Personally, I just think the ACA is bad law. But, since I have zero interest in buying in, I'll pay the $95 penalty, get on my gf's insurance in September (open enrollment isn't until then) and go on my merry way.
If you don't get a tax refund, they can't collect that $95 anyways.
|
The penalty kicks in for 2014, so the only people who have to start paying the penalty now are people who have to file quarterly (self employed or anyone getting a 1099, I guess). Anyone else will be on the hook for the April 15, 2015 tax day. I think they extended the enrollment deadline, but I'm sure September is past it still, so I'd have to kick in the $95 to be compliant.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The ACA is just a handjob for the insurance industry
Down with handjobs for the insurance industry!
That's what I don't get about the right-wingers argument against Obamacare. I mean, I don't want to get involved with the whole "taxes are theft" argument, but it seems pretty clear to me that Citizen R. and whoever are "being robbed" not for the benefit of drug-addicted, never-holding-a-job parasites, but for the benefit of CIGNA, Aetna, Wellpoint, whomever.
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yep. My problem with paying taxes right now is too much of that money is going to billionaires who should be getting indicted instead in the form of tax exemptions, subsidies, bail-outs, and a host of other "entitlements" those billionaire welfare queens are greedily sucking out of the vitality of the American working class. Then those billionaires break off a taste (or a job) for the criminal "public servant" that voted for the bill that put that money in his or her pocket.
If that money were going to the American working class and poor to improve their lives, I'd be quite happy with my tax contribution.
The penalty kicks in for 2014, so the only people who have to start paying the penalty now are people who have to file quarterly (self employed or anyone getting a 1099, I guess). Anyone else will be on the hook for the April 15, 2015 tax day. I think they extended the enrollment deadline, but I'm sure September is past it still, so I'd have to kick in the $95 to be compliant.
The latest deadline is extended if you check a box saying you had "hardship." Besides, the law is specifically written so that the only way they currently collect the "fine" from those who don't pay is by witholding it from your tax refund.
While the Supreme Court says it's a tax, the IRS still considers it a fine. Don't ask me how that works.
But I'm not a lawyer and don't ever offer legal advice. Pay the $95 and call it done.
|
The ACA is just a handjob for the insurance industryDown with handjobs for the insurance industry!
That's what I don't get about the right-wingers argument against Obamacare. I mean, I don't want to get involved with the whole "taxes are theft" argument, but it seems pretty clear to me that Citizen R. and whoever are "being robbed" not for the benefit of drug-addicted, never-holding-a-job parasites, but for the benefit of CIGNA, Aetna, Wellpoint, whomever.
I have opposed it for a long time as a gimme to the insurance industry but that gift is paid for largely through subsidies for the cannot and will not work/earn enough. Most of us that are pissed about having to pay the way for others(again!~) are already paying for our own so that part effects us less.
Yep. My problem with paying taxes right now is too much of that money is going to billionaires who should be getting indicted instead in the form of tax exemptions, subsidies, bail-outs, and a host of other "entitlements" those billionaire welfare queens are greedily sucking out of the vitality of the American working class. Then those billionaires break off a taste (or a job) for the criminal "public servant" that voted for the bill that put that money in his or her pocket.
If that money were going to the American working class and poor to improve their lives, I'd be quite happy with my tax contribution.
Food stamps for agribusiness, welfare for Wal-Mart and McDonald's employees, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
I mean at least dearly beloved Comrades Thorn and Knife used to understand this.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I have opposed it for a long time as a gimme to the insurance industry but that gift is paid for largely through subsidies for the cannot and will not work/earn enough. Most of us that are pissed about having to pay the way for others(again!~) are already paying for our own so that part effects us less.The ACA is just a handjob for the insurance industryDown with handjobs for the insurance industry!
That's what I don't get about the right-wingers argument against Obamacare. I mean, I don't want to get involved with the whole "taxes are theft" argument, but it seems pretty clear to me that Citizen R. and whoever are "being robbed" not for the benefit of drug-addicted, never-holding-a-job parasites, but for the benefit of CIGNA, Aetna, Wellpoint, whomever.
