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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (63609)	4/3/2018 2:45:23 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 361115

>> How about explaining that so I can get on the right page. My point was that the cost of civilization is what government spends without the vigorish taken by the bureaucrats, without the waste from poor management, and without the overstepping that almost always comes from government. That is "cost". Taxes are the amount of revenue taken from taxpayers, without regard for whether it actually contributes to formation of a civilization or not. And it omits a fairly major item -- debt, now sitting at around 20 Trillion dollars for the US, and some multiple of that if you count the unfunded obligations to old people. So, the actual cost far exceeds the tax collections. That was my point -- that you're calling a figure cost that actually has to have a number of adjustments to arrive at true cost and those adjustments are quite huge over time. You might find the following piece, by Frederick Bastiat, interesting along these lines. econlib.org