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Why do we need to gather even more tax revenue when congress and the fed can just expand their balance sheets to infinity? The government is terrible at managi

by rank0 5y ago

Why do we need to gather even more tax revenue when congress and the fed can just expand their balance sheets to infinity? The government is terrible at managing money. More tax revenue != less poverty.

kadoban 5y ago
> Why do we need to gather even more tax revenue when congress and the fed can just expand their balance sheets to infinity? Because printing money is an awkward and not very flexible way to raise money. > The government is terrible at managing money. More tax revenue != less poverty. We should also improve our government then, and get them to address poverty better.
- aeternum 5y ago
  >We should also improve our government then, and get them to address poverty better. Sure, but that proposal along with clear milestones and deliverables should come before the funding. I'd vote for it but only if the money goes right back to the billionaires if/when the gov. fails to deliver on the plan. One of the primary things we can do to improve the government is define objectives for new legislation, and make the new laws null and void automatically if they fail to achieve the desired objective.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    > Sure, but that proposal along with clear milestones and deliverables should come before the funding. Probably not the worst idea. The CBO already does a lot of that though. With the current situation though, we already did the spending. We need to at least reduce the deficit, if not the debt. > One of the primary things we can do to improve the government is define objectives for new legislation, and make the new laws null and void automatically if they fail to achieve the desired objective. That's a recipe for either a bunch of way-too-low bars to jump, or a lot of legislation that was on the right track but we just undo it. With the current situation in the US Senate, more hurdles to passing legislation is _not_ what is needed.
- rayiner 5y ago
  > We should also improve our government then, and get them to address poverty better. Let’s do that first.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    It's a big government with lots of people, we can do both at once.
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      I don't think we can improve government, based on what I observed over past 30 years.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      We keep doing the one thing (spending more money) but keep making no progress on the other (better functioning services). Adjusted for inflation, we spend 50% more on education than we when I was a kid in the 1990s: https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-pupil-in-public-schools-in-the-us-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...
      - cloudfifty 5y ago
        This flow seem very convenient for the extremely rich: 1. Milk as much taxpayer money as possible, while providing as little as possible through profit-driven social services etc. that require increasingly larger budgets to not collapse entirely. 2. Tax us? Look at all the money the government isn't getting any value out of! 3. Rinse & repeat.

by rank0 5y ago

kadoban 5y ago

> Why do we need to gather even more tax revenue when congress and the fed can just expand their balance sheets to infinity? Because printing money is an awkward and not very flexible way to raise money. > The government is terrible at managing money. More tax revenue != less poverty. We should also improve our government then, and get them to address poverty better.

aeternum 5y ago
>We should also improve our government then, and get them to address poverty better. Sure, but that proposal along with clear milestones and deliverables should come before the funding. I'd vote for it but only if the money goes right back to the billionaires if/when the gov. fails to deliver on the plan. One of the primary things we can do to improve the government is define objectives for new legislation, and make the new laws null and void automatically if they fail to achieve the desired objective.
- kadoban 5y ago
  > Sure, but that proposal along with clear milestones and deliverables should come before the funding. Probably not the worst idea. The CBO already does a lot of that though. With the current situation though, we already did the spending. We need to at least reduce the deficit, if not the debt. > One of the primary things we can do to improve the government is define objectives for new legislation, and make the new laws null and void automatically if they fail to achieve the desired objective. That's a recipe for either a bunch of way-too-low bars to jump, or a lot of legislation that was on the right track but we just undo it. With the current situation in the US Senate, more hurdles to passing legislation is _not_ what is needed.
rayiner 5y ago
> We should also improve our government then, and get them to address poverty better. Let’s do that first.
- kadoban 5y ago
  It's a big government with lots of people, we can do both at once.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    I don't think we can improve government, based on what I observed over past 30 years.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    We keep doing the one thing (spending more money) but keep making no progress on the other (better functioning services). Adjusted for inflation, we spend 50% more on education than we when I was a kid in the 1990s: https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-pupil-in-public-schools-in-the-us-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...
    - cloudfifty 5y ago
      This flow seem very convenient for the extremely rich: 1. Milk as much taxpayer money as possible, while providing as little as possible through profit-driven social services etc. that require increasingly larger budgets to not collapse entirely. 2. Tax us? Look at all the money the government isn't getting any value out of! 3. Rinse & repeat.