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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (6034)	2/11/2009 7:37:08 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Bad example. Not that the government might not be more efficient than Intel, but the government doesn't usually build roads. Private companies usually do, the government usually pays for the roads which isn't the same thing. Good example... Intel doesn't pour cement or nail drywall. The basic idea is that government activities have to be paid for by taxes (borrowing is essentially delayed payments through taxes unless the debt is monetized, and printing/monetizing the payment normally causes even larger, probably much larger dead weight losses). Since government activities have to be paid for by taxes you have to consider the negative effect of those taxes. One measure is simply, if you spend a dollar, you tax someone a dollar. But there are indirect negative effects that go beyond that. Higher taxes discourage investment, risk taking, and harder/longer work by skilled individuals. Also higher taxes distort investment and other decisions. On the other hand our economy couldn't survive without the infrastructure that the government (collective through our representative system) provides. That includes but is not limited to schools, roads, energy, communications, police, military, fire protection, international trade laws, domestic trade laws, the justice system, the Constitution, the rule of law, basic R&D, a lot, a really lot of other stuff. If we didn't act collectively, we couldn't act independently. Government enables your precious 'free market'. Without the US, state and municipal governments there would be no great US companies, period.