Another dumb financial statement

[daveon]

I don't really have the energy for this: Seattle 2.0 Guest Blogger on Proposed Tax Changes

If there's a weaker argument about not paying taxes than "It's my money, I earned it" then I've yet to hear it. 

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

A whole lot of what we have in America today is here because we're living off of capital investments made by my grandparents. (Sometimes literally: My grandfather was one of the construction workers on Interstate 5 through the Cascades in Northern California, something I think about every time I drive through there like I will be next weekend.) I think a whole lot of people have come complete disconnected from why we pay taxes.

Of course I'd rather have more money in my pocket come payday. But I also like having all of those services. I guess the loony-type Libertarians assume that Private Industry would provide all of those services (more efficiently and cheaply) than the Government. Well, among other things, a completely-private postal service would stop making deliveries to anything other than the largest cities, and a private road network would have toll booths every few miles, while your local roads would be returned to gravel. (As is happening now, according to an article I saw recently.) The streetlights would go out unless you wanted to pay personally for the one in front of your house. (I'm in a rural town right now where that's exactly how it works, as it's unincorporated and if you want a streetlight, you go put it up yourself and pay the electric bill yourself.)

But some of them probably think that's a Good Thing.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I had an argument with somebody about the postal thing a couple of days ago. He was of the opinion that things would be better if only he had a choice about 1st Class mail providers...

The funny thing is, my older brother used to work for DHL and did a lot of studies on taking over various 1st Class mail services and they just didn't want it.

They wanted block contracts where they could deliver all of GIANT_BANK's statements every month and the ability to bid for and cherry pick those services.

The probability that they'd offer a nationwide single cost mail service for $0.50 is approximately zero.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Right. Oh, I reckon people from rural small towns like the one I'm from wouldn't lose all their mail service. A private operator might possibly manage to do one run per week, and you'd have to pay to both send a letter and to receive it, and it would cost $5/item, or possibly you might pay for an annual subscription to receive mail from the contractor. Otherwise, there's no reason to do the work.

Some people might say, "Good!" but that makes the implicit assumption that there is no social value in supporting rural life and that only Big Cities matter. IMO down that path leads madness.