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Comment by distances | Hacker News Reader

> I wonder if any government in history has ever been good to its people. But, man, does it really seem like governments now are really fucking the 90% over.

Getting off topic, but I'm from the Nordics, grown-up, and still have this naïve view that governments are for the people and aim to do the best for all citizens. It not all roses here either, but I'm quite happy to pay my share of taxes to keep the civil society running.

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Over in the U.S. it seems like people hate taxes because they don't want other people to get "their" money and in the meantime they're happy to watch the entire infrastructure of the country fall apart, as long as poor people are miserable, prisons are filled to the rafters and the military gets like half the government's budget (for freedom, support our troops, rah rah rah) it's all good.

It's infuriating. You like civilization? Pay some goddamn taxes. But alas.

What boggles my mind is when I was helping my mom at a parent teacher conference, I engaged in a conversation with another parent who was complaining about the education tax. "I thought public school was supposed to be free!" she argued.

Education being broken is a vicious cycle.

Taxes are utilized notoriously inefficiently in the US. It's not unreasonable to want them to be lowered and used more efficiently, or to even simply prefer having less services.

> Taxes are utilized notoriously inefficiently in the US.

I've wondered about this: is this "conventional wisdom", or are there actual cross-country comparison studies?

Healthcare spending per capita is a big one.

Gov't spending in this sector is the only efficient form of spending happening.

Insurance companies and hospitals are being as inefficient and wasteful as possible because it makes them more money.

If US taxes went towards keeping civil society running instead of paying for our military being a "world police", maybe people here would be happier.

It'd be nice if the companies that did business here had to pay taxes as well.

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