Re: Ever Increasing Government: a good idea, or not?




On 3/19/06 4:25 PM, in article RbmdnRSzzpsea4DZRVn_vA@xxxxxxxxxxxx,
"Engineer" <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:




Timothy Travis wrote:

Engineer wrote:

My view is that the term "flowed through" is value laded and misleading.

It's an accurate description of what happens to the wealth whereas saying
that it is consumed...

I say that "consumed" is accurate and that "flowed through" is
misleading. You say that "flowed through" is is accurate and
that "consumed" is misleading. Stalemate.

Your description--that the wealth is somehow destroyed ("consumed" as a car
is consumed, used up)--is not true. Mine, that the wealth changes hands
("flows through") and remains in the economy, is true.



My taxes are not seized at gunpoint.

Yes. they are.

That's your value system that characterizes it as such.

In your opinion. I think it is an accurate description of reality.

No one has or has had to come to me with a gun...therefore my taxes are not
paid at gunpoint. Your characterizing my voluntary payment of taxes as being
"seized at gunpoint" is your characterization and nothing more. Just
because I cannot go into a grocery and walk out without paying doesn't mean
that I pay for my groceries at gun point.


My taxes, and those of most people, are paid voluntarily

It's not voluntary if you can't choose not to do it.

I don't think that's true. I cannot choose not to feed my children but I do
it, every day. Voluntarily. Without someone putting a gun in my face to
make me do it. I do a lot of things, voluntarily, that I have no choice but
to do...

But I think most people choose to pay taxes without someone using a gun to
force them because they understand the necessity and benefit of paying what
we have to pay to live in society. Our current set up is an expensive
proposition and most people understand that. None of us wants to pay taxes,
especially with the chorus of "something for nothing" or "nothing is better"
tax reformers out there. But it's not accurate to say that people do not
pay them willingly.


Even people who work for the IRS understand that if it was
necessary to collect taxes without the cooperation of the
taxpayer it would never get done.

Not true. The IRS understands that if *everyone* resists
that they don't have enough men with guns, but they do a
fine job of pointing those guns at taxpayers who refuse to
cooperate.

Then why don't all of us just refuse?

I think that everyone doesn't resist because most people are, more or less,
pretty grown up about paying their own way. Most people understand that our
way of life would be worse...while all of us take exception to some of the
things our money supports.



So if I buy a car with my own money and wear it out, I am consuming,
but if Uncle Sam buys a tank with my money and wears it out, that
somehow isn't consuming?

It is in that sense, but what's consumed is what is purchased with
the wealth, not the wealth, itself. The money paid for the tank,
like the money paid for the car, flows back into the economy.

Ah. You appear to believe that consuming part of the GNP is
not possible. I disagree.

One does not consume wealth...one consumes what the wealth buys and the
wealth passes on to those who create what is consumed. It doesn't matter
to wage earners or share holders if their earnings come from government
contracts or the "free" market.


Of course it is. I expected that to be your view. It allows
you to accept a government that is getting bigger and bigger../

It does, if that government is using the money, from my point
of view, wisely.

Without any bounds at all? It's OK to have the government
control everything and own everything as long as that
government rules wisely?

In theory, sure.

Do you really believe that ever
increasing government is a good idea?

No, I believe, going back to what *I* originally said that *I* believed, my
original point, that looking at the outcomes, rather than the size, of
government is the measure of good government.


My position is that any government that destroys liberty is
not wise and is not doing the right thing.

I believe that any accumulation of power that infringes on the rights of
others is not good and allowing it is not wise.

Wealth also destroys "liberty" (whatever that is)...liberty is destroyed by
private power as well as government power. The power of government is a
counter balance.

.The very act of
owning everything and controlling everything

What I said was that what is done with the money is more important to assess
than how much is spent.

Do you think that how government (or any group of people, or any individual)
spends money is not what should measure whether it was good spending or bad
spending?

makes your dream
of an all-wise government that always does good impossible.


What dream of an all wise government? Government is nothing more than
people like you and me; people are government and people are not all wise
and never can be. There are limits on our ability to reason, on our wisdom.

All I said that the measure of good government is the outcomes not the
amount of the Gross National Product that it spends. (comparing the outcomes
to the amount of resources it takes to get them is, of course, a part of the
analysis...)

What's wrong with using outcomes as a measure?


As for the core rhetorical question of the thread...anyone who
has ever lived where there was no government seems to want one.

That is a misleading statement and you know it. I have clearly
stated on multiple occasions that there can be too little
government as well as too much government.

I only respond to the name of the thread...

*You* composed the Subject line "Government: a good idea, or not?"

Maybe I am confused, maybe I have a bad memory, maybe all the posts in this
thread are not on my computer...but the first message I have under this
thread name is from you, on 3/11 in response to something that Whiskers
wrote...

Do I have that wrong?

I changed it to "Ever Increasing Government: a good idea, or not?"
because that is what I have been discussing from the start. Your
implying that I or anyone else here favors no government at all is
a straw man. You, on the other hand, have never admitted that you
think that any limits on the size or power of government is needed.

What is needed is to assess the outcomes of government...

No *arbitrary* limit of size is a good thing. "Spending limits" or "tax
limits," as they are currently proposed (as some set amount of money or
percent of the gross national product or state per capita income levels) are
a bad idea because there is no relationship between that percentage and the
cost of what has to be done. People just decide, with no concept of what
things really cost, "well, that should be enough if I'm going to keep what I
want." Imagine such a limit on the cost of groceries. Roads cost what they
cost. Schools cost what they cost. Most of those costs are determined by
the "free" market--government goes out into the market and purchases just
like we do. The people who buy our roads cannot go out and say to the
people who build roads "hey, I think that this is enough to buy the roads we
need, so this is what you'll build them for." (that would be government at
gun point).

The limits set up for the intake of calories per day, by the certified smart
people who do such things, are not arbitrary, like the spending and tax
limits are. They are based on a assessment of what is healthy for the
growth and maintenance of the human body. The tax and spending limit plans
are all developed, in a manner of speaking, from the point of view of the
preservation of food--not health of the body to be nourished--to minimize
the intake of food to a level that "should be enough" and to leave the
maximum amount of food uneaten.

Whether it's what you call "men with guns" power or the power of economic
leverage (which also comes down to "men with guns" power), *all* power, not
just government power, needs to be counter balanced and limited.

I am a firm believer in separation of power--not only in the formal sense of
the three branches of government but also in the general sense of too much
power in any hands, private or public.

But, moving from the distractions back to my original point: any
assessments of government or any other action should be based on the
outcome, not just on the size of the government or of the actor. That is my
point in this discussion about whether
a) government is a good idea or not, or
b) ever increasing government is a good idea or not.


Timothy Travis
Bridge City Friends Meeting
Portland, Oregon



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