5 ms·

These numbers are absurd. There aren't nearly enough homeless people to drive taxes up by that degree; it'd still be well under 1% of your total tax burden. P

These numbers are absurd. There aren't nearly enough homeless people to drive taxes up by that degree; it'd still be well under 1% of your total tax burden. Plus, we're already paying for homelessness and mental illness anyway in the form of tax money that goes to the police, jails, and hospitals. A lot of people say that it would be cheaper to provide housing and support rather than continue the cycle of police, jail, and emergency medical treatment involvement.

luckylion 8y ago
> There aren't nearly enough homeless people to drive taxes up by that degree Sure, but a welfare state isn't just about open homelessness, it's about free education, free health care etc as well.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  1. You're setting a record here in moving goalposts. 2. Free public education has made this country what it is today. We wouldn't be one-tenth the world power we are now if we hadn't educated our citizenry to create a high knowledge work force. Killing off education and leaving the majority of the population uneducated would be the single best one change you could make to turn us into a third world country. It's the ultimate in short-termist thinking.
  - luckylion 8y ago
    > 1. You're setting a record here in moving goalposts. No, you're replying in a subthread that you didn't want to apparently. To quote myself: "I believe that many Americans don't have a good idea of what it costs to run a Western European welfare state". > Free public education has made this country what it is today Possibly. I think high skill immigration has also played a very strong role. And again, since nobody is reading what I'm writing before flagging or angrily replying: I'm not arguing that a high tax welfare state is necessarily a bad idea. While I do believe that it creates bad incentives and has to be very well calibrated (which is hard and usually fails in my experience), that's not what this is about. The point is that it does not come for free. You will have to pay for it, and you will pay via taxes. You should be aware of that, and I'm interested in finding out how much more people are willing to pay. The reactions I get (anger, disbelief, flagging) lead me to believe that people are vaguely aware of that fact, but don't want to face it. I suggest they do before they implement it.

luckylion 8y ago

> There aren't nearly enough homeless people to drive taxes up by that degree Sure, but a welfare state isn't just about open homelessness, it's about free education, free health care etc as well.

CydeWeys 8y ago
1. You're setting a record here in moving goalposts. 2. Free public education has made this country what it is today. We wouldn't be one-tenth the world power we are now if we hadn't educated our citizenry to create a high knowledge work force. Killing off education and leaving the majority of the population uneducated would be the single best one change you could make to turn us into a third world country. It's the ultimate in short-termist thinking.
- luckylion 8y ago
  > 1. You're setting a record here in moving goalposts. No, you're replying in a subthread that you didn't want to apparently. To quote myself: "I believe that many Americans don't have a good idea of what it costs to run a Western European welfare state". > Free public education has made this country what it is today Possibly. I think high skill immigration has also played a very strong role. And again, since nobody is reading what I'm writing before flagging or angrily replying: I'm not arguing that a high tax welfare state is necessarily a bad idea. While I do believe that it creates bad incentives and has to be very well calibrated (which is hard and usually fails in my experience), that's not what this is about. The point is that it does not come for free. You will have to pay for it, and you will pay via taxes. You should be aware of that, and I'm interested in finding out how much more people are willing to pay. The reactions I get (anger, disbelief, flagging) lead me to believe that people are vaguely aware of that fact, but don't want to face it. I suggest they do before they implement it.