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I don't dispute the fact that this is an inefficient use of resources, and that there's something revolting and perverse about "self licking ice-cream cone" employment for the sake of employment. However, are the persons employed in these ventures foregoing potential alternative employment with more value to society? Are we saddling intelligent and well-educated people with nugatory and oppressive responsibilities? Or are we giving professional employment to people who otherwise would have been underemployed, or unemployed? Are we keeping sharp (more or less) the technical skills of persons who otherwise would have seen those skills atrophy?
Digging/refilling holes only employs ditch-diggers. What about R&D, design, construction, testing, deployment and ultimately decommissioning and dismantling of aircraft carriers or nuclear warheads? This employs PhD electrical engineers, naval architects, mathematicians and so forth. What would we have them do? Have them do management consulting for McKinsey or Bain? Design new quantitative trading algorithms for Goldman-Sachs? When I was a graduate student in the 1990s, droves of my engineering-colleagues were getting Wall Street offers. Instead of solving the Navier-Stokes equations, they went to work on Black-Scholes or whatever. Remember Long Term Capital Management? How did that work out? Or we could follow the model of the collapse of the USSR… disband the defense industry, and have the brightest scientific talent join computer hacking rings or hire themselves out to design weapons for the world's least savory regimes?
Revolting and perverse misallocations and dislocations are the price for having an advanced modern society. Welfare isn't merely for the indigent and the ignorant. How many of us genuinely add value, as opposed to moving money around, hawking something, hustling something, insinuating ourselves into the transaction, digging/refilling ditches, writing code whose job is to cancel somebody else's code, creating art that nobody wants to buy, mowing lawns that nobody will ever see, and otherwise in myriad ways partaking of high-class welfare?
Ditch diggers have as much right to make-work as have engineers. When their engineering gigs go bust, who are they to deserve more than the shovel? I guess futures markets can destroy civilization as we know it but A-bombs can too and much more certainly.
As easy as it is to hustle the money in our own pockets it much easier to hustle money in Uncle Sam's.
We had an advanced modern society before we had an income tax. 2000 looks more like 1900 than 1900 looked like 1800. i.e., income taxes were not around society advanced the most. Perverse misallocations of resources can never be a big problem until the scale of resources available for misuse becomes so large and the attention to their husbandry so small that it becomes inevitable.
If there were no tax there would be nothing to fight about. Nobody would want a massive military if we didn't already have one and we wouldn't already have one unless we had the income tax. People would be much less enthusiastic about social welfare if they had to write out a check for it every month instead of having it paid for with money they never saw. Which is why they invented withholding in the first place.
They invented withholding because of the number of deadbeats who can't manage money. My wife actually has a larger pension than I do, but she is always broke and overdrawing her checking account. She never met a dollar she couldn't spend before she even gets her hands on it. Last month I bailed her out of over $2700 in overdrafts, and she spent it all on stuff we don't need. I also make quarterly income tax payments because she under-withholds taxes on her pension. I'm pretty enthusiastic about social welfare programs, but less sanguine about keeping over 100 military bases open around the world.
We had an advanced modern society before we had an income tax. 2000 looks more like 1900 than 1900 looked like 1800. i.e., income taxes were not around society advanced the most.
There have been societies with income tax as early as 2,000 years ago.
Ditch diggers have as much right to make-work as have engineers. When their engineering gigs go bust, who are they to deserve more than the shovel?
And when an engineer gets old and elderly why is it that the ditch digger gets all kinds of government help and the engineer does not qualify.
The ditch digger gets government subsidies for healthcare insurance, while the engineer pays full ticket price. Why does the ditch digger deserve more than the engineer?
And when an engineer gets old and elderly why is it that the ditch digger gets all kinds of government help and the engineer does not qualify.
The ditch digger gets government subsidies for healthcare insurance, while the engineer pays full ticket price. Why does the ditch digger deserve more than the engineer?
Know the full story before you post.
Did we ask the engineer if he is OK with the arrangement?
After all how does the engineer make a living without the ditch digger?
There have been societies with income tax as early as 2,000 years ago.
And where are they now? Obviously, they died after they put in their income tax. So they could build bigger monuments, have bigger armies, the usual. Maybe they should have left well enough alone.
And when an engineer gets old and elderly why is it that the ditch digger gets all kinds of government help and the engineer does not qualify.
The ditch digger gets government subsidies for healthcare insurance, while the engineer pays full ticket price. Why does the ditch digger deserve more than the engineer?
Know the full story before you post.
All the engineers I know retired with health insurance, either pensions or buyouts, SS, Medicare. I'm not defending ditch diggers but their work is just as dignified as any others as long as its useful. There are plenty of make work engineering projects and ditch digging projects.
NASA, the Grand Cooley Dam both employed a lot of both, both had make-work aspects, both accomplished some good. Like the Panama Canal and the Trans-continental RR, neither needed an income tax to finance them.
Whenever I see articles like that I wonder...if we pay so much in taxes, why don't we have cool stuff like universal health care or tuition-free college? Other countries have that stuff & pay high taxes as a result, but the article says we pay high taxes?
Either we're not paying that much tax or the U.S. government is much more inept & inefficient than those of the rest of the developed world.
You already pay for universal healthcare, it's all just wasted through the ripoff that is the medical industry or **** poor management. So you have to pay for it all over again by buying insurance. US spends more public dollars on healthcare than many countries with socialist health care systems. I.e. UK Switzerland and are almost overtaking France.
Heard of the F-35 program? That's your free college. Or how about the new ships they're shoving down the navies throat that keep breaking down?
And where are they now? Obviously, they died after they put in their income tax.
Hello logic fail. These were some of the most prosperous societies in world history, and their eventual decline after long runs in history is hardly attributed only to income tax nor can we assume they'd have had further accomplishment without it. I could just as easily (and stupidly) claim income tax made them great.
The Nordic Countries are three countries. France makes 4. That leaves a lot that are less.
Three countries? Epic geography fail!
There are 10 countries in Europe with tax revenue at least 40% of GDP. The United States is 24.8%.
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