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Where do governments get their money from? Taxes on economic activity. The more economic activity the government performs itself, the less opportunity there is

Where do governments get their money from? Taxes on economic activity. The more economic activity the government performs itself, the less opportunity there is to raise tax revenue. Take this through to its logical conclusion and you have the government owning farms, making food, making its own steel, building its own cars, etc. with a corresponding loss of revenue-raising activity in the real economy.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
Government can and does tax its workers and suppliers. In a bubble, there is no revenue raising difference between a government owned economy and a private economy with equal production. Realistic differences come down to comparative disfunction of management (IMO, best considered in terms of which is worse).
sitkack 2y ago
The government isn't in the business of consuming tax revenue. Its mission is to most efficiently serve the needs of its constituents. Government services help everyone and raise the floor of the standard of living. Someone is now free to go write and do SOMETHING else and sell that. By your logic, we should get rid of libraries since more economic activity would happen if everyone had to buy their own books.
theflash666 2y ago
From my understanding, most European governments purchase American or other foreign-owned software, which often does not contribute to tax revenues in the countries where it is used.
- theflash666 2y ago
  Actually, open-source product and code can totally be deployed or reused by private actors to make money of it
- rvense 2y ago
  Software licenses are certainly a major expense for all levels of the Danish government. (Cloud infrastructure, too, increasingly.) They've started complaining, especially since prices have been going up, but while there's rumbling underground, we've yet to see any real movement away from Microsoft.
crabmusket 2y ago
> Where do governments get their money from? Taxes on economic activity. That may be true of local/state governments, but it isn't true for currency-issuing governments like the US. I'm not as familiar with the EU monetary system as I haven't read as much into it.
wvh 2y ago
There is this thing called balance. The middle road. Yin Yang. Entities keeping each other in check.

s1artibartfast 2y ago

Government can and does tax its workers and suppliers. In a bubble, there is no revenue raising difference between a government owned economy and a private economy with equal production. Realistic differences come down to comparative disfunction of management (IMO, best considered in terms of which is worse).

sitkack 2y ago

The government isn't in the business of consuming tax revenue. Its mission is to most efficiently serve the needs of its constituents. Government services help everyone and raise the floor of the standard of living. Someone is now free to go write and do SOMETHING else and sell that. By your logic, we should get rid of libraries since more economic activity would happen if everyone had to buy their own books.

theflash666 2y ago

From my understanding, most European governments purchase American or other foreign-owned software, which often does not contribute to tax revenues in the countries where it is used.

theflash666 2y ago
Actually, open-source product and code can totally be deployed or reused by private actors to make money of it
rvense 2y ago
Software licenses are certainly a major expense for all levels of the Danish government. (Cloud infrastructure, too, increasingly.) They've started complaining, especially since prices have been going up, but while there's rumbling underground, we've yet to see any real movement away from Microsoft.

crabmusket 2y ago

> Where do governments get their money from? Taxes on economic activity. That may be true of local/state governments, but it isn't true for currency-issuing governments like the US. I'm not as familiar with the EU monetary system as I haven't read as much into it.

wvh 2y ago

There is this thing called balance. The middle road. Yin Yang. Entities keeping each other in check.