (successful) politicians merely follow trends.

Which, to a close approximation, everyone actually supports. We don't reduce government spending because we don't want to.

Yeah and I think that mismatch is exactly how it's gotten so bad. How is it that we still have "the war", undeclared, after 16+ years? It's because everything is now enabled through whether or not there's a budget for it, and you can pretty much accept the budget or shut down the government, and everyone keeps choosing to just accept the budget and not hold their party responsible for promising shit again.

You can generalize this to the funding of the US government. The system obfuscates the stark reality: the US government spends resources faster than it collects them. It makes up the difference it two ways: deficit spending and off-the-books liabilities (SSA and Medicare being the biggest). Inflation is a solution to these problems.

I think they are incentivized to mismanage money. Voters want low taxes and government programs more than they want a balanced budget.

This is the crux of the problem and it all comes down to motivation. Politicians have exactly 2 priorities: being elected and being reelected. Every other concern is a very, very distant third.

In a democracy people imagine that the politicians they voted will do a good job in order for you to vote them again. But in reality politicians have always found easier, faster shortcuts for that: populism and buying the votes directly with your tax money.

SF administration has immense budgets that anywhere else in the world would solve a lot of (if not all) problems. But they preferred to focus their attention on populist issues of the day, like attacking businesses and corporations (the very same ones providing jobs and building housing), and various woke causes.

The results speak for themselves.

Votes are already bought by wealthy campaign contributors.

Anyway, aren't politicians supposed to help the public financially? If a politician campaigns on tax cuts, tax credits, and tax incentives, isn't that also "buying votes"? Which politician is not buying votes with their stated economic policies?

Then campaign and vote for people who will handle the money how you prefer. You don’t get to argue with the bill after the money is already spent. Tax collection time is the wrong time to be having this fight.

We don't want to create a system where only the rich can afford to be politicians ... or at least we don't want to make that any worse than it already is

There is more than enough money to go around, it's that there is a lot of it being wasted. The government and states failed to provide a good taxation and spending model. It's not the issue of the voters not willing to pay for it.

Well, what do you propose for solving that issue? Because those who believe public spending and taxation should be more limited also believe that there's no simple fix for the accountability issues that stem from monopolized state control over certain industries.

The government isn’t short on money.

Are we sure that the problem isn’t that we are spending Elon Musk’s entire lifetime net worth on the military each and every 90 days while not even at war? We shovel twenty tons of hundred dollar bills (about $2bn) into the neverending pit of the war machine every day.

I’m not convinced more government revenue is the solution to any problems, given what they are doing with their current insanely large levels of revenue at present.

Voting on how government spends money is in no conceivable way like you deciding how to spend your money.

> Private money is in no way accountable

It's accountable to the people who are providing the funds out of their own pockets. People do not like wasting their own money.

I bet you look at your own budget. You have to, otherwise you'll be in jail for bouncing checks and tax evasion. I also bet you've never looked at your city, county, state or federal budget. It's other peoples' money, so who cares!

Because we pay less in taxes than we (as the people who elect our governments) choose to spend. Sure, we could spend less, but we could also tax more (a LOT more), and have done so in the past.

You're correct.

As a matter of fact, it has gotten to the point where I believe the US could do away with taxes entirely and borrow the entire budget ... it wouldn't make much of a difference.

Or reform the broken democracy at the crux of it all.