But wait. Why buy private assets. Why not have the government make its own assets. Like….a govt bond. Well, those are substantial portions of pension assets.
You could fund pensions from general tax revenue. But, then what happens if tax revenues are low one year….do you just not pay out the pensions?
At a certain point you’re on the market whether you like it or not. Even communist countries own assets
Taxes. You need taxes. Just like how you run the military.
> then what happens if tax revenues are low one year
You tax the top iter of the society to make up for it. Just like how it is done for the military.
> Even communist countries own assets
In no communist country, the well being of their people or societal infrastructure ranging from transportation to military to police or education, was tied to the market. Even today there are many capitalist countries that dont do that.
it's unfortunate but usually when there's a downturn, revenues drop. yes including from the super-rich, whose net worths are usually more not less volatile. so now what?
Most countries don't do that because the funding for military is never excluded from budget calculations. But when such a need arises, like in wartime or emergencies, they do.
> i get really fed up with people pretending that military spending is anywhere close to entitlement spending these days
Only in the US, where military has been made into a teat from which the military-industry sector sucks as hard as it can. That way you end up with gigantic flops like F-35 that go on forever. They are flops for defense, but they are major successes for channeling public money to the industry...
entitlements were $1.18T (social security) + $697B (medicare) + $537B (welfare) + $396B (unemployment) = $3.329T
military was $1.035T.
if it helps, 3.329 / 1.035 = 3.22. that number means we spent over 3 times as much on handouts.
so no, military spending is nowhere close to our handout spending. yeah it's inefficient and wasteful and i favor cutting it at least somewhat combined with efficiency improvements and focusing on spreading defense $ to make the market more competitive. but i get really fed up with people trying to "both sides" our handout and military spending every time someone brings up the cost of the former because they just aren't close.
If you don’t save current resources for future expenses, then you risk needing a very large future amount of the tax base for pensions. If, for example, more people retire.
Even for the military they used war bonds and took on debt in wars when the wars demanded outsized current expenses. They didn’t just raise taxes really high in WWII to pay for everything. They paid for it over time with bonds. The Soviets did the same in agreeing to repay lend lease bonds.