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"the scope of what taxes are increased to support only increases under a democracy" In addition to all those leisure activities you have been deprived of by "t

"the scope of what taxes are increased to support only increases under a democracy" In addition to all those leisure activities you have been deprived of by "those people sitting around watching TV", you apparently have been too busy to acquire basic historical facts or exercise basic common sense (I vaguely recall various people being elected with promises to reduce taxes, and occasionally even doing so). Since about the 1940s, there has been no clear trend upward in the fashion that you describe; certainly nothing that would substantially move the needle in how many leisure activities you can partake in. So I suggest you go take that pottery class now.

malandrew 10y ago
You're focusing only on income tax in the US. The US is not the only democracy, and even if it were, income tax isn't the only tax used to extract value from those creating it. In several democracies the tax rate has increased since the 1940s. For example, in Germany taxes as a percent of national income has increased from 29% in 1950 to 45% in 2011. In the US, the tax rate has remained largely unchanged since 1945 when you take into account all taxes, not just income taxes. My point was that the scope of what taxes support increases under a democracy. All savings from improvements in productivity are just used for new activities. Instead of returning those savings from increased productivity to taxpayers, they just find new activities to spend it on. I want from the government today, exactly what we got from the government in the 1950s, but delivered with 2017 efficiency/productivity. The government needs to stop finding new things to waste our money on.
- glangdale 10y ago
  Welp. As you observe, most people in a democracy don't agree with you. So your fetishization of "exactly what we got from the government in the 1950s" will be a lonely dream; likely most of the rest of us would like something in excess of 1950s investments in education, health care, and so on. The rest of us here on Planet Earth might also be aware that many of the goods the government might have to pay for competed for by other sectors, so if the government decides that it would like to pay 1950s level prices for such goods, it will be shit out of luck. I suspect you can probably find a country or two out there with a tax burden and government services akin to the USA in 1950; perhaps you should move there?
  - jstanley 10y ago
    > I suspect you can probably find a country or two out there with a tax burden and government services akin to the USA in 1950; perhaps you should move there? If the welfare states of the world don't get their acts together, this will happen. And it will keep happening until they've lost enough of their high-tax-paying citizenry that they can no longer afford to sustain themselves and will collapse under their own weight. The inevitable future is one in which taxes are priced more like a payment for a service provided and less like a protection racket. And in which citizens are treated more like customers and less like assets.
    - glangdale 10y ago
      Yeah, right. I know a ton of people who talk like this and exactly 2 who have moved to low-tax jurisdictions. Neither of them are any great loss. Generally the tone is a bunch of libertarian piffle where they soak up education, get raised up and absorb experience in a nice stable high-tax jurisdiction. Then at some point they stamp their pretty little foot and say that it's quitsies time for their big-state upbringing and that they are now "even" with the societies that conferred all those advantages on them... and off they go (typically to run businesses whose business entirely depends, weirdly enough, on economic activity in the high-tax type jurisdictions that they left). I have some sympathy for the idea that taxes should be lower and governments should be leaner, but the messianic nonsense (collapse of the West predicted, film at 11) that people like you and the guy I originally responded to is just irritating. In the fantasy world you live in, no democratic government even undergoes a course correction due to unsustainable spending. No-one ever gets irritated and votes in a party that promises to lower their taxes and does so, ever.... You are manufacturing a crisis to make your moderately interesting ideas seem the The Only Answer To Everything. Incidentally, the answer is treat citizens like citizens, not like 'customers' (or assets, for that matter) - unless you want to torture the idea of being a "customer" to the point where you can turn benefiting from a public good into somehow being a "customer" of that good. Generally this isn't a analogy that particularly helps understanding anything at all. What would we learn about defense, public order, or the notion of public education as a public service - not a "customer good" provided to the person themselves or their parents, etc. by rephrasing it as a "customer" relationship?

malandrew 10y ago

You're focusing only on income tax in the US. The US is not the only democracy, and even if it were, income tax isn't the only tax used to extract value from those creating it. In several democracies the tax rate has increased since the 1940s. For example, in Germany taxes as a percent of national income has increased from 29% in 1950 to 45% in 2011. In the US, the tax rate has remained largely unchanged since 1945 when you take into account all taxes, not just income taxes. My point was that the scope of what taxes support increases under a democracy. All savings from improvements in productivity are just used for new activities. Instead of returning those savings from increased productivity to taxpayers, they just find new activities to spend it on. I want from the government today, exactly what we got from the government in the 1950s, but delivered with 2017 efficiency/productivity. The government needs to stop finding new things to waste our money on.

glangdale 10y ago
Welp. As you observe, most people in a democracy don't agree with you. So your fetishization of "exactly what we got from the government in the 1950s" will be a lonely dream; likely most of the rest of us would like something in excess of 1950s investments in education, health care, and so on. The rest of us here on Planet Earth might also be aware that many of the goods the government might have to pay for competed for by other sectors, so if the government decides that it would like to pay 1950s level prices for such goods, it will be shit out of luck. I suspect you can probably find a country or two out there with a tax burden and government services akin to the USA in 1950; perhaps you should move there?
- jstanley 10y ago
  > I suspect you can probably find a country or two out there with a tax burden and government services akin to the USA in 1950; perhaps you should move there? If the welfare states of the world don't get their acts together, this will happen. And it will keep happening until they've lost enough of their high-tax-paying citizenry that they can no longer afford to sustain themselves and will collapse under their own weight. The inevitable future is one in which taxes are priced more like a payment for a service provided and less like a protection racket. And in which citizens are treated more like customers and less like assets.
  - glangdale 10y ago
    Yeah, right. I know a ton of people who talk like this and exactly 2 who have moved to low-tax jurisdictions. Neither of them are any great loss. Generally the tone is a bunch of libertarian piffle where they soak up education, get raised up and absorb experience in a nice stable high-tax jurisdiction. Then at some point they stamp their pretty little foot and say that it's quitsies time for their big-state upbringing and that they are now "even" with the societies that conferred all those advantages on them... and off they go (typically to run businesses whose business entirely depends, weirdly enough, on economic activity in the high-tax type jurisdictions that they left). I have some sympathy for the idea that taxes should be lower and governments should be leaner, but the messianic nonsense (collapse of the West predicted, film at 11) that people like you and the guy I originally responded to is just irritating. In the fantasy world you live in, no democratic government even undergoes a course correction due to unsustainable spending. No-one ever gets irritated and votes in a party that promises to lower their taxes and does so, ever.... You are manufacturing a crisis to make your moderately interesting ideas seem the The Only Answer To Everything. Incidentally, the answer is treat citizens like citizens, not like 'customers' (or assets, for that matter) - unless you want to torture the idea of being a "customer" to the point where you can turn benefiting from a public good into somehow being a "customer" of that good. Generally this isn't a analogy that particularly helps understanding anything at all. What would we learn about defense, public order, or the notion of public education as a public service - not a "customer good" provided to the person themselves or their parents, etc. by rephrasing it as a "customer" relationship?