6 ms·

Hate is a strong word - perhaps these voters you speak of simply don't feel there is a very strong correlation between amount of taxes/fees paid, and services r

by mcrad 7y ago

Hate is a strong word - perhaps these voters you speak of simply don't feel there is a very strong correlation between amount of taxes/fees paid, and services rendered.

stretchwithme 7y ago
And many who talk about how we should gladly pay our taxes get or figure they would get more than they pay in if everybody would happily pay as much as they possibly could. Not that the amount of taxes paid ever stopped a government from trying borrow and spend way more than that.
- tabtab 7y ago
  Re: Not that the amount of taxes paid ever stopped a government from trying borrow and spend way more than that. Government, taxes, and private industry are all tools of civilization. Tools are imperfect and the human managers & users are imperfect. One has to monitor all of them to keep them in decent working order. They won't just automatically run in an optimum mode if citizens don't keep a critical eye on them all.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  Governments don't "borrow and spend". Money is a political abstraction, not a tangible one. It is physically impossible for a government to run out of fiat money. The only things a government can run out of are faith in the future and internal and external trust. When either or both of those disappear, human animals panic and the economy stops working. Private enclosure of capital - which is equivalent to private enclosure of political and economic power - is far more likely to create that sort of breakdown than high taxes and generous public spending. (Effective - non-corrupt - public spending being equivalent to policy decisions that broaden and diffuse political power rather than concentrating it.) Effective generous public spending is actually a political negative feedback mechanism that damps wild oscillations in confidence, seeds future investment, and enhances political stability.
  - tabtab 7y ago
    In practice the gov't has to pretend like the money is real in order to prevent chaos. In fact both gov't and citizens have to pretend "properly" for it to work. It's a mutual agreement about how to represent the value of commerce. Laws are the same way: members of civilization have to mutually agree on how to create and follow the laws for them to "work". Civilization is the Mother of All Handshakes. If a large enough percentage of the population disagrees with the "agreements", anarchy happens. Modern technology and civilization are both inherently driven by standards: both written and de-facto.
  - stretchwithme 7y ago
    I think you're confusing money with resources. Money is a medium of exchange. The resources are real. Governments frequently consume more resources than they can purchase with the taxes they collect. Yes, they could just print all the money they could ever need. And when they do, inflation runs wild. Then a government cannot borrow in its own currency because no one will trust it. Or it must pay a high rate. The US government is in a unique situation. It's been able to print much more than a government normally could because it is the most trusted reserve currency in a rapidly globalizing world. Trillions of dollars are held overseas. And if the dollar loses that role, you will see a lot of inflation as those dollars return to the US. Even if it doesn't lose that role and the world just stops taking additional dollars, the US would have to print less to keep the same rate of inflation. Most governments don't fall into this category. And no country is in this category forever. A country's currency is really just another form of debt. And while it may never run out, the more it prints, the more it declines in value. It's not debt people can collect on, but the law of supply and demand will certainly collect on this debt. And it's also a tax, a tax on savings. And the country could remove dollars from circulation, thereby reducing this debt and reversing the decline in the value of savings.
    - duahncjak 7y ago
      Countries have held much higher debt levels than the US currently does without being the global reserve currency.
roenxi 7y ago
'Tax' is a simple word for a simple concept that spirals into a very complicated topic in practice. Through taxes the pacifist supports wars, the environmentalist industrialisation, the bigot equality and the individualist collectivism, the staunch right winger the salaries of the leftist politicians, etc, etc. Hating on the general concept of taxes isn't very productive but people are quite unhappy about the details. Politics involves painful compromises and tax is one of the pointy ends of politics. I'd hazard that taxes are usually raised to force people to support ideas that the individual taxpayers vehemently oppose - because otherwise presumably said taxpayer would already be paying for the service.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  > taxes are usually raised to force people to support.... Sorry, the first half of your sentence is too broad for the rest of it to possibly be true.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    Honestly I'm not sure your comment is any more helpful to me than just leaving a down vote. You havn't explained what you mean, there isn't an argument and I'm at a loss trying to follow your complaint. I could see that applying to the other part of the sentence - "ideas that the individual taxpayers vehemently oppose" - but the bit you've picked out is just literally true. Taxes are levied to finance schemes whether the taxpayer agrees with them or not.
    - erikpukinskis 7y ago
      Sorry, didn’t mean to be obtuse. Logically speaking, the assertion that 50%+ of taxes are driven by the same motivation seems impossible. Taxation is such a generic mechanism at work in so many different places, your assertion seems like a non-starter to me. Did you intend to make such a strong claim?
      - roenxi 7y ago
        That I can learn from. Thanks :) The intent was quite different, I didn't see a reading of that sentence that involved motivation but now that it has been pointed out I can see that it is the most obvious one. My intent was more about the outcomes of a tax but that wasn't expressed. What I wanted to say was something more like "No political decision has perfect support, and many cause stark divisions. But taxpayers financially support all the decisions taken and they will be vehemently opposed to some of the things they fund".

