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I'm not sure your comment has any substance to it. I could reframe it "Every dollar paid in taxes is a dollar given to a real, flesh-and-blood human being" and

I'm not sure your comment has any substance to it. I could reframe it "Every dollar paid in taxes is a dollar given to a real, flesh-and-blood human being" and the same facts point to the opposite conclusion. I hope that the HN crowd isn't so ignorant as to think that corporations aren't made up of real people.

ecuzzillo 16y ago
Yeah, but the real flesh-and-blood human beings receiving the dollars, his point is, are not really people whom most people are all that interested in randomly giving dollars to, like starving people in Africa; they're government bureaucrats who often end up serving to make dollar-givers' lives more difficult.
- gjm11 16y ago
  Except that he only made it sound that way by pretending that the people being paid with those tax dollars are taking the money for doing nothing, whereas in fact they are, e.g., teachers and policemen and firefighters, and the government is handing that money to them in exchange for doing their jobs, and their jobs do in fact involve providing public services. In other words, exactly what taxes are meant to be used for. Now, of course it's possible that California is employing incompetent people to do those things, or that it's prioritizing them badly, or that its bureaucratic overhead is much bigger than it should be. But (1) Patrick didn't offer any sort of evidence for any of those things, or even say them, and (2) those things, if true, aren't problems with taxation but with other functions of government. (Unless they're incurable, so that anything paid for by taxes is inevitably going to be done badly; but, living as I do in a country where all sorts of important things are done quite competently using money raised from taxes, I find that difficult to believe.)
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  Do you have absolutely anything to back up what you're saying, or are you just stating your prejudices?
borism 16y ago
I totally agree with you that his comment adds 0 to the discussion, but it will be upvoted anyway because hey, it's coming from HN authority, right?

ecuzzillo 16y ago

Yeah, but the real flesh-and-blood human beings receiving the dollars, his point is, are not really people whom most people are all that interested in randomly giving dollars to, like starving people in Africa; they're government bureaucrats who often end up serving to make dollar-givers' lives more difficult.

gjm11 16y ago
Except that he only made it sound that way by pretending that the people being paid with those tax dollars are taking the money for doing nothing, whereas in fact they are, e.g., teachers and policemen and firefighters, and the government is handing that money to them in exchange for doing their jobs, and their jobs do in fact involve providing public services. In other words, exactly what taxes are meant to be used for. Now, of course it's possible that California is employing incompetent people to do those things, or that it's prioritizing them badly, or that its bureaucratic overhead is much bigger than it should be. But (1) Patrick didn't offer any sort of evidence for any of those things, or even say them, and (2) those things, if true, aren't problems with taxation but with other functions of government. (Unless they're incurable, so that anything paid for by taxes is inevitably going to be done badly; but, living as I do in a country where all sorts of important things are done quite competently using money raised from taxes, I find that difficult to believe.)
jokermatt999 16y ago
Do you have absolutely anything to back up what you're saying, or are you just stating your prejudices?

borism 16y ago

I totally agree with you that his comment adds 0 to the discussion, but it will be upvoted anyway because hey, it's coming from HN authority, right?