Maybe you have, I try not to read your posts if I can help it.
|
|
The penalty kicks in for 2014, so the only people who have to start paying the penalty now are people who have to file quarterly (self employed or anyone getting a 1099, I guess). Anyone else will be on the hook for the April 15, 2015 tax day. I think they extended the enrollment deadline, but I'm sure September is past it still, so I'd have to kick in the $95 to be compliant.The latest deadline is extended if you check a box saying you had "hardship." Besides, the law is specifically written so that the only way they currently collect the "fine" from those who don't pay is by witholding it from your tax refund.
While the Supreme Court says it's a tax, the IRS still considers it a fine. Don't ask me how that works.
But I'm not a lawyer and don't ever offer legal advice. Pay the $95 and call it done.
Then again i have heard some (perhaps paranoid) talk about if you just pay the fine are you not admitting guilty to breaking a federal law? and if so what can they do to you for that?
|
|
Maybe you have, I try not to read your posts if I can help it.I have opposed it for a long time as a gimme to the insurance industry but that gift is paid for largely through subsidies for the cannot and will not work/earn enough. Most of us that are pissed about having to pay the way for others(again!~) are already paying for our own so that part effects us less.The ACA is just a handjob for the insurance industryDown with handjobs for the insurance industry!
That's what I don't get about the right-wingers argument against Obamacare. I mean, I don't want to get involved with the whole "taxes are theft" argument, but it seems pretty clear to me that Citizen R. and whoever are "being robbed" not for the benefit of drug-addicted, never-holding-a-job parasites, but for the benefit of CIGNA, Aetna, Wellpoint, whomever.
There is little evidence of that, you often complain when i oppose your communist ideals.
|
|
If that money were going to the American working class and poor to improve their lives, I'd be quite happy with my tax contribution.
If our money was being smartly used to effect real changes for the poor i would rail against it less. Right now it just allows the refuse to work to get red bull and doritos seven days a week at our expense.
There is little evidence of that, you often complain when i oppose your communist ideals.Maybe you have, I try not to read your posts if I can help it.I have opposed it for a long time as a gimme to the insurance industry but that gift is paid for largely through subsidies for the cannot and will not work/earn enough. Most of us that are pissed about having to pay the way for others(again!~) are already paying for our own so that part effects us less.
What can I say? Sometimes I can't help it.
So, going back a few pages and ignoring most of the bullshiznit between the liberals and the laissez-faire right:
Comrade Pravda, you asserted that a higher capital gains rate WOULDN'T cause the rich to stop investing because they wouldn't get rich as quickly.
I thought that was what was already happening with low capital gains rates? And that that is why the plutocrats are sitting on trillions of dollars in off-shore accounts?
I thought that the failure of the American capitalists to realize the high rate of profits that they need for their system to "be healthy" was why they turned en masse to the field of derivatives and whatnot in the first place?
Just curious. I still haven't taught myself economics.
The money being off-shore and investing it are not mutually exclusive.
Derivatives, credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations and the like were usually developed initially as methods of spreading risk in an attempt to avoid it. Instead it linked risk together and because of the bubble, put the entire financial system in jeopardy.
When mortgage backed securities (MBS) first started to show up the supply of AAA rated mortgages was fairly low. Fannie and Freddie were the largest purveyors and pretty much anything that passed through them was highly desirable. They were considered guaranteed loans, but loans can have a decent rate of return, much better than government or corporate bonds. Since Wall Street could basically sell as many AAA MBS as they could get their hands on, to increase their profits they needed to increase the number of MBS.
In 1996 Long Beach Mortgage Company settled with the Department of Justice in a case of predatory lending within California. Shortly afterwards the company essentially split into three entities, a mortgage retailer, a mortgage wholesaler and an external transaction warehouse. The mortgage retailer was Ameriquest Mortgage. By 2007, Ameriquest was involved in lawsuits with 30 different states and their attorney generals.
