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This is not limitless. The government gets money by collecting taxes. In order to collect taxes, there have to be people doing paid work to collect taxes from.

by imgabe 2y ago

This is not limitless. The government gets money by collecting taxes. In order to collect taxes, there have to be people doing paid work to collect taxes from. If the government takes over doing all the things that people currently get paid to do by engaging in commerce, then where is the government going to collect taxes from? Without collecting taxes, how is the government going to compensate all the workers providing the free food and healthcare?

micromacrofoot 2y ago
This is a bit of a naive perspective, the military is massive in the US and they contract with hundreds of private companies and create thousands of jobs. Rolling things into taxes and government services doesn't make jobs and money disappear. It's not a perfect system by any means, but there's no question of availability when it comes to national defense priorities... in fact there's a massive abundance and it feels like we sell arms to half the planet. We can do the same for healthcare.
- imgabe 2y ago
  It goes from net revenue to net loss. If the government pays $100 billion in defense contracts they are necessarily collecting less than that in taxes from the employee income. Spending $100 billion to collect $30 billion in taxes is not sustainable. It's not naive, it's simple arithmetic. The money has to come from somewhere.
  - micromacrofoot 2y ago
    and yet the US has been operating this way for 100 years
    - imgabe 2y ago
      Yes, because there are large sectors of the economy that are not just government spending and the government taxes those to support the sectors it does spend on. Every time you take a sector that is private and replace it with one provided by the government, you reduce government revenue and increase government expenses. How many times do you think you can do that? The government is not a magic fairy godmother that produces things you want out of thin air.
      - micromacrofoot 2y ago
        > How many times do you think you can do that? I mean, maybe a couple more times? privatizing healthcare specifically has been studying extensively and is very likely to save large sums of money
        imgabe 2y ago
        This is the opposite of privatizing. Publicizing I guess. The government already spends more than it takes in and is $32 trillion in debt. There are definitely a lot of inefficiencies in healthcare, many of them could be solved without the government taking it over.

by imgabe 2y ago

micromacrofoot 2y ago

This is a bit of a naive perspective, the military is massive in the US and they contract with hundreds of private companies and create thousands of jobs. Rolling things into taxes and government services doesn't make jobs and money disappear. It's not a perfect system by any means, but there's no question of availability when it comes to national defense priorities... in fact there's a massive abundance and it feels like we sell arms to half the planet. We can do the same for healthcare.

imgabe 2y ago
It goes from net revenue to net loss. If the government pays $100 billion in defense contracts they are necessarily collecting less than that in taxes from the employee income. Spending $100 billion to collect $30 billion in taxes is not sustainable. It's not naive, it's simple arithmetic. The money has to come from somewhere.
- micromacrofoot 2y ago
  and yet the US has been operating this way for 100 years
  - imgabe 2y ago
    Yes, because there are large sectors of the economy that are not just government spending and the government taxes those to support the sectors it does spend on. Every time you take a sector that is private and replace it with one provided by the government, you reduce government revenue and increase government expenses. How many times do you think you can do that? The government is not a magic fairy godmother that produces things you want out of thin air.
    - micromacrofoot 2y ago
      > How many times do you think you can do that? I mean, maybe a couple more times? privatizing healthcare specifically has been studying extensively and is very likely to save large sums of money
      - imgabe 2y ago
        This is the opposite of privatizing. Publicizing I guess. The government already spends more than it takes in and is $32 trillion in debt. There are definitely a lot of inefficiencies in healthcare, many of them could be solved without the government taking it over.