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Are you arguing that food is "free market" in the US?
I have about 25 billion reasons your incorrect.

Of course that's excessive, we could abolish Medicare and Medicaid and the VA and housing programs and just support a team of waste disposal specialists who pick up the corpses and incinerate them, that would be quite a lot cheaper. But it might have other consequences, who knows.

And there we go. We don't need to spend 40% of the federal government's budget, including "off budget" to prevent bodies in the street. Notice the pattern: an enormously expensive solution to a cheap problem.

Then there's "social security, unemployment and labor", that's the biggest single tranche of the whole budget. Of course we could do without those things, we did just fine up until 1933, give or take. But I'll just say - right or wrong, there was a reason why they were introduced, and it wasn't a commie plot.

It's a pyramid scheme bribe to the voters to look the other way. Anyone of voting age alive in 1933 got considerably more out of those programs than they put in (which was a great deal for themselves, but not for posterity). In exchange, they ignored a massive increase in government spending, part which was funded directly by Social Security.

Let us note that federal spending was well under 5% of GDP for most of the life of the US prior to 1933 except for two wars, the Civil War and the First World War. After the FDR era and the end of the Second World War, US government spending never went below 11% and is now above 20% of GDP.

To have a government like Finland or the Netherlands requires pretty left-wing policies and attitudes, including paying civil servants well, which requires a lot of tax money. If you keep insisting on low tax rates because we don't have a government type that doesn't arise unless one has somewhat higher tax rates, I'm not sure what to say.

Feds earn 74% more than people in the private sector.

The Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards compared data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to show that, in his view, civilian federal workers are overcompensated. Factoring both salary and benefits, Edwards pointed to BEA data showing the average federal employee earns about $119,000 annually, compared to the private sector worker who earns $67,000 per year. When comparing just salaries, feds collect 50 percent bigger paychecks, Edwards said.

Since the 1990s, federal workers have enjoyed faster compensation growth than private-sector workers.

More sources:
U.S. Office of Personnel Management: "Senior Executive Service Performance & Compensation"
Congressional Research Service: "The Federal Workforce: Characteristics and Trends"
Congressional Budget Office: "Comparing the Compensation of Federal and Private-Sector Employees".

Apparently our Government is starved for cash? Here's where we tax. Look at how it's spent.

I doubt you find many german areas where commuting by bus is common.

About half of the rides on German public transport are by bus:

https://www.destatis.de/DE/Pre...

Railway is cheaper because it is cheaper, energy wise etc. As I pointed out several times now: the subsidizes are extremely low in relation to the effect (billions of passenger kilometers per year).

Even according to the UK government, railway passenger subsidies are around $ 0.10 per kilometer, https://www.gov.uk/government/...

Germany is under EU investigation over its massive subsidies for rail service (in addition to postal and energy). Germany's rail system also enjoyed a government-granted monopoly for a century.

Energy savings from rail are modest because trains are often not filled to capacity.

Here is an excellent summary of the history, financing, and cost of transportation:

http://www.downsizinggovernmen...

Also keep in mind: the number is per capita not per student/pupil so the amount of money for a student/pupil in the USA is even lower as the ratio between adults and youngs is bigger.

No, sorry, not true: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us...

The United States spent more than $11,000 per elementary student in 2010 and more than $12,000 per high school student. When researchers factored in the cost for programs after high school education such as college or vocational training, the United States spent $15,171 on each young person in the system — more than any other nation covered in the report.

What they want is control over global industry, insane amounts of unaudited "international aid money" and absolute moral authority.

Solve the problem and you take away their power, their money, and their claims to moral superiority.

This is something they will never let die.

If we fixed the climate tomorrow they'd still be harping about it.

That's always the case when special interests have their hands in the cookie jar whether it be environmentalists (who can't agree with each other sometimes) or the fossil fuel industries. And yes coal and petroleum get subsidies. Fossil Fuel Subsidies in the U.S.. CATO again, Clean Coal Subsidies, Energy Subsidies, and T. Boone Hard-Wired for Subsidies. From Bloomberg, hardly an environmental sympathizer, Fossil Fuel Subsidies Six Times More Than Renewable Energy.

FalconWolf

The Economist shined the light on all these "rural internet stimulus" projects when they were kickstarted by the feds with $7B in 2011. http://www.economist.com/node/...

The general subject of rural subsidies, from airports to highways to analog television, is older. http://www.downsizinggovernmen... Geography, unlike race or income, is a choice. I'm not red-baiting tea party-er, but the "last mile of track" forgives a lot of costs the private sector won't ignore, and governments with a mission to ignore costs attracts a lot people who represent the worst of capitalism, eager to exploit the willingness of pork politicians to pay for mountain hermits to view streaming porn.

Ordinary sugar wouldn't lead to this, because it's not from a crop that's drenched in the implicated pesticide.

