3 ms·

This community is deranged. All forms of taxation are messed up, the funds end up in grifters pockets, funding wars, or in black holes. The last place I want m

• avgDev 4y ago
  So, what is your solution for building infrastructure? Funding the military? Social programs? Snow removal? Libraries? Education?
  • honkycat 4y ago
    Or producing meat, or maintaining prisons, or building security critical CPUs, or funding medical research... These people think the market exists, but really we just have a fucked-up version of socialism that privatizes the profits while subsidizing the risk. It supports toxic industries while fucking everyone else over. In this case, particularly talking about agriculture and the prison industrial complex... or the huge scam with the covid loans where they just used the money for stock buybacks.
  • justinzollars 4y ago
    Governments in the West have grown tremendously. In the United States the footprint of Government is 44% of GDP. 44%! This community is "Hacker News" not "Socialist News" or "Red State". Government should be able to function much better with much less. And it is no Hackers interest for its footprint to continue its endless expansion.
    • EddieDante 4y ago
      You realize that there is a website called Red State and that it's a right-wing propaganda outfit, right? I personally think it's hilarious that the "godless Reds" used to be commies, and now they're Republicans.
• humanistbot 4y ago
  You might enjoy Somalia.
  • justinzollars 4y ago
    I live in very high tax San Francisco, which is similar to Somalia in many ways. Our politicians are corrupt (Nancy Pelosi is a world class Options trader), we have a meteoric increase in crime, and we let people die on the streets - 1,300 over the last 2 years [1]. 1. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/San-Francisco-drug-overdose-17067557.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/San-Francisco-drug-ov...
    • honkycat 4y ago
      People on the left are viscous critics of the democratic machine politicians. Pointing to them isn't an effective critique because: yes I agree. Liars and crooks all of them. Running to the right and embracing authoritarianism is much preferable to the politicians than, say, a general strike and a unionization movement. Which would actually harm the people in power instead of squishing those at the bottom.
• mdcds 4y ago
  What was the original mandate for the US Fed Gov? Focus on international affairs and waging war, and let states handle the rest?
  • honkycat 4y ago
    You realize that was almost 250 years ago at this point. Constitutionaliam is a grift run by conservatives to smoke screen their agendas. Nobody argues it in good faith.
    • mdcds 4y ago
      idk, never heard of Constitutionaliam. So what the mandate of Fed Gov should be and how long TTL?
    • justinzollars 4y ago
      > Constitutionaliam is a grift run by conservatives to smoke screen their agendas. Nobody argues it in good faith. I argue it in good faith. I want government to shrink. The constitution should be used as a tool to constrain the size and scope of Government. And with the New Supreme Court it's chipping away at the concept the State can rule by edict. It's an exciting restoration of Democracy. Today Government spending is 44% of GDP - which is colossal by most measures. In fact It's much larger than the CCP. Government size will shrink either through inflation or default because its debt burden is 130% of GDP. In research done by Hirschmann capital, 51 out of 52 times a country’s debt-to-GDP ratio reached 130%, the country eventually defaulted. The one exception is Japan - whose trajectory doesn't look great today. Like it or not, you are either fighting constitutionalism or the mathematical force of Gravity. But there is no way Government will continue to expand.
• imtringued 4y ago
  Ok, introduce a land value tax and a citizen's dividend then.