It's your argument.
Your making counter arguments like the assertion that paying as much taxes as we do is the price we pay for society.
I agree with (but note that even here you do not back up with any numbers and details) the point that paying some taxes is the price we pay for a well functioning society, but your assertions and implications go beyond that.
You are making arguments based on opinion and ideology
My arguments are mostly obviously true. The idea that smaller government would be better could be questioned, but the point that most of government is not necessary in order to avoid the collapse of society is obviously true. The converse is just crazy.
"Either your implying that society would collapse if we significantly cut government spending (in which case I suggest the burden of providing specific evidence properly belongs on you), or your not opposing my point."
Here you go again. You are putting words into my posts and then arguing against your own made up arguments.
I'm not putting words in to your mouth, I'm stating what my main argument being false implies, and saying that either you agree with that OR your not really opposing my argument. Putting words in your mouth would simply be saying that you agree with that idea, whether or not you do.
I say the majority of our taxes are not a necessary price for society. Either you agree, or you don't address the issue at all, or you think that we do need to pay most of what we pay in taxes to avoid the collapse of society. I'm not putting words in to your mouth, I'm letting you pick. Any number of different types of statements that you might make amount to "not addressing the issue", and perhaps that is what your doing, but if your not addressing it you shouldn't pretend that you are.
Do you have a model that designates a specific percentage of private/public outlays per year as optimal?
No, and if I did, even if it was an absolutely flawless and perfect model (which would of course be utterly impossible), it still wouldn't be relevant to my point.
My main point is simply that most government spending is not necessary to keep society functioning.
Spending beyond what is needed to keep society functioning may be optimal, but I'm not talking about "optimal", at least not as a main point.
even though SS is easily self-funding into perpetuity.
Every dollar of SS spending is a dollar of spending. Every dollar of SS taxation is a dollar of taxation. In terms of budget balance and ONLY in terms of budget balance they cancel each other out. In every other way they don't cancel out. If both grow then you have more taxes and more spending.
Any spending (SS or not) could be arbitrarily "self-funding" just by creating a tax with the same name and assigning it to the spending.
We could have a "give Tim Fowler a billion dollars a year" program, and a "give Tim Fowler a billion dollars a year tax", and for selfish motives I could call it "self-funding", and be technically right, but not right in any meaningful sense.
"Self funding" is no defense for a government program, let alone of letting a very large program grow at a clip that noticeably exceeds the growth of the economy.
But in addition to your assertion being irrelevant, its also false. SS is not "easily self-funding into perpetuity". It will start to require funds from general tax revenue before 2020. The so called "trust fund" (which has no real assets because its government loans to itself, not loans that can be called from an external entity) will be "depleted" within a few decades after that.
- farm subsidies including milk which seems to bug you to an unnatural degree.
- corporate welfare
Is that enough?
The milk program is just a particularly perverse example of the farm subsidies, but it doesn't really but me much more than the rest of them.
Its not all I mentioned. I mentioned restraint on entitlements, and keeping defense down as a percentage of GDP rather than letting it increase with the long term growth of the economy. None of which is a direct immediate cut, but they are major reductions in the future burden of government.
Also I mentioned eliminating at least most subsidies in general, not just farm programs and corporate welfare.
I mentioned cutting areas of regulation, and the regulatory enforcement costs.
And I said "that's a start", I wouldn't say "that everything that would be cut.
All told the direct relatively immediate (well possibly phased out in some cases) cuts would be over $100bil.
The reduction in future spending from containing the growth of the biggest spending area (entitlements), and the next biggest (defense) would eventually reach trillions of dollars per year.
And that's just considering the federal government. State and local governments also spend money unnecessarily, but the Feds spend the most, and probably waste the most, so I've concentrated my thoughts there (also you can move to a state with lower taxation without leaving the country, leaving the country is a much bigger deal, and still might not enable you to avoid legal liability for federal taxes, and other countries in many cases would tax you even more than the feds do) |
