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The government is an incredibly poor & wasteful allocator of capital. Full stop. The founders of the country would shudder at at the size, scope and over-reach

The government is an incredibly poor & wasteful allocator of capital. Full stop. The founders of the country would shudder at at the size, scope and over-reach of the government... Also remember, income tax was introduced as a "temporary" measure... the country had roads, hospitals, and orphanages before that.

RichEO 6y ago
> The government is an incredibly poor & wasteful allocator of capital. Full stop. Which government? What is the threshold for “poor allocation”? Seems like the free market misallocates a lot of capital to me. WeWork was allocated over a billion dollars of investment, and $47 billion in value, that could be easily argued would have be better used elsewhere.
- mrnobody_67 6y ago
  At least that money can get counted for properly... and venture capital as an asset class still generates double-digit IRRs, and LPs stop funding investors with poor returns. The Pentagon has spent 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars in building systems to just try to account for its waste, highly recommend this long read from Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pentagon-budget-mystery-807276/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pent... and http://nebraskansforpeace.org/pentagon_accounting_fraud http://nebraskansforpeace.org/pentagon_accounting_fraud The stuff about government people spending 15 year careers entering phony numbers is just insane: https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-accounting-conceals-epic-waste-2013-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-accounting-conceals...
gremlinsinc 6y ago
> The founders of the country would shudder at at the size, scope and over-reach of the government... I don't think they would (not all of them). Jefferson would for sure, but this is basically Alexander Hamilton's utopian dream. The world he wanted to create. Congrats Alex, you won, everybody else lost. I agree w/ you that the govt is wasteful. I wish we had where states provide all the citizen benefits and also received the majority of tax revenues, and the fed was a lot smaller and even states managed their own armies and the fed just borrowed soldiers from states for international purposes. Basically their own countries just unionized over interstate commerce and such.

RichEO 6y ago

> The government is an incredibly poor & wasteful allocator of capital. Full stop. Which government? What is the threshold for “poor allocation”? Seems like the free market misallocates a lot of capital to me. WeWork was allocated over a billion dollars of investment, and $47 billion in value, that could be easily argued would have be better used elsewhere.

mrnobody_67 6y ago
At least that money can get counted for properly... and venture capital as an asset class still generates double-digit IRRs, and LPs stop funding investors with poor returns. The Pentagon has spent 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars in building systems to just try to account for its waste, highly recommend this long read from Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pentagon-budget-mystery-807276/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pent... and http://nebraskansforpeace.org/pentagon_accounting_fraud http://nebraskansforpeace.org/pentagon_accounting_fraud The stuff about government people spending 15 year careers entering phony numbers is just insane: https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-accounting-conceals-epic-waste-2013-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-accounting-conceals...

gremlinsinc 6y ago

> The founders of the country would shudder at at the size, scope and over-reach of the government... I don't think they would (not all of them). Jefferson would for sure, but this is basically Alexander Hamilton's utopian dream. The world he wanted to create. Congrats Alex, you won, everybody else lost. I agree w/ you that the govt is wasteful. I wish we had where states provide all the citizen benefits and also received the majority of tax revenues, and the fed was a lot smaller and even states managed their own armies and the fed just borrowed soldiers from states for international purposes. Basically their own countries just unionized over interstate commerce and such.