I dont want to see people suffer, but I believe in small government and that we need self accountability.
The more intervention by the government, the more unnecessary regulation or wasteful spending with high taxes the more rampant abuse by others.
The fact is people have had society for a long time and it tends to work out, the biggest problem we face now is if the government provides we see people become dependent on the government
You really shouldn't be opposed to high taxes; the problem is the burden of taxes is poorly/unfairly distributed among the population. If the top 0.1% were forced to pay the tax burden of the bottom 99.9%, they would easily retain their status of top 0.1% wealthiest. If the top 0.1% wealthiest people had to pay 100% of society's taxes, they would still on average have a net worth of $150m.
The more intervention by the government, the more unnecessary regulation or wasteful spending with high taxes the more rampant abuse by others.
Assuming the "rampant abuse" you mention is people exploiting food stamps or getting free life saving medical treatment, you should look to history and see how rampant abuse was in the era before "unnecessary regulation." There is a reason pure capitalists came to be known as "robber barons." The most rampant abuse today is the sheer amount of human exploitation required to create a billionaire class.
The fact is people have had society for a long time and it tends to work out, the biggest problem we face now is if the government provides we see people become dependent on the government
Generational wealth(billionaires/trillionaires/etc) is impossible without the stability provided by government. It is actually the wealthy who depend on the government to provide the stability for them to grow, retain and enjoy their wealth.
You completely disregard incentives for work and where that money actually comes from. Itās not sitting around in a bank. Itās being using by the companies they invest 99% of their money into.
Taking the money means starving these businesses of their investors in favor of giving that to the government in the hopes the government will do more with that money.
Many people donāt trust the government to spend money efficiently or safely.
In the government they care about being reelected, aka maintaining power. In a private business they care about making money.
So the question is, āDo you trust someone who wants power or someone who wants to make money?ā
For me and many others, Iād trust the person who wants to make money to make a more successful product.
Obviously there are exceptions, and the government DOES need to step in when the free market has perverse incentives to the goodwill of the people.
But saying ājust tax the rich moreā is a telltale sign that you havenāt actually thought about where that money comes from and what areas in the private sector get screwed over.
You completely disregard incentives for work and where that money actually comes from. Itās not sitting around in a bank. Itās being using by the companies they invest 99% of their money into.
These sound awful like the assumptions used to justify horse and sparrow economics; unfortunately we have decades of empirical evidence disproving the wishful "trickle down" thinking.
In the post WW2 period the top statutory marginal income tax rate for the highest earners was over 90%. Uncoincidentally the following decades were known as the "golden age of labor," society flourished and there was plenty of economic growth -- instead of the hypothetical perversion-of-incentives economic doomsday scenario you allude to. Businesses still thrived, except back then empires weren't being built at the expense of the middle class.
But saying ājust tax the rich moreā is a telltale sign that you havenāt actually thought about where that money comes from and what areas in the private sector get screwed over.
If I have to actually defend the merits of hypothetically revising tax law such that society's wealth is redistributed in a way that reduces the wealth of billionaires to "mere" 100-millionaires, then I suspect no amount of reasoning or facts would be enough to convince you. One of my degrees is in economics so I have spent at least a few years casually thinking about this; unfortunately "just tax the rich more" is unequivocally an improvement over the present day reality. However this doesn't mean I endorse government waste; at a minimum I'd like to see the government work for the common man, as opposed to a government for the oligarchs.
A great example is how Elon Musk has derived much of his wealth from selling EVs to a captive market because the government protects his company from foreign competition. I can't think of a better example of "perverse incentives" than the world's first trillionaire who's wealth is built on a foundation of rent seeking behavior.
I only read the first paragraph but noticed one major flaw in your logic already, we elect these people an expect these people to be able to appropriate funds into meaningful fucking programs and currently with all the fucking money were spending we see no change, tax hike after tax hike shit progressively gets worse throwing more money at the problem dosent solve it when the problem is a government that dosent spend wisely or carefully no instead they spend flagrantly and unchecked leading to massive amounts of tax dollars ending up being collected by fraudulent organizations and people. When will it finally be enough money you think? Although yes the tax structure could use work in the way of burdens imposed on different classes of wealth but that is far from the main issue here.
I'm not making any claims about how the government spends money or how it could spend it better. I was only pointing out the little understood fact that if the richest 0.1% of the population paid all of the taxes currently being paid by the 99.99%, they would all still be richer than most lottery winners. In this hypothetical I'm not saying anything about how the tax revenue is spent -- it would be far too wishful for me to assume that a more sensible tax code would also result in more sensible government spending.
Unless you're talking about corporations dependent on the government and looting everything from taxpayers, you have it wrong. Fewer regulations benefit corporations and let them abuse and exploit more, too.
It does, which is why we have small government. Enough to say, these are the laws. Keep it simple enough any adult can understand the writing and let people do what they do.
Small government and small, easy to understand laws. All of these convoluted, 4,500 pages laws have so many loopholes that they make Swiss cheese jealous. Agreed.
Large corporations love the gov providing them with laws that will over burden competitors. A company like Walmart has billions of dollars as lawyers and entire compliance teams. A small business does not. How are you all this stupid?
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u/Excellent_Arrival1 1d ago
Exactly this.
I dont want to see people suffer, but I believe in small government and that we need self accountability.
The more intervention by the government, the more unnecessary regulation or wasteful spending with high taxes the more rampant abuse by others.
The fact is people have had society for a long time and it tends to work out, the biggest problem we face now is if the government provides we see people become dependent on the government