by mcrad 7y ago

Hate is a strong word - perhaps these voters you speak of simply don't feel there is a very strong correlation between amount of taxes/fees paid, and services rendered.

stretchwithme 7y ago

And many who talk about how we should gladly pay our taxes get or figure they would get more than they pay in if everybody would happily pay as much as they possibly could. Not that the amount of taxes paid ever stopped a government from trying borrow and spend way more than that.

tabtab 7y ago
Re: Not that the amount of taxes paid ever stopped a government from trying borrow and spend way more than that. Government, taxes, and private industry are all tools of civilization. Tools are imperfect and the human managers & users are imperfect. One has to monitor all of them to keep them in decent working order. They won't just automatically run in an optimum mode if citizens don't keep a critical eye on them all.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
Governments don't "borrow and spend". Money is a political abstraction, not a tangible one. It is physically impossible for a government to run out of fiat money. The only things a government can run out of are faith in the future and internal and external trust. When either or both of those disappear, human animals panic and the economy stops working. Private enclosure of capital - which is equivalent to private enclosure of political and economic power - is far more likely to create that sort of breakdown than high taxes and generous public spending. (Effective - non-corrupt - public spending being equivalent to policy decisions that broaden and diffuse political power rather than concentrating it.) Effective generous public spending is actually a political negative feedback mechanism that damps wild oscillations in confidence, seeds future investment, and enhances political stability.
- tabtab 7y ago
  In practice the gov't has to pretend like the money is real in order to prevent chaos. In fact both gov't and citizens have to pretend "properly" for it to work. It's a mutual agreement about how to represent the value of commerce. Laws are the same way: members of civilization have to mutually agree on how to create and follow the laws for them to "work". Civilization is the Mother of All Handshakes. If a large enough percentage of the population disagrees with the "agreements", anarchy happens. Modern technology and civilization are both inherently driven by standards: both written and de-facto.
- stretchwithme 7y ago
  I think you're confusing money with resources. Money is a medium of exchange. The resources are real. Governments frequently consume more resources than they can purchase with the taxes they collect. Yes, they could just print all the money they could ever need. And when they do, inflation runs wild. Then a government cannot borrow in its own currency because no one will trust it. Or it must pay a high rate. The US government is in a unique situation. It's been able to print much more than a government normally could because it is the most trusted reserve currency in a rapidly globalizing world. Trillions of dollars are held overseas. And if the dollar loses that role, you will see a lot of inflation as those dollars return to the US. Even if it doesn't lose that role and the world just stops taking additional dollars, the US would have to print less to keep the same rate of inflation. Most governments don't fall into this category. And no country is in this category forever. A country's currency is really just another form of debt. And while it may never run out, the more it prints, the more it declines in value. It's not debt people can collect on, but the law of supply and demand will certainly collect on this debt. And it's also a tax, a tax on savings. And the country could remove dollars from circulation, thereby reducing this debt and reversing the decline in the value of savings.
  - duahncjak 7y ago
    Countries have held much higher debt levels than the US currently does without being the global reserve currency.

roenxi 7y ago

'Tax' is a simple word for a simple concept that spirals into a very complicated topic in practice. Through taxes the pacifist supports wars, the environmentalist industrialisation, the bigot equality and the individualist collectivism, the staunch right winger the salaries of the leftist politicians, etc, etc. Hating on the general concept of taxes isn't very productive but people are quite unhappy about the details. Politics involves painful compromises and tax is one of the pointy ends of politics. I'd hazard that taxes are usually raised to force people to support ideas that the individual taxpayers vehemently oppose - because otherwise presumably said taxpayer would already be paying for the service.

erikpukinskis 7y ago
> taxes are usually raised to force people to support.... Sorry, the first half of your sentence is too broad for the rest of it to possibly be true.
- roenxi 7y ago
  Honestly I'm not sure your comment is any more helpful to me than just leaving a down vote. You havn't explained what you mean, there isn't an argument and I'm at a loss trying to follow your complaint. I could see that applying to the other part of the sentence - "ideas that the individual taxpayers vehemently oppose" - but the bit you've picked out is just literally true. Taxes are levied to finance schemes whether the taxpayer agrees with them or not.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    Sorry, didn’t mean to be obtuse. Logically speaking, the assertion that 50%+ of taxes are driven by the same motivation seems impossible. Taxation is such a generic mechanism at work in so many different places, your assertion seems like a non-starter to me. Did you intend to make such a strong claim?
    - roenxi 7y ago
      That I can learn from. Thanks :) The intent was quite different, I didn't see a reading of that sentence that involved motivation but now that it has been pointed out I can see that it is the most obvious one. My intent was more about the outcomes of a tax but that wasn't expressed. What I wanted to say was something more like "No political decision has perfect support, and many cause stark divisions. But taxpayers financially support all the decisions taken and they will be vehemently opposed to some of the things they fund".