/knee jerk mode
The best tax is no tax at all.
/exit knee jerk mode
"DakotaT" wrote:
I'm sure you're right. ::roll:
Yes Wade, you just got the condenscending eye roll. See I pay taxes so I can have highways to drive instead of riding a horse, and I want to have somewhere to lay my head, and have somebody to feed me, when I am no longer able to wipe my own ass.
I know you guys in the universities around the country are real smart with your pie graphs and theories and stuff; but maybe you'd like to take a stab at convincing me how in the hell we sustain the outstanding luxuries we currently enjoy in the decline of the10th Roman Empire without taxation. Just give me something logical and reasonable, and less than 500 words.
I had a guy tell me one time that we could do away with taxes and the goodness in people would come out and we would all take care of each other. I asked if he sold hallucianagines as well as used them.
"Wade" wrote:
(by the way, most of those guys in universities either think I'm a loon or would if they knew me 🙂 )
Taxes are necessary, ISTM, if -- and only if -- there are things that the government can do better than other people.
IMO the list of such things is small:
1. National defense. Which is not the same as being the world's policeman or being able to make war. And also not the same as protectionism for defense contractors. It's no accident that the twentieth century was the bloodiest century in human history.
2. Local roads. Perhaps also national highways, but that is a much, much harder thing to demonstrate. The best maintained highways tend to be toll roads, and there's no obvious government superiority in collecting tolls or entering into maintenance contracts.
3. Water and sewer service. Note though that this is another place where the government needed is local only.
4. Courts and contract enforcement. Mostly local/state as well. Federal needed only in *real* cases of interstate and foreign commerce (not any commerce, as the Supremes have made the law).
5. Payment of interest and principal on already incurred debt. Unfortunately.
I can't name a sixth.
With the exception of #5 (which, to my mind is an especially strong argument against government being better at much of anything involving the spending of money and resources), the taxes required for the rest are a fraction of the current tax burden.
The question is not what government currently does. The question is what government is better at doing.
And since the answer to that question is "not a heckuva lot," there's surprisingly little need for tax revenues either.
So while my initial statement was a bit of hyperbole (I did say it was "knee jerk", after all), it was only a bit.
Did I come in under 500 words?
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)