Comment by somethingwitty1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somethingwitty1 | Hacker News Reader

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somethingwitty1

I always find this kind of thought interesting. The government provides a ton of things. Do you use public roads or sidewalks? Do you live, work or shop in a structure that adheres to building codes? Do you have power? Do you have access to the internet? Do you enjoy food that doesn't kill you? So many of these things wouldn't be possible for the general population without government. It takes money to operate a government. I share the frustration that tax money isn't always (often) spent effectively, but then I ask...what have I done? what would I do differently? At the end of the day, I'm not that interested in doing these things. Sure, I like to complain to my inner circle about how I could do it better, but I've not actually gotten involved. The most I do is vote for people that (on the surface) aren't unhinged and trying to mostly do good, rather than buying into political ideology. So avoiding paying taxes or escaping would just be selfish for someone in my position. Paying these taxes doesn't measurably impact my overall well-being.

>Do you use public roads or sidewalks?

Yes, and that is paid for by my outrageous property/vehicle registration/gas taxes. Huge portions of our cities have roads in near 3rd-world conditions. The major arteries of every top-50 US city grind to a halt twice a day, and you have been conditioned to believe this is normal/acceptable. Our bridges, roads, and railways are falling apart.

> Do you live, work or shop in a structure that adheres to building codes?

Yes, and I pay for that directly via the price of homes (home inspection and permit costs are passed on).

> Do you have power? Do you have access to the internet? Do you enjoy food that doesn't kill you?

I pay for all of these things directly out of the money left over that the government does not take from me. In the case of food, I pay taxes again on it when I buy it.

> share the frustration that tax money isn't always (often) spent effectively, but then I ask...what have I done? what would I do differently? At the end of the day, I'm not that interested in doing these things.

Where do you live that the government provides you home, roads, sidewalks, food, power, and water for $0 post-taxes? Because I pay for all those things directly with post-tax income.

>Paying these taxes doesn't measurably impact my overall well-being.

How does 30-50% of your take home not impact your "overall well being"? All forms of calculation that result in a lower number than that have, in my experience, come from ignorance of the comprehensive tax cycle.

What is surprising in the US is they don't teach anyone about taxes in grades 1-12 and even in college it is optional. You can see that translate into even forums like this with potentially wealthier people, but even here many don't recognize all the various levels of taxes and what is contributing to what. Federal income taxes for example are what most people recognize as taxes and that mostly only goes towards federal items, federal meaning, national, such as military, border, and other interstate agencies. We need to literally teach about taxes in school, that is the only way people will learn.

I agree with your sentiment overall.

> How does 30-50% of your take home not impact your "overall well being"?

How do you respond to the claim that if income and other taxes were lower, then everything would go up in price to compensate for the extra liquidity in the market?

Perhaps initially, but the additional demand would drive economic expansion via demand for more workers to fill said demand no?

Everything you described is done with less than 15% of total spending budget that the U.S. currently allocates. The vast majority goes to paying for military spending and benefits to people who pay very little tax.

> benefits to people who pay very little tax.

By which you mean Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid? Those programs have broad public support.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56324

>Those programs have broad public support.

Which is largely an education problem. Diamonds have overwhelming public support and are essentially a scam. We need to build sustainable, healthy systems that work for our population and don't make naive assumptions like infinite growth.

> benefits to people who pay very little tax

This is extremely misinformed.

Social Security Retirement, Survivors, and Disability Insurance are entitlement programs, and by far account for the vast majority of this budget (along with the Medicare that most of these individuals are entitled to have). You do not have a right to it, and you are obligated to participate in the insurance program by paying taxes. They are payed for by the individual worker and in some cases, partially, by the employer, via FICA taxes deducted from your US paycheck. Other taxes may be withheld from your paycheck, which lower income individuals will get money back from the IRS for, upon filing their taxes. But, this is not the case for FICA taxes.

The issue is that actuaries have not properly estimated the costs of things like Medicare, and then Congress has really never updated the tax code to account for proper FICA taxes for future projections.

I personally like to use this site when this sort of thing comes up. It is not a perfect breakdown. But hits on what is going on on. https://www.usdebtclock.org/

Bottom line though is we are taking in about 3.5 and spending about 7. We are well past 'buy one less bomber'.

I would be careful to extrapolate a one-time injection like 2020 going forward, unless you expect a COVID shutdown & resulting stimulus to happen every year from now on. We're still running a deficit, sure, but it's not quite as it sounds.

Social security is effectively a boomer ponzi scheme relying on infinite population growth to sustain itself. It falls apart the first time a generation realizes they can reap more than they sow by having/investing in fewer children, but the bill comes due.

A just system would be something like "invest 15% of your income in XYZ approved categories, or pay a penalty tax on up to 15% of your income". This effectively mandates citizen savings via penalizing irresponsible spending/lack of savings.

"We'll tax you and we pinky promise to pay you back someday... totally investing that money and not spending it now then printing more when we need to pay up" is both so insane and obvious an outcome I suspect leaded gasoline played a role in societal acceptance.

> Social security is effectively a boomer ponzi scheme relying on infinite population growth to sustain itself. It falls apart the first time a generation realizes they can reap more than they sow by having/investing in fewer children, but the bill comes due.

Likewise, not true. I find your comment to be extremely offensive, too.

I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system plus type 1 diabetes. I worked nearly full-time at university, while going to university full-time, while still making good grades in undergraduate, in electrical engineering. I had to do this just to keep medical insurance so I would not die.

Anyways, I was extremely sick from age 18 on at university. I was misdiagnosed, and my health problems were blamed as "diabetes complications". I found out that I had a very rare neurological disease, that very likely caused my type 1 diabetes, when I was 22.

I was declared disabled by the Social Security Administration at age 21. I am sure I am not the only one, and some people incur costs that cannot be paid for by just "saving up". This especially applies for medical care. In my case, I really had no chance whatsoever to do this.

By the way, I am off of disability now.

>By the way, I am off of disability now.

That's great to hear! The issue I take with your story is not that you got help, but that a government mandated retirement program should never have been retrofitted to provide socialized health care. It is an absolutely terrible design.

I'm not going to write a blog post about my theory for an optimal health care system architecture, but I suspect we would agree that a lot of things are wrong and need to be redesigned.

Yeah, I agree with you on this. But, thank you for understanding. I really appreciate it. :-)

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