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While I agree with the general sentiment, I think this stresses an emphasis on taxes that isn't right. Do you think these people would still be unsatisfied if

While I agree with the general sentiment, I think this stresses an emphasis on taxes that isn't right. Do you think these people would still be unsatisfied if the tax rate was 0%? I do. Dissatisfaction with the govt does not necessarily mean dissatisfaction with the return on the investment of taxes. I want kids to be educated, people to be healthy, and that desire doesn't change if my tax rate is 0% or 80%. Sure, there's a point at which I think that taxes aren't the answer, but the root desire is not about taxes, they are merely a means to an end. Many of the libertarian-leaning folks here will have a very different view of the above, but I think that would be apples and oranges - they view govt as either inefficient or unjust, but the issues in this article are different, about effectiveness and functioning.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> Dissatisfaction with the govt does not necessarily mean dissatisfaction with the return on the investment of taxes. I want kids to be educated, people to be healthy, and that desire doesn't change if my tax rate is 0% or 80%. Sure, there's a point at which I think that taxes aren't the answer, but the root desire is not about taxes, they are merely a means to an end. The issue is about efficiency. If you pay $2000 in taxes, you want to be getting >=$2000 in value for it. If you have to pay $5000, the value needs to be >=$5000. The problem in the US is that government efficiency is a disgrace. We spend more on the military than most other countries combined and get... what, oil? We already have oil. And we need less of it, not more. Our healthcare costs are outrageous and rather than do anything at all to actually address the cost, we just keep increasing the amount of tax money that gets thrown at it -- which only raises the costs further. Social security is designed to sound progressive when it's really a transfer of wealth from poor to rich (because the rich live longer), and which deprives the poor of money during their working years that they could have used to send their children to college and other investments in the future, intentionally making the choice to retire later or rely on that investment they could (and now can't) make in their children to support them in their old age. Or for that matter have just invested the same money in a major index ETF, which has always had better long-term returns than social security to begin with. If we were getting what we're getting now and paying half the taxes then everything would be fine, because then you don't have free healthcare but you do have the amount of money it costs to buy healthcare. It would also be fine if we were paying what we are now but getting twice as much. But we're not.
- ergothus 8y ago
  > If we were getting what we're getting now and paying half the taxes then everything would be fine This is the statement I disagree with. Me having a few thousand extra $ at the end of the year does not give the homeless homes, does not allow me to comparison shop for healthcare, does not tell me if the drug at the store is actually real, does not ensure the schools are safe and effective. And I can't buy those by myself for that extra cash. This is how the people under discussion in this article are feeling. We won't resolve libertarian principles and divides here, but WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THIS ARTICLE, my argument is that the dissatisfied people would not be content if the tax rate is zero, because they aren't dissatisfied about the tax rate. That there is a separate group of people that ARE dissatisfied about the tax rate can be true without being relevant to the first group.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > And I can't buy those by myself for that extra cash. Why not? If you had thousands of dollars a year in extra cash, you could donate to homeless shelters, pay the higher healthcare premiums, subscribe to a service that would independently validate pharmacies, pay for good private schools or donate to scholarship funds, etc. More to the point, you wouldn't need to pay for them to the extent that they already exist. There currently are homeless shelters and multiple health insurance companies and an FDA and mostly reasonable public schools. But they cost twice as much as they ought to or more. The healthcare market in the US is completely broken, but it's completely broken by inefficient regulations. Some of the costs of the inefficiency are paid in private health insurance premiums rather than tax dollars, but the problem is still the inefficiency.
    - baumandm 8y ago
      I believe inefficiency is a red herring. I want the government to collect taxes to fund these efforts for two reasons: 1) So that we can have consistent, reliable, and widely-available services. 2) So the financial cost of society is spread fairly across everyone. These are not guarantees the free market provides, because the market doesn't care about outcomes. Giving people tax breaks and hoping they donate it to homeless shelters will probably not help all the homeless people in the country. Switching the FDA to an opt-in subscription service will not prevent unsafe drugs from reaching consumers. Sure I'd prefer government to run be as efficient as possible, but the goal isn't efficiency, it's better outcomes.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> Dissatisfaction with the govt does not necessarily mean dissatisfaction with the return on the investment of taxes. I want kids to be educated, people to be healthy, and that desire doesn't change if my tax rate is 0% or 80%. Sure, there's a point at which I think that taxes aren't the answer, but the root desire is not about taxes, they are merely a means to an end. The issue is about efficiency. If you pay $2000 in taxes, you want to be getting >=$2000 in value for it. If you have to pay $5000, the value needs to be >=$5000. The problem in the US is that government efficiency is a disgrace. We spend more on the military than most other countries combined and get... what, oil? We already have oil. And we need less of it, not more. Our healthcare costs are outrageous and rather than do anything at all to actually address the cost, we just keep increasing the amount of tax money that gets thrown at it -- which only raises the costs further. Social security is designed to sound progressive when it's really a transfer of wealth from poor to rich (because the rich live longer), and which deprives the poor of money during their working years that they could have used to send their children to college and other investments in the future, intentionally making the choice to retire later or rely on that investment they could (and now can't) make in their children to support them in their old age. Or for that matter have just invested the same money in a major index ETF, which has always had better long-term returns than social security to begin with. If we were getting what we're getting now and paying half the taxes then everything would be fine, because then you don't have free healthcare but you do have the amount of money it costs to buy healthcare. It would also be fine if we were paying what we are now but getting twice as much. But we're not.

ergothus 8y ago
> If we were getting what we're getting now and paying half the taxes then everything would be fine This is the statement I disagree with. Me having a few thousand extra $ at the end of the year does not give the homeless homes, does not allow me to comparison shop for healthcare, does not tell me if the drug at the store is actually real, does not ensure the schools are safe and effective. And I can't buy those by myself for that extra cash. This is how the people under discussion in this article are feeling. We won't resolve libertarian principles and divides here, but WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THIS ARTICLE, my argument is that the dissatisfied people would not be content if the tax rate is zero, because they aren't dissatisfied about the tax rate. That there is a separate group of people that ARE dissatisfied about the tax rate can be true without being relevant to the first group.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > And I can't buy those by myself for that extra cash. Why not? If you had thousands of dollars a year in extra cash, you could donate to homeless shelters, pay the higher healthcare premiums, subscribe to a service that would independently validate pharmacies, pay for good private schools or donate to scholarship funds, etc. More to the point, you wouldn't need to pay for them to the extent that they already exist. There currently are homeless shelters and multiple health insurance companies and an FDA and mostly reasonable public schools. But they cost twice as much as they ought to or more. The healthcare market in the US is completely broken, but it's completely broken by inefficient regulations. Some of the costs of the inefficiency are paid in private health insurance premiums rather than tax dollars, but the problem is still the inefficiency.
  - baumandm 8y ago
    I believe inefficiency is a red herring. I want the government to collect taxes to fund these efforts for two reasons: 1) So that we can have consistent, reliable, and widely-available services. 2) So the financial cost of society is spread fairly across everyone. These are not guarantees the free market provides, because the market doesn't care about outcomes. Giving people tax breaks and hoping they donate it to homeless shelters will probably not help all the homeless people in the country. Switching the FDA to an opt-in subscription service will not prevent unsafe drugs from reaching consumers. Sure I'd prefer government to run be as efficient as possible, but the goal isn't efficiency, it's better outcomes.