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Should maintaining current government spending or creating the most reasonable and fair taxation system be a higher priority? That's not a rhetorical question

Should maintaining current government spending or creating the most reasonable and fair taxation system be a higher priority? That's not a rhetorical question since I imagine there would be a wide array of different views on it. In my opinion reasonable and fair taxation should be the priority. And the reason for this is because how tax is managed can radically reshape the economy. And so the role and expenditures of the government would shift accordingly. For instance today in the US there is an immense amount of land available for next to nothing. I don't think most people realize what you can do with the smallest amount of land. For instance these [1] guys are self sufficient on 1/5th of an acre. In Pasadena, California no less! It just seems so wasteful and really just crazy that we have all of this land out there that we collectively aren't doing anything with especially at a time when ever more people are interested in environmentalism, sustainability, or even for those just looking for something different in their lives. [1] - http://urbanhomestead.org/ http://urbanhomestead.org/

supertrope 8y ago
"Fair" taxation is a very slippery term whose meaning varies along the political spectrum and each individual's personal self-interest. Are you willing to sacrifice many public services to reach the lower taxation level? I'm not talking about light rail and Shakespeare in the Park. In some rural areas the sheriff's jurisdiction is so large they tell 911 callers to get their shotgun and deal with suspicious activity themselves because a deputy won't get there in time. If the answer is yes, I applaud your intellectual honesty. Many people cling desperately to the notion that we can have comprehensive public services and rock bottom taxes, maybe through some magical and simple 10x government efficiency tweak. (At least local government can't deficit spend).
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  This is tangential, but also relevant. A big part of the problem is not the lack of money, it's completely reckless spending and management of money. If you look at the actual amount of money spent on any public servant ranging from teachers to police to garbage collectors, it's a minuscule fraction of the spending for their respective segment, as is the cost for facilities and other fundamentally necessary costs. Where the real expenses come in are in bloated administrative salaries paired with even more bloated administrative structure, unsustainable and irrationally constructed pensions, completely wasteful spending of discretionary funds, and so on. It takes a truly special government to manage to spend in excess of $2,000,000,000 billion on a website [1]. Of course that's federal spending but the exact same is true at the state level. So for instance we ostensibly should take pride in the fact that we spend more on education than nearly any other country in the world (3 spend slightly more than us), even parity adjusted. It should show how highly we value education. Yet of course in reality our educational institutions are seemingly underfunded. What gives? As a random example Illinois, like most states, is currently in a 'higher education crisis.' This [2] article provides details on where their funding is going, and this is completely typical. Primary and secondary education suffers the exact same problems. And this is a similar pattern in nearly (and that is a weasel word - to my knowledge it's safe to just say every) every single government program. So how can we fix this? One of the biggest problems with bureaucracy is that when money is 'free', there is a massive incentive to not only spend every single penny you have but also slightly overspend to justify budgetary increase requests in the future. Organizations that spend less don't get rewarded; quite the opposite - they get punished with reduced budgets in future years. If our government suddenly had an annual windfall of $10 trillion, it's not like we'd be living in utopia as far as state programs are concerned. We'd be running a deficit within a decade again with shockingly little to show for it all. It's the nature of bureaucracy. The point of this all is that whatever we are currently spending is certainly much more than we what we need to be spending, and if fair taxation resulted in less revenue (which, as an aside, is not necessarily a given) - I do not see that as a major problem. [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-24/obamacare-website-costs-exceed-2-billion-study-finds https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-24/obamacare... [2] - https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/pensions-vs-higher-education/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/pensions-vs-higher-ed...

supertrope 8y ago

"Fair" taxation is a very slippery term whose meaning varies along the political spectrum and each individual's personal self-interest. Are you willing to sacrifice many public services to reach the lower taxation level? I'm not talking about light rail and Shakespeare in the Park. In some rural areas the sheriff's jurisdiction is so large they tell 911 callers to get their shotgun and deal with suspicious activity themselves because a deputy won't get there in time. If the answer is yes, I applaud your intellectual honesty. Many people cling desperately to the notion that we can have comprehensive public services and rock bottom taxes, maybe through some magical and simple 10x government efficiency tweak. (At least local government can't deficit spend).

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
This is tangential, but also relevant. A big part of the problem is not the lack of money, it's completely reckless spending and management of money. If you look at the actual amount of money spent on any public servant ranging from teachers to police to garbage collectors, it's a minuscule fraction of the spending for their respective segment, as is the cost for facilities and other fundamentally necessary costs. Where the real expenses come in are in bloated administrative salaries paired with even more bloated administrative structure, unsustainable and irrationally constructed pensions, completely wasteful spending of discretionary funds, and so on. It takes a truly special government to manage to spend in excess of $2,000,000,000 billion on a website [1]. Of course that's federal spending but the exact same is true at the state level. So for instance we ostensibly should take pride in the fact that we spend more on education than nearly any other country in the world (3 spend slightly more than us), even parity adjusted. It should show how highly we value education. Yet of course in reality our educational institutions are seemingly underfunded. What gives? As a random example Illinois, like most states, is currently in a 'higher education crisis.' This [2] article provides details on where their funding is going, and this is completely typical. Primary and secondary education suffers the exact same problems. And this is a similar pattern in nearly (and that is a weasel word - to my knowledge it's safe to just say every) every single government program. So how can we fix this? One of the biggest problems with bureaucracy is that when money is 'free', there is a massive incentive to not only spend every single penny you have but also slightly overspend to justify budgetary increase requests in the future. Organizations that spend less don't get rewarded; quite the opposite - they get punished with reduced budgets in future years. If our government suddenly had an annual windfall of $10 trillion, it's not like we'd be living in utopia as far as state programs are concerned. We'd be running a deficit within a decade again with shockingly little to show for it all. It's the nature of bureaucracy. The point of this all is that whatever we are currently spending is certainly much more than we what we need to be spending, and if fair taxation resulted in less revenue (which, as an aside, is not necessarily a given) - I do not see that as a major problem. [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-24/obamacare-website-costs-exceed-2-billion-study-finds https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-24/obamacare... [2] - https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/pensions-vs-higher-education/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/pensions-vs-higher-ed...