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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (144067)	10/29/2008 4:52:04 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

You hand over the cash because you expect you will receive a product or service in return. Sure. But the whole transaction has parts that can be considered and commented on in isolation. Few people want a fuel injector, without the engine, in fact few people want the engine without the car or other vehicle its supposed to power. But that doesn't mean you can't comment on the qualities of the fuel injector itself. As I have said repeatedly, if taxation is this onerous why aren't more Americans leaving as much of society behind as possible (say living in a barter economy) in order to not be so unhappy? Because the costs and problems of the tax haven't risen to the level of the cost and problems that would be created by shifting to an all barter or even mostly barter economy. Also 1 - People do barter, work off the books etc. and 2 - Even if you barter you are legally liable for taxes. You might find it easier to get away with tax evasion if you barter or only use cash, but you could get caught and could be subject to potentially serve penalties. Obviously, the negative of taxation is offset by the positive of what we get from society. Taxation doesn't pay for the "positive of what we get from society". It just pays for the positive of what we get from government. And the fact that the total burden of taxes is (at least IMO and yours) less than the total value of what we get from government, that doesn't mean that most of what we get is of higher value than most of what we pay. Providing very basic infrastructure, national security, police functions, a court system, etc. Is worth more more than its cost. But it doesn't cost the nearly $6tril that governments at all levels combined spend in the US per year. If the first $2tril. in spending gives us $5tril in benefits, and the next $2tril gives us $2tril in benefits, and the next trillion gives us .3 tril in benefits, and the rest (.5 to 1 tril) gives us negative .3 tril in benfits), then the whole 5.5 to 6 tril of spending gives us more than that amount of benefit (it gives us 7 trillion), but that doesn't support increasing rates of taxes and spending, or even keeping them as high as they are now.