They were engage in predatory lending, selling mortgages to people who already owned homes with loans that were unpayable. That didn't matter, since they could just sell them another mortgage to pay off that one, for a fee, which they would then turn around and sell through their mortgage wholesaler on Wall Street.
The Wall Street firms needed AAA MBS though, not AA or even A. Everything had to be AAA. The first step was to change them into something else, they weren't just packages of loans, but rather CDOs, a complex piece of financial engineering. There are ways to simplify the explanation, but that belies the fact that they were exceptionally complicated. That complexity made it easier to rate them AAA, though the fees that financial services companies paid to the ratings agencies didn't hurt either.
AAA investments are useful for banks. Banks are required to keep certain amounts of money on hand, but that amount varies depending on how they invest the rest of their money. If they invest it in high risk ventures, such as a company with a B rating, they have to keep more money on hand. If they invest it in something with a AAA rating, they don't have to keep as much on hand, allowing them to hold more investments.
CDO's were useful in demonstrating a lack of risk to the individual bank. First off the debt is collateralized, meaning that there is intrinsic value backing the debt, like a house. Second it was being partitioned off and sold to various entities meaning that no one individual (or company) held all of the risk. Third, it created debt which could then be referenced for a credit default swap (CDS).
A CDS can most easily be understood as insurance. I sell you a CDS, you give me payments over a period of time, if the credit goes bad, I pay you. Where it starts to go wrong from insurance is that there are no rules. A seller of a CDS isn't obligated to tell you anything. They aren't allowed to lie by commission, passing on fraudulent data, but they are allowed to lie by omission, leaving out anything they choose. Also, as in the case of AIG, there are no financial rules about maintaining assets to cover the cost of CDSs which fail. An insurance company must maintain certain assets.
The creation of the CDS was "ingenious" for Wall Street. Prior to their creation firms were restricted in how many mortgages they could sell, they had to buy mortgages from originators first. Now with the CDS, their only needed to be one mortgage in existence and you could sell an unlimited number of CDS's that referenced it. A firm that deals in CDS could be both buyer and seller. When you sell, you're going "long", when you buy you are going "short". A CDS that doesn't actually involve any ownership of the debt is called a naked CDS. Approximately 80% of the CDS market deals in naked CDS.
An analogy of naked CDS is like buying fire insurance on your neighbors home. Neither you nor the insurance company have a financial claim to the house, you're just making bets on what will happen to it.
If you want to dive into a specific aspect of this feel free to highlight and ask questions. I'm sure I'll think of more later too.
Thank you for the response, Comrade Pravda.
I admit that I may have muddled a bunch of concepts together, as usually happens whenever I contemplate the world of high muckety-muck finance.
Pravda?
They should have grew a pair and pushed single payer. I'd rather pay a little more in tax and just cover the people that need it (and let people with insurance keep that if that's their thing, and allow companies to offer it as a benefit if that's their thing) than force everyone to pay a private for-profit entity for coverage.
I don't disagree. However, single payer would almost certainly have failed to make it through Congress.
Pravda?
It's Russian for igazság (Hungarian).
What's Russian for Euro-Mutt? (I'm German, Irish, Italian, English and Norweigan).
Igazság doesn't mean Hungarian, it's a Hungarian word. I was trying to be cute by answering the question in a way that wouldn't answer the question.
Yeah, I thought "Magyar" was Hungarian. What is Igazság -- "truth" or something similar?
Correct.
Oh, of course -- you're "Irontruth." Duh.
I get the idiot award today.
If that money were going to the American working class and poor to improve their lives, I'd be quite happy with my tax contribution.
Otoh, I'm still pissed I don't get to be in the 47%.
Also, I hope nobody minds if I cry a little bit.
New England men aren't very emotional (unless that emotion is anger), even when it turns out their fathers had a stroke, but, thankfully, I have a goblin avatar here on Paizo.com and goblins aren't nearly as reserved.
[Weeps]
Ah, that's better.
