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Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

And history: Income tax in the US dates to 1894. The 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913. A very premature response to WWII.

Income is not the only taxable quantity; tariffs, excise, property, wealth, and estate taxes are among the options.

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Not to mention simply spending a lot less on things the federal government doesn't need to be involved in to begin with.

Sorry?

Such as?

We could start with all the things the federal government wasn't involved in prior to the enactment of the income tax.

You're not answering the question.

The world has changed somewhat since 1894.

You asked what the government could spend less on. I answered the question. What more do you want?

You've not given specific cases, and your hand-wave ignores reality.

Maintaining over 700 military bases across the world, endless war (handouts to Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex companies), corporate welfare, foreign aid, public art, Africa, etc...

OK, that's a set of specifics, though for the first you might find much of that has some justification (economically, not necessarily morally) via geopolitics of both raw materials (petrochemical and the Harbord list) and trade.

FYI the last three items amount to about 2% or less of Federal spending. All discretionary spending was 16% in 2016:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/U....

Excluding entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, debt service) it's still minuscule:

http://memepoliceman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/viper-re...

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