3 ms·

What does this mean? > The truth is that the vast majority of federal tax money today goes to [...] corporate welfare (tax breaks)" That sounds like me saying

What does this mean? > The truth is that the vast majority of federal tax money today goes to [...] corporate welfare (tax breaks)" That sounds like me saying that the majority of your salary comes from me not stealing it from you.

zackmorris 8y ago
You're correct that I mistyped "the vast majority of federal tax money today goes to the military, corporate welfare (tax breaks) and debt service". What I meant to say there is that the greatest mismanagement of our tax dollars happens with those things, so we would save more money through reforms there than by shutting down public works like libraries which are relatively inexpensive per capita. The taxation-is-theft phenomenon is relatively new. During my first government class sometime in the early 90s socialism, progressivism, populism and libertarianism were low single digit percentage demographics in US politics. At that time, it was still considered patriotic to fund the UN/NATO, public schools, farmers, medical research, levies to build bridges etc etc etc. We fought tooth and nail to prevent sales tax from going from 5 to 6%, but only fringe groups talked about reducing social security withholding. Somehow that's all changed, correlated with the decline of US infrastructure and the rise of trade deficits and the national debt. Personally I think that was all orchestrated starting from the Reagan era, because if those monies don't go back to the public then some rich guy gets them. We've swung from democratic institutions to republican institutions and either extreme has its dangers. I'd recommend the guns vs butter argument if you want an interesting Wikipedia crawl. The USSR fell due to overspending on the military and authoritarian agencies instead of investing in its people and economic productivity. The same thing could easily happen to us if we succumb to late stage capitalism when it eats itself through policies like austerity that have no mathematical basis (that are dogma).
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > During my first government class sometime in the early 90s socialism, progressivism, populism and libertarianism were low single digit demographics in US politics. No, they weren't all, though “progressivism” as a label wasn't current (what it now refers to was mostly referred to as “liberalism” in the 1990s). But it's true that the early 1990s was the height of the neoliberal consensus when there was a historically narrow range of ideas within mainstream political thought on core issues outside of the partisan division on culture war issues. But that was an exception, not the norm.

zackmorris 8y ago

You're correct that I mistyped "the vast majority of federal tax money today goes to the military, corporate welfare (tax breaks) and debt service". What I meant to say there is that the greatest mismanagement of our tax dollars happens with those things, so we would save more money through reforms there than by shutting down public works like libraries which are relatively inexpensive per capita. The taxation-is-theft phenomenon is relatively new. During my first government class sometime in the early 90s socialism, progressivism, populism and libertarianism were low single digit percentage demographics in US politics. At that time, it was still considered patriotic to fund the UN/NATO, public schools, farmers, medical research, levies to build bridges etc etc etc. We fought tooth and nail to prevent sales tax from going from 5 to 6%, but only fringe groups talked about reducing social security withholding. Somehow that's all changed, correlated with the decline of US infrastructure and the rise of trade deficits and the national debt. Personally I think that was all orchestrated starting from the Reagan era, because if those monies don't go back to the public then some rich guy gets them. We've swung from democratic institutions to republican institutions and either extreme has its dangers. I'd recommend the guns vs butter argument if you want an interesting Wikipedia crawl. The USSR fell due to overspending on the military and authoritarian agencies instead of investing in its people and economic productivity. The same thing could easily happen to us if we succumb to late stage capitalism when it eats itself through policies like austerity that have no mathematical basis (that are dogma).

dragonwriter 8y ago
> During my first government class sometime in the early 90s socialism, progressivism, populism and libertarianism were low single digit demographics in US politics. No, they weren't all, though “progressivism” as a label wasn't current (what it now refers to was mostly referred to as “liberalism” in the 1990s). But it's true that the early 1990s was the height of the neoliberal consensus when there was a historically narrow range of ideas within mainstream political thought on core issues outside of the partisan division on culture war issues. But that was an exception, not the norm.