Thank you for the response, Comrade Pravda.
I admit that I may have muddled a bunch of concepts together, as usually happens whenever I contemplate the world of high muckety-muck finance.
The pot had to affect something.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Also, I hope nobody minds if I cry a little bit. New England men aren't very emotional (unless that emotion is anger), even when it turns out their fathers had a stroke, but, thankfully, I have a goblin avatar here on Paizo.com and goblins aren't nearly as reserved.
Wishing Goblin Sr. a speedy and full recovery.
Also, I hope nobody minds if I cry a little bit. New England men aren't very emotional (unless that emotion is anger), even when it turns out their fathers had a stroke, but, thankfully, I have a goblin avatar here on Paizo.com and goblins aren't nearly as reserved.Wishing Goblin Sr. a speedy and full recovery.
Thank you. [Cries some more]
The pot had to affect something.Thank you for the response, Comrade Pravda.
I admit that I may have muddled a bunch of concepts together, as usually happens whenever I contemplate the world of high muckety-muck finance.
Yeah, well, I still know Murray Rothbard invented anarchocapitalism.
Lloyd Blankfein--"There is more than a trillion dollars of cash that is sitting on the balance sheets of U.S. nonfinancial companies. With certainty about tax rates, companies will increase their capital expenditures (currently at anemic levels), contributing to a virtuous cycle of jobs and growth."
Charles Krauthammer--"So, in every area, there's going to be an increase in uncertainty, you know the increase in regulation. And when you don't know what's going to happen, you don't invest. We are having a capital strike."
Steve Wynn--"Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America. You bet....And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the president of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs."
Of course, the idea that Obama is anything but the handmaiden of the plutocracy is absurd, and they are kinda old quotes, maybe the capitalists have changed their minds. I don't follow the business press as closely as I should.
And, for fun, a bunch of revisionist Marxist-Keynsians on the turn towards finance to get out of the stagflation of the seventies that I'm not even going to pretend to understand:
Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation
Maybe they don't fit together exactly as I thought they did in my earlier question to Comrade Pravda, but I still think I'm on to something. Or maybe I'm just high. [Shrugs]
Make the bosses take the losses!
For workers revolution!
Vive le Galt!
Also, I hope nobody minds if I cry a little bit. New England men aren't very emotional (unless that emotion is anger), even when it turns out their fathers had a stroke, but, thankfully, I have a goblin avatar here on Paizo.com and goblins aren't nearly as reserved.Wishing Goblin Sr. a speedy and full recovery.
That goes ditto from me too, Comrade. Vive le Recovery!
Also, I hope nobody minds if I cry a little bit.
New England men aren't very emotional (unless that emotion is anger), even when it turns out their fathers had a stroke, but, thankfully, I have a goblin avatar here on Paizo.com and goblins aren't nearly as reserved.
[Weeps]
Ah, that's better.
My dad had one last year. I understand. Good luck.
Vive le Recovery!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Thank you, Comrades and Citizens all.
Fortunately, the doctor said that it happened in an "unimportant part of the brain." One of the benefits of goblin physiology is an oversized head, and, consequently, many, many, many unimportant parts of the brain.
Lloyd Blankfein--"There is more than a trillion dollars of cash that is sitting on the balance sheets of U.S. nonfinancial companies. With certainty about tax rates, companies will increase their capital expenditures (currently at anemic levels), contributing to a virtuous cycle of jobs and growth."
Charles Krauthammer--"So, in every area, there's going to be an increase in uncertainty, you know the increase in regulation. And when you don't know what's going to happen, you don't invest. We are having a capital strike."
Steve Wynn--"Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America. You bet....And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the president of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs."
Of course, the idea that Obama is anything but the handmaiden of the plutocracy is absurd, and they are kinda old quotes, maybe the capitalists have changed their minds. I don't follow the business press as closely as I should.
