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Need a Receipt On Taxes? The Federal Tax Receipt
ndogg writes "The White House has opened up a tool that lets you see where your tax dollars are being spent. I put my numbers in and it showed that a little over a quarter goes towards defense and military spending (I'm not sure I'm getting my money's worth on that one), and a little under a quarter for health care." I'm sure readers (and think tanks of various stripes) will have some alternative narratives, too. For readers elsewhere; it's tax season here in the US.
If we cut that back to 1/6th of our spending on military, we'd still be the top spender in the world.
If we cut 90%, we'd be the world's second-highest spender.
If we cut back 95%, we'd be 10th.
The preamble of the United States constitution reads: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." (emphasis added)
Article I, section 8 reinforces this general welfare statement by remarking: "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." (more emphasis added).
Insofar as Planned Parenthood encourages the development of families that are planned and not just accidents, ACORN encourages get out the vote projects to enhance American democracy, General Electric, General Motors, and Chrysler provide gainful employment for Americans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provide opportunities for home ownership, and the like, I think you reasonably have to say the goal is to provide for the general welfare.
You and I are welcome to disagree over whether those are the best ways to promote the general welfare (and in many cases, though not all, I suspect we would be in agreement, despite this post). However, the constitution is pretty clear that the US government has a general broad right to promote the general welfare in the United States.
I should also like to add, one of the primary advocates of the United States Constitution during the period leading up to its ratification was Alexander Hamilton, who was originally in favor of setting up a fairly powerful monarch. He lost out on the the first draft of the Constitution -- the Articles of Confederation -- which provided for a much more limited government. However, we threw that in the toilet and opted for the Constitution, which was designed to strengthen and centralize the Federal government's power, not really limit it (though it does have its own limitations laid out in the Bill of Rights).
Look, I'm pretty sympathetic to the Jeffersonian minimalist government ideal. But the Constitution isn't a Jeffersonian document. It's a Hamiltonian and Madisonian one, and those guys were more for centralized power than the original founders were. Insofar as that's the government we got, that's the government we got.
In other countries, a quarter of their taxes goes to health care, but then they actually get health care for that! It's very sad that in the US, you can pay just as much, yet that only covers old people and poor people and politicians.
I've lived in 3 countries -- UK, Canada, and USA -- and the health care in UK and Canada is a billion times better than in the US. The doctors here in the US spend about half their energy finding funding for whatever care they want to provide, and people here routinely walk around sick and with untreated wounds and diseases. Even people who "have insurance." And people who live on the Canadian or Mexican border cross the border to get health care or buy pharmaceuticals routinely. It's just amazingly sad.
Let's imagine a world where you don't pay for the "unearned security" of others. The kid next door, through no fault of his own, has irresponsible parents. Maybe he gets knocked around. He certainly can't afford college. He tries to get a job, but the antics of the super-rich (in their efforts to become double-ultra-super-rich) have sent a lot of them overseas. He has no access to food or medicine or shelter, because you're too greedy to toss some money his way.
So he breaks into your home, robs, and murders you.
Taxes are what the rich people pay in exchange for the poor letting them continue to be rich. Doesn't seem fair? Tough shit. Life isn't fair. Just ask that starving kid next door.
Insightful? Really?
"Government is a bureaucracy. By definition, government produces exactly nothing. It takes from others in order to perform its functions."
You know I find irritating? Idiots who claim that our government produces nothing. Go live in a third world country for a year, without all those comfortable amenities you have that you don't even think about. If you manage to survive without getting killed or debilitatingly sick, then come on back and tell us about how our government produces nothing. It either produces or facilitates everything you take for granted in your happy, comfortable, privileged little life.
"And the sad fact is, government, historically, has been woefully inefficient at ANY of the functions it has undertaken. There may have been a few exceptions, in a few places, a few times, but in the vast majority of cases that is the simple truth."
That is just plain bullshit. If governments were woefully inefficient at everything they did then major empires lasting centuries would not have been possible. Nor would we have major countries today that have been around for 500 years or more. Governments exist because the majority of the population view them as beneficial. Those that aren't beneficial get to experience uprising, and being replaced by something that is.
"You cannot even say -- today -- that taxes are a "bargain compared to warlords and tycoons ruling everything" because, today, you have those anyway and you are still paying outrageous taxes."
