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Of the items you've mentioned, only education forms a significant part of the government budget (15%). Roads are 4% of the government budget, protection (police, fire, etc) is 5%.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2010_US_total

If you want to defend taxation, defend the things it actually pays for: redistribution from the young to the old and the military (redistribution from workers to non-workers is a distant third).

Welfare and healthcare (which are really interconnected efforts, or should be) are not just "redistribution from the young to the old", and that's 30% of your graph right there. Countries without these sort of provisions tend to be... "unstable" at best.

You can argue the US military gets too much money, sure, but looking at cultural and voting patterns, I really don't think that's why people don't like to pay taxes.

Obviously public money has to be spent in good ways, but let's not misrepresent all government being about "military and pensions".

Countries without these sort of provisions tend to be... "unstable" at best.

Could you explain what you are talking about here? Will the geriatric hordes smash their walkers through the glass of Apple's cube stores if they don't receive trillions in tribute?

The "geriatric hordes" have sons and grandsons. If the State doesn't support Granny, it's Father who will have to, which will leave less money for Junior, who has enough free time to go out and loot if necessary. You see where this goes.

If that family was made of civil servants or (god forbid) military personnel, you'll also have a strong feeling of resentment-fuelled rage as a bonus.

But that's how it winds up working anyway: the working-age middle class support the elderly. The only difference is that instead of that support being internal to the family, it's pooled, so that those with parents who are especially expensive to support don't have to pay more, or much more, than others.

There's some value in pooling it like that, I suppose, but let's not kid ourselves. Social Security is a transfer payment system, not a retirement savings program, which is what it was sold to people as.

I don't know the specific "implementation details" of US Social Security; my point was that support for the elderly is necessary in general, otherwise they go back to being a burden for families, lowering their tolerance levels towards accepting the rule of law. If you plan on scaling back a certain program, you better have something else ready to replace it, or you'll feel the pain at the polls or, in the worst case, in the streets.

I agree with that. I'm not suggesting we should just scrap it. The problem I have is with people who argue it shouldn't even be means-tested.

Yeah, when Father and Junior are the ones to throw away and forget Granny in the nursing home, they're the first ones that will come to their rescue.

This is why the elderly come out in droves on election day. They can't trust the young'uns.

>I would say that HN readers and contributors are among the smartest people on the web

But HN readers are almost exclusively rich white American males. They've never had any adverse experiences in their lives. They've never been frisked by the police; they've never gone hungry for even one meal; they borrowed money from their parents to get started; their parents put them through college.

Having no experience of adversity is proven to produce feelings of excessive competence/arrogance in people. And that's pretty much what you see here.

Very few of them have any sense of the society that they are coasting on top of, nor does telling them that they are one injury from abject poverty make any difference. They don't really believe it, not in their hearts.

So, sorry, but you aren't going to get a lot of sensible responses about taxation here. They're incapable of it.

"But HN readers are almost exclusively rich white American males. They've never had any adverse experiences in their lives. They've never been frisked by the police; they've never gone hungry for even one meal; they borrowed money from their parents to get started; their parents put them through college."

Where are you getting all this from?

"nor does telling them that they are one injury from abject poverty make any difference"

That seems to contradict this: "rich white American males.....they borrowed money from their parents to get started

Textbook example of an ad hominem argument. Honestly, a basic understanding of logical fallacies should be a mandatory prerequisite for posting on HