> Okay, so how does raising taxes to pay for something not count as 'affording' it? This is a bit of a digression because this began about eminent domain but I

> Okay, so how does raising taxes to pay for something not count as 'affording' it? This is a bit of a digression because this began about eminent domain but I'll bite. Because taxes are coercive. The idea is that deciding that you need more money because you want something and don't have enough money for it, then telling people more is required of them because you want something you didn't want last year is prone to abuse and fails in the limit. Why don't we just raise taxes enough so that we could all retire? Money is a proxy for valuable goods and services. Raising taxes to pay for something is increasing the proportion of physical goods and services consumed by government. We can debate about what the proper proportion is but everyone should agree that there is a point where the government is consuming the maximum amount for the good of society and a further increase would be bad for society. At that point, we could agree that the government can not afford additional expenditures. A logical response is that certain expenditures increase the wealth of society and so the tax rate might increase, but there would be more goods and services available so society could afford to pay more taxes. This is potentially true but doesn't apply to every public work, so we could still agree that there is a point where government can't afford any more. Whether a given public work would in fact increase the wealth of society is a matter of discussion for members of that society.