Ordinary sugar would be used if not for Congress's ham-fisted attempts at social-engineering and changing leadership in Cuba and price controls for the benefit of Domino and their ilk.

(because everybody predicted massive bee death as a foreseen consequence of the trade embargo in 1960, right?)

You know, every time I hear various parties say "get government out of business" and all that, I think "okay... maybe... but some regulation is needed because when there isn't, big business ends up raping the country." But then again, I never heard parties say "we need government to stop giving subsidies to business..."

Then you're not listening to people in the right parties.

• Put farm subsidies out to pasture
  "'It's absurd that we're paying farmers billions of dollars during a time of soaring crop prices,' says Libertarian Party National Media Coordinator Andrew Davis. "Taxpayers should not be subsidizing farmers while paying higher prices at the grocery store."
• Libertarians say Paul Ryan is worse than Bill Clinton
  "We Libertarians propose eliminating federal functions that are not authorized in the Constitution. Furthermore, Libertarians propose ending foreign wars and foreign troop deployments, allowing huge cuts in military spending. Libertarians would cut the federal government down to less than 10% of GDP, and we'd keep cutting once we got there."
• Libertarians: Tea Party betrayed by tiny Republican budget cuts
  "It doesn't help that Congressional Republicans voted for more unemployment spending and ethanol subsidies last December, or that they want to keep increasing military spending. And they haven't come up with any serious cuts to entitlements."
• LP Monday Message: Republicans jack up government spending
  And we want to get rid of ethanol subsidies and other corporate welfare -- while the Republicans vote to increase it."
• Anti-war liberals can vote Libertarian
  "We Libertarians have a saying that we're 'pro-choice on everything.' We are uncompromising supporters of free speech. We completely oppose corporate welfare, and we hate the way big corporations often manipulate the government to get subsidies and protection from competition. "
• Corn Subsidies
• Ron Paul on Government Subsidies
• Oil and nuclear are not free market energies: ACC 6-28-2011
  "Alternative" energies are not the only ones heavily subsidized. 2 examples of how oil and nuclear enjoy the largess of the state."
• Energy Subsidies

Someone either isn't looking or has their head buried in sand.

Oh, one more link: My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'
In the video Rep Edward Markey (D) brags that his energy bill has massive subsidies for coal and nuclear power among other dirty energy sources, but little subsidies for alternative energy. Fact is is government picks, or tries to pick, winners and losers all the tyme.

Falcon

Taxes are collected from those that make money to be given to those that do not.

Partly correct. Sometimes taxes are collected from those that make some money to be given to those who have lots of money.

Exactly... we already pay for infrastructure. The problem is that this money is being diverted to other (not always related) causes... which is why the infrastructure is suffering. (See http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/transportation/highway-funding ). It would be better if we simply used the funds for the intent they were created, rather than squandering them on other (often unrelated) nonsense. In other words, let the earmarkers go figure out where to get the money from, rather than raiding our infrastructure monies!

Interesting comment about cities being more subsidized. Do you have any evidence? I think that cities are punitively taxed, yet people still move to them because the benefits still outweigh the extra taxes.

For example:
Urban areas pay more than they otherwise would for telecommunications to subsidize rural connectivity
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/07/federal-subsidies-for-rural-living/

Fuel used for non-farming purposes cannot claim back tax paid on it. Rebates for an industry primarily situated in rural areas sounds suspiciously like a subsidy to rural areas.
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/industries/article/0,,id=98980,00.html

Agricultural subsidies are a giant rip-off for taxpayers, funneling money to the largest producers of wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton. While rural residents are not typically better off for this, there are a lot more urban taxpayers than rural taxpayers.
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/rural-subsidies

Large cities often impose an additional sales (or wage) tax in addition to what the state already imposes; rural residents avoid paying those taxes.
http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/taxesbycity2005/index.html

Rural areas generally create more CO2 per resident than urban areas, but I feel certain that the costs of CO2 reduction will not be assessed proportionately.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16819-city-dwellers-harm-climate-less.html

As for why urbanites still live in cities, despite all these 'crushing' taxes? One reason might be economic: earnings grow more quickly for individuals who live in cities. The analysis points to the advantages of being close to experience you can learn from.
timharford.com

So this comment might not be conclusive, but at least I have some evidence, rather than just prejudice for holding my opinion.

I don't know where you got that notion from but it simply doesn't match reality as I have seen. Post Offices in small towns have closed recently due to decreased volume and the employees from those offices have been let go. Existing offices are not hiring, even to replace retiring workers.

I've got your reality right here. Well, strictly speaking, 584,000 of the 600,000 USPS workers are covered by the no-layoffs clause. Sue me.

From their labor union's blog:

http://labornotes.org/node/1947

(as far as I know, the layoffs they were fearing did not materialize)

And from the CATO institute:

http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/the-postal-services-union-problem