Yes, he can say that. Do you have any idea what a real warlord is? A real warlord will come up to you and cut your fucking head off just because he feels like it. Then he'll rape your wife/daughters and then order his men to lock them in their house and burn it to the ground. Your sons will either be put in a camp to become future members of his army or killed right along with them. A warlord will use a jeep mounted machine gun and run down dozens of fleeing people for not paying him a tribute. A warlord will slaughter thousands and dump them into mass graves to keep or solidify his grip on power. THAT'S what a warlord is.
Get some fucking perspective. Your privileged, pampered ass has NO CLUE about just how good you have it. If you truly and honestly believe government and taxes are useless and provide nothing, there are plenty of places you can go where you can enjoy a tax free existence and a remarkably short life span.
~X~
Taxes buy infrastructure.
- taxes kill infrastructure.
FDR taxed the airlines in order to build the unprofitable and inefficient system of roads while taking apart the existing system of privately owned profitable and efficient rail. This was a massive subsidy to the auto-industry, it caused massive sub-urban sprawl, which is unmaintainable without huge subsidies. It cause much more pollution that rail ever could. It caused much more traffic and waste of peoples' lives than if cities were much less spread around and instead had more population density in smaller area. It killed the industry for profitable public transport (well, it was part of the kill, there are many other parts, all have government hands in it).
Of-course today Obama wants to build rail. Of-course USA has no money for it, but they figure they'll print it/borrow from Chinese. It will be massively expensive and inefficient, because the plan is to use all USA parts, which don't actually exist, so it can't be profitable without huge subsidies because nobody would be able to buy the tickets without huge subsidies. I don't think Obama actually will do this, USA is literally out of investment capital and credit, but that was the plan anyway.
Taxes buy culture.
- so without taxes there is no culture? You are talking about education for some reason there, but education is a function of the market, which requires education if it is a productive market. USA used to be a productive market in 19 century, beginning of the 20 century and past WWII, when it had a monopoly on production. It was the industrialization and manufacturing that pushed for more education, not gov't in any way. Education was efficient and it made sense as an investment. It was also quite cheap. All until government money poured in, made the system very expensive and inefficient and destroyed quality in the process. Now the market in USA does not require anywhere near as much education as there are dollars allocated for all the government subsidized schools and programs and loans, there is a huge bubble in education prices, there is a huge drop in quality, and all this is bought with more money than any other country spends per capita (same as with gov't ran health care in USA, same problems - huge costs and low quality, all thanks to government money in it.)
As to 'culture', the only 'culture' that taxes buy is culture of people who are unwilling to do anything and instead expect to be taken care of by the government - this is bread and circuses culture.
From tools, to access to shared resources, to even the ability to shape the system you live in - taxes buy a lot more than a simple minarchy would allow.
- all of this assumes that there is a need for any of those things and that by taxing income the government does not displace other types of investment that people would have made with their money, that wouldn't have given them more of what they actually needed, rather than something, government believes they need. This point has no value at all.
Taxes are the resources of the people paying for the shared needs of the people.
- yet when the USA was agreed upon by the separate States, the agreement was on a very very very tiny federal government that would do very very very little, would only take care of minimum military for protection and a justice system. What are the "shared needs" of people in New York and in Alaska exactly? How is a government bureaucratic system deciding these?
Also gov't is terrible at owning 'shared resources'. It really should not own any assets. It's terrible at being an 'owner', because as a collective, it has no sense of ownership.
That's why it's so terrible at actually protecting the 'shared resources'. The Guelph of Mexico is a good example - oil is spilled constantly, yet the gov't is a system that allowed 10 million dollar cap on the liability of the companies on d
You can't handle the truth.
That would have serious incentive incompatibility. You think for-profit prison lobbyists pushing for harder terms is bad now? If the police were to be for-profit, it would benefit from catching "criminals" - and from redefining what a criminal is, and squeezing as much labor out of them as they could manage, and if possible, encouraging criminals to commit greater offenses. Every arrested person would mysteriously resist arrest so that could be added to the charge sheets. The prisons would be harsh and have no rehabilitation - if they turn into academies of crime, all the better, because it increases the revenue stream of recidivists.
In short: if it's profitable to catch criminals, the private police would farm them. Like any other company, if they get paid for X, then well, you'll get plenty of X.