And, for fun, a bunch of revisionist Marxist-Keynsians on the turn towards finance to get out of the stagflation of the seventies that I'm not even going to pretend to understand:
Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation
Maybe they don't fit together exactly as I thought they did in my earlier question to Comrade Pravda, but I still think I'm on to something. Or maybe I'm just high. [Shrugs]
Make the bosses take the losses!
For workers revolution!
Vive le Galt!
Those are the kinds of things they're always going to say. Financial crash? Too much regulation. Financial stagnation? Too much regulation. Boom times? Could have been boomier with less regulation.
The increasing focus and power of the financial system does help to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of the few. I just picked up Michael Lewis' new book and will give it a read, it's about how the high frequency trading has legitimized their ability to do insider trading, because instead of doing it through human interaction, it's now about who can pay more for faster connections and thus beat investors to the punch and insert themselves as middle-men.
You should give Inequality for All a watch, it's on Netflix streaming for the time being. He does talk about how the financial system and debt were used to sustain the economic growth of the past 30 years without a corresponding increase in worker's wages.
Which does feed into the home loan crisis, more and more loans were created and then sold to investors and pension systems, funneling that money away from smaller investors and into the pockets of those already fairly wealthy.
There are a lot of parallels between the crash of '29 and '08. Once you get out of the Great Depression, you have one of the more stable periods (though far from completely stable) and it coincides with overall good worker's rights and wages, even with the Taft-Hartley act. The problem is in both era's the financial sector became the dominant industry that was leading growth for the economy.
The financial sector is useful when it fuels industry and distributing capital in an efficient manner for the economy as a whole. It means that someone with a good idea can get the money they need to start their business and make goods/services for others, which is useful.
It becomes our downfall when it is an ends unto itself, where money is moved purely because moving money makes money.
Oh, I know that these are the kinds of things that they always say. Greedy plutocrats have always been greedy plutocrats.
But, per Blankfein, there's plenty of money and plenty of investment opportunities, but they're not going to do it until they get a better deal. Or, as Krauthammer put it, we are having a capital strike.
So how are you going to break the strike?
On the one hand, I think your prognosis is too optimistic. The postwar American bubble was fuelled by such factors as rebuilding Europe, building the highway system, military production. The plutocrats were willing to put with up much higher taxation rates because, even after paying the government and their unionized workforce, they were still rolling in it. America's position vis-a-vis the rest of the world's economy could afford the additional expenditures. This seems to have come to an end with the '74 crash.
On the other hand, I think you are missing the key difference between post-'29 and post-'08: the level of class struggle. Red-dominated or -influenced industrial unions running around having general strikes and sit-ins. The plutocrats were willing to put up with much higher taxation rates and expenditures on labor because it was either that or workers revolution. Thanks in large part to the Communist Party's newly found patriotism once the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the plutocrats were able to enforce a war-time ban on stikes, but as soon as the war was over, the American working class embarked on, IIRC, the largest strike wave this country has ever seen. The plutocrats responded with McCarthyism and Taft-Hartley, but, still, it took awhile before they completely shackled the unions.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to a higher capital gains tax rate and would welcome any reform that shifts the burden of shouldering the losses from the working class and the poor to the plutocrats. But I think the idea that the Democrats are ever going to do this without hard, class struggle from below is delusional no matter what Clinton's former Secretary of Labor says. And then, of course, once you've got the reform, the plutocrats are just going to take it away as soon as the class struggle simmers down. And if, the ghost of Marx willing, the class struggle does ever boil up again, I'm just going to argue for overthrowing capitalism.
Vive le Galt!
[I'm pretty tired and didn't re-read the posts, pages apart, so it's quite possible I straw manned some stuff.]
It may surprise you, but I agree with basically all of that.
It may surprise you, but it doesn't surprise me at all. I do try to read all of your posts. Well, the ones in threads I am interested in, anyway.
See you on the barricades! (I'll bring my dice so we can play D&D during the lulls.)
Man, Comrade, my best wishes and prayers for you, your dad, and your family.
Oh, I know that these are the kinds of things that they always say. Greedy plutocrats have always been greedy plutocrats.
