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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (539815)	12/31/2009 3:39:10 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1575173

Return in this case, meaning the same type of return he's expecting from Social Security, a cash return directly to him. Most income tax payers don't get a net return of that type from their income tax payments. As for the military, the police, and the court system (and I'd throw in some other important parts of government) sure that's a net return, but much of government spending is on other things. You don't need over $6tril of spending (for government on all levels in the US) to have such things, you also don't need over three trillion of federal spending. Nominal federal spending has more that doubled since 1999 (and yes Bush was a big factor in that, this isn't a partisan point about Democrats). Of course we've had inflation and population increases since then but real per capita federal spending is up something like 40 to 50 percent in that time frame. I don't think we get a net return from that 40+% increase (gross return, sure, all that money buys something, some of it is a direct negative, but most of it is somewhat useful just not worth the cost).