Re: why everyone wishes it would stop but no one can stop it.
- From: ijdavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Ian Davis)
- Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 04:07:30 +0000 (UTC)
In article <4ccj0fF1463jvU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Yowie <yowie9644.DIESPAMDIE@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Engineer" <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:y86dncy2XpZOyP3ZRVn_vA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(This is a bit long, but the part at the end where the
author discusses war makes it worth reading)
By David Boaz
Government has an important role to play in a free society. It is
supposed to protect our rights, creating a society in which
people can live their lives and undertake projects reasonably
secure from the threat of murder, assault, theft, or foreign
invasion. By the standards of most governments in history, this
is an extremely modest role. That's what made the American
Revolution so revolutionary. The Declaration of Independence
proclaimed, To secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men. Not to make men moral. Not to boost economic growth.
Not to ensure everyone a decent standard of living. Just the
simple, revolutionary idea that government's role was limited to
securing our rights. But imagine how much better off we would all
be if our government did an adequate job at this simple, limited
task.
I stopped when it was implied that the tax we pay to states is the same as
paying money to a 'protection racket'. Whilst I can't speak for other
states, when I pay my taxes, I can see them going into schools, into
affordable housing, into infrastructure, into universal health care, going
into things that I want and need, into things I'm happy to pay for, into
things that I'm happy for the state to manage. I can't say that my state is
perfect, it isn't. The way it uses my taxes can be ineffecient. Some people
in governement are corrupt. Sometimes it gives a higher proportion of the
tax money to things than I would. But on the whole, I am happy to pay for
the things the state provides.
The article would only make sense to me if the government took money and
used it for its own enjoyment / edification rather than paying for things
people want. Since it doesn't, its whole premise is unsound. I didn't bother
reading the rest.
Yowie
I think the article wrongly focused because I am not interested in the notion
that one shouldn't pay taxes and being forced to constitutes a basic
infringment of my rights (to me the Russian system which was that everyone
was in theory obliged to pay taxes, but in practice only those who wanted
to did isn't one I'd wish to see implemented here). I am much more interested
in the question of how taxes raised then get redistributed. I cannot
understand why somewhere like England which has higher taxes on things
like petrol/gasoline than Canada seemingly doesn't as a consequence have
higher revenues to invest back into the system -- Canada spends ~13% of
GDP on health care while Britain spends ~8%, etc. Why is it that everything
in England costs easily twice what it costs here.
A personal pet theory, is that a particular aspect of the capitalist system
actually works against the prosperity of nations. In London England, the
demand for housing exceeds the supply. As a consequence there is seemingly
no limit to how high house prices can eventually get. Each generation is
essentially bankrolled by the previous, and this means that there is always
some capital arising from sales that justify the every increasing inflation
in the housing market. If you look at this economically it is as if the
British have taken their considerable personal wealth and tied it all up
in a commodity that they as a nation owned to begin with. Worse than this
the high cost of real estate trickles down to high cost for any service that
uses as part of that service real estate. It is the harsh reality of being
morgaged to the hilt which places even the more affluent within London
society, at a huge disadvantage when compared to the same affluent person
living somewhere where house prices are cheaper. Somehow the very capitalist
model which says that the market will set a better price when left itself
than when managed, seems flawed in the above example. The market in the
above example is not making people better off collectively, but is the
monster in the room, making all worse off collectively. It is too late now,
but the English would have been far better off if the government had built
the same houses (they did build council houses in London) and made them
available at a fixed cost, with availability resolved when demand exceeded
supply by some sort of lottery system. The devil would of course be in the
details, but somehow a country tying up a substantial portion of its GDP
paying itself ever increasing sums of money for the same commodity, while
having those profitting from this arrangement going of to buy cheap villa's
in the south of France/Portugal etc. when they retire, doesn't seem to be
a wise use of a nations GDP.
Ian
.
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