But, per Blankfein, there's plenty of money and plenty of investment opportunities, but they're not going to do it until they get a better deal. Or, as Krauthammer put it, we are having a capital strike.
So how are you going to break the strike?
Yeah, I don't think capital is on strike. If one rich guy stops investing, his neighbor who keeps investing will make more money (even if it's less than before), meaning he is accumulating wealth faster and be able to use it to buy more influence and power than the guy who stopped investing.
They don't stop investing, they just change where they invest it.
Man, Comrade, my best wishes and prayers for you, your dad, and your family.
Thank you, Comrade van der Kroft.
The latest news is: He probably had a heart attack up to three years ago and never even noticed, which, apparently, isn't uncommon with diabetics; he had a stroke up to three days before he got into the car accident; my mother is suffering from all kinds of guilt because she didn't notice any difference in his behavior (how could she? all he does is come home, sit in the lazy boy and watch ESPN) even though his co-workers and his friends at the gun club did; his blood sugar levels upon admittance were somewhere in the 500-600 level which means nothing to me, but someone healthy blood sugar levels are way down between 50-120 or something.
Most amusing conversation thus far was when my mother started crying because she thought it was her fault because she nagged him to take his meds too much which caused him to ignore her and stop taking his meds. My mother's superpower is to think that everything is her fault.
Oh, I know that these are the kinds of things that they always say. Greedy plutocrats have always been greedy plutocrats.
But, per Blankfein, there's plenty of money and plenty of investment opportunities, but they're not going to do it until they get a better deal. Or, as Krauthammer put it, we are having a capital strike.
So how are you going to break the strike?
Yeah, I don't think capital is on strike. If one rich guy stops investing, his neighbor who keeps investing will make more money (even if it's less than before), meaning he is accumulating wealth faster and be able to use it to buy more influence and power than the guy who stopped investing.
They don't stop investing, they just change where they invest it.
Yeah it's more structural than that. Currently the best place to invest, in terms of short term financial returns, is the casino, not in anything that actually builds the larger economy.
The strike talk is just to keep everyone thinking that if we're just a little nicer to them they'll give us jobs again. It's PR. Or blackmail if you will.
So, walk me through this, because I don't read Forbes unless I have to:
The plutocrats dump trillions into offshore accounts because, allegedly, the tax rates are too high. There's nowhere to invest the money that's going to give them rates of return that they're going to like, except the high muckety-muck world of financial gambling. They're not on "strike" per se, because the capitalist class doesn't go in for the whole class solidarity thing unless they're all in danger, but all that money is just sitting there doing nothing. Someone else should be coming along and investing to take advantage of this, but, to my knowledge, no one has.
Miraculously, this year, the Democrats retake the House, keep the Senate, and every new Congressperson is to the left of Elizabeth Warren and they pass a higher capital gains tax rate. Where's all those off-shore trillions of dollars going to go? And who's going to make up the slack for that money not being invested?
I'm not convinced that an actual communist overthrow of capitalism is a good idea, but I do think the threat of it is absolutely necessary. So keep trying!
You may get a kick out of this:
Oh, I know that these are the kinds of things that they always say. Greedy plutocrats have always been greedy plutocrats.
But, per Blankfein, there's plenty of money and plenty of investment opportunities, but they're not going to do it until they get a better deal. Or, as Krauthammer put it, we are having a capital strike.
So how are you going to break the strike?
Yeah, I don't think capital is on strike. If one rich guy stops investing, his neighbor who keeps investing will make more money (even if it's less than before), meaning he is accumulating wealth faster and be able to use it to buy more influence and power than the guy who stopped investing.
They don't stop investing, they just change where they invest it.
Yeah it's more structural than that. Currently the best place to invest, in terms of short term financial returns, is the casino, not in anything that actually builds the larger economy.
The strike talk is just to keep everyone thinking that if we're just a little nicer to them they'll give us jobs again. It's PR. Or blackmail if you will.
