So! Cutting taxes DOESN'T increase tax revenue as the right claimed!

How so, do you have anything to substantiate that?

 

the post I replied to said "The point shouldn't be to reduce taxes...but to reduce spending to the point that taxes are no longer needed."

in order to not have taxes, you would have to get rid of anything taxes is spent on

 

It tends toward the appropriate allocation of resources much more so than central planning.

 

Taxes are spent on food....would we need to get rid of food?

 

the inefficiency of large govts???
what about the USSR and Red China slowly starving 120 million to death?? What about Cuba and Venezuela?? Ever heard of East/West Germany???

 

foodstamps, yes, if we had no taxes, the government could buy no food or assist farmers in emergency situations

 

With due respect, and I mean that, but that sounds like you just side stepped my question and embracing ideology over fact.

Do you have any evidence to the idea that "voluntary interaction is always more efficient?"

How would you compare the government which is effectively a $2+ trillion dollar entity with a private company?

I've worked in the private sector all my life, but I worked in the Federal space for over a dozen Federal agencies (ask and I'll list them) and while my experiences are anecdotal, I can't say I've seen anything that would lead me to believe that government is inherently more inefficient than government.

Yes we all know the stories of $300 toilet seats at the Pentagon, but there are lots of stories in the private sector that mimic these stories, but the Washington Post isn't concerned with how a company like Bank of America, for example, spends its profits and BoA has no obligation to share its inefficiency with the public and every incentive to hide its waste. The media does care how governments "spend taxpayer dollars" as it makes for great headlines and helps sell papers.

So, you dismiss it as apriori truth callously dismissing anyone that would dare even think to challenge the notion that governments are no more wasteful (when comparing the relative size of organizations) than any other Fortune 500 company of similar makeup.

Sorry, but I don't think there is anything that makes government more wasteful except for their sheer size and exposure to public scrutiny that makes them seem that way. On the other side, the sheer buying power of the US Federal government creates opportunities at scale that companies cannot rival. I know this first hand having worked for a technical sales person for Dell EMC (The world's largest private IT company) selling multi-million dollar IT systems to the US government and to private companies like Citigroup, Verizon, and Ford.

 

yes 120 million dead human souls in USSR and Red China plus 132 other countries that also failed thanks to central planning by bureaucrat monopolist socialists guessing what to do with other people's money and facing no consequences for failure.

 

Not talking about the USSR or China.

 

What about 132 other countries the tried big government and in every case it turned out to be extremely inefficient if not extremely deadly

 

Why didn't they have large governments with tremendous purchasing power? What about Venezuela and Cuba?

 

Can you pick one and be more specific with your question/s?

 

Are you really asking me to explain the history of the governments of 132 other countries? LOL.

Sometimes questions don't have simple answers.

 

Do you have any evidence to support the opposite? I will simply point to the economic calculation problem put forth by Mises as support for my position.

I don't know that I am attempting to compare them as a private company can go out of business...the government cannot. There is no actual penalty for inefficiency in the government.

I guess that all depends on how you define efficient.

I am simply suggesting that voluntary interaction is always more efficient than involuntary interaction in the long run. There is far to much intervention and regulation in today's economy to really determine what is or is not an entirely voluntary interaction. Was there a specific tax break or incentive put forth for any of the corporations you named to act in the manner that they did by the Government? I don't know enough about the specifics to answer that and I am sure you do not either.

You are the one comparing private companies to the government. I simply suggested that voluntary interaction is always more efficient.

 

You're asking me to prove a negative, however, in fairness, I think the claim of efficiency can be made on both sides and I'm simply challenging the notion that the inefficiency of government can be taken as gospel.

Go out of business? That's like saying that companies are terrible because they can't make laws.

Of course, the government can't go out of business any more than a company can pass laws.

Governments can fail though, so making the claim that gov has no incentive to operate efficiently is simply false.

Bingo!

I won't disagree that we could, as a society, sit down and go through our rules and regulations and re-evaluate them. But again, that is true of any company.

I'll give you an example. I work in IT for some of the largest companies in the world. They had to do an upgrade on a network switch. Switches are redundant (to prevent failures) so there are two switches. They upgraded one one night and one the next. The time and resources in terms of people and cost is huge.

I asked why we didn't just upgrade both switches in the same night. Long story short, no one knew why, it's just the way things had always been done. When I researched it, I learned that, in the past, older models of switches could not be upgraded on the same day but no one that worked for the company on the day of the upgrade had worked there when that was true.

Inefficiency creeps into any large organization and active decisions must be made to ferret them out.

I'm all for asking the question, "does anyone know why we have this particular rule or regulation? What is the rule intended to prevent?"

In trying to solve this problem that you perceive you eliminate the benefits that arise from those same systems. Classic "grass is greener over there".....

LOL, come on. People form coampanies when there is volinarty interaction and you are comparing that to government.

 

It failed because of "pass through" tax avoidance and people gaming the system, as people tend to do.

 

You are also asking me something that is nearly impossible to "prove". Again, I will always point to the economic calculation problem.

Why do you think they have lobbies?

Companies draft and get laws passed quite often actually.

Sure Governments can fail, but that is hardly an incentive for them to operate efficiently. Look at Venezuela....about the most inefficient government we have in the world today...still has not failed.

Do those benefits come at the cost of voluntary interaction? If so, then they are not actually benefits at all if you ask me.

What?

 

I think we've said what we can each say on this topic unless you think you can prove me wrong, can we agree to disagree?

 

ever heard of Taiwan/Red China. Taiwan did better with capitalism than Red China did with massive central govt purchasing power. Notice how it always seems like the conservative/libertarian is running a kindergarten?

 

How about a progressive voting system? The more taxes you pay the more votes you get to cast.

 

I am continually amazed at why people think that the purpose of taxation is to continually INCREASE revenue. Why is that exactly? If the government is spending more than is needed why does everyone feel like you can't cut revenue?

This of course is the Kansas issue which is something that some of my liberal friends bring up. Its ****ing Kansas. They could cut taxes to zero and 99% of companies would say "Thanks but we are fine just where we are?"

The best comparisons between liberal and conservative states has been and for the foreseeable future will be California versus Texas.

 

I think East /West Germany is better or Cuba/FLA.