So, walk me through this, because I don't read Forbes unless I have to:
The plutocrats dump trillions into offshore accounts because, allegedly, the tax rates are too high. There's nowhere to invest the money that's going to give them rates of return that they're going to like, except the high muckety-muck world of financial gambling. They're not on "strike" per se, because the capitalist class doesn't go in for the whole class solidarity thing unless they're all in danger, but all that money is just sitting there doing nothing. Someone else should be coming along and investing to take advantage of this, but, to my knowledge, no one has.
Miraculously, this year, the Democrats retake the House, keep the Senate, and every new Congressperson is to the left of Elizabeth Warren and they pass a higher capital gains tax rate. Where's all those...
It's not doing nothing. If they weren't doing anything with the money they wouldn't have to hide it. The create holding companies and trust funds in places with high secrecy laws so that it's impossible to tell who owns what and what they're doing with it, that way when the tax man shows up, he can't prove how much you owe in taxes.
As far as government tax revenue goes, the money has disappeared off the face of the earth. The wealthy are still using it to acquire more wealth though, which means more money "disappears" every day.
As far as government tax revenue goes, the money has disappeared off the face of the earth
In individual circumstances of waste or corruption, yes. In theory, it shouldn't. It should go on spending for the military, public services, the cost of governance, police, schools etc, all of which provides a tangible return for everyone in society.
The response to a government wasting money shouldn't be the abolition of taxes (which is basically a call for the abolution of the nation-state, a curious desire), but for the government to become more efficient and less wasteful. How you do that when the tendency of any large government is to become less efficient with the more people it has to deal with is altogether less clear. The USA and the EU certainly seem to indicate that there are severe limitations to how efficient a government can be when dealing with 250 million+ people. OTOH, the experiences in Scotland and Wales in the UK, where government spending has been much more succesful and transparent, seems to suggest devolution and putting those spending decisions in the hands of smaller authorities may be an answer.
As far as government tax revenue goes, the money has disappeared off the face of the earthIn individual circumstances of waste or corruption, yes. In theory, it shouldn't. It should go on spending for the military, public services, the cost of governance, police, schools etc, all of which provides a tangible return for everyone in society.
The response to a government wasting money shouldn't be the abolition of taxes (which is basically a call for the abolution of the nation-state, a curious desire), but for the government to become more efficient and less wasteful. How you do that when the tendency of any large government is to become less efficient with the more people it has to deal with is altogether less clear. The USA and the EU certainly seem to indicate that there are severe limitations to how efficient a government can be when dealing with 250 million+ people. OTOH, the experiences in Scotland and Wales in the UK, where government spending has been much more succesful and transparent, seems to suggest devolution and putting those spending decisions in the hands of smaller authorities may be an answer.
I think you missed what he was saying. He wasn't talking about government waste. He's saying that when wealthy people stash their money the government fails to get any tax revenue from it. So effectively we're giving them tac breaks and getting nothing to show for it.
As far as government tax revenue goes, the money has disappeared off the face of the earthIn individual circumstances of waste or corruption, yes. In theory, it shouldn't. It should go on spending for the military, public services, the cost of governance, police, schools etc, all of which provides a tangible return for everyone in society.
The response to a government wasting money shouldn't be the abolition of taxes (which is basically a call for the abolution of the nation-state, a curious desire), but for the government to become more efficient and less wasteful. How you do that when the tendency of any large government is to become less efficient with the more people it has to deal with is altogether less clear. The USA and the EU certainly seem to indicate that there are severe limitations to how efficient a government can be when dealing with 250 million+ people. OTOH, the experiences in Scotland and Wales in the UK, where government spending has been much more succesful and transparent, seems to suggest devolution and putting those spending decisions in the hands of smaller authorities may be an answer.
Davick is correct. I wasn't evaluating government spending, I was referring to the amount of revenue generated for governments who have citizens hiding money "on" Cook Island. This isn't a problem specifically for the US either, it hurts the EU, China, Japan, Russia, most of Africa and Asia as well. Plus probably a few of the more developed countries in the Asia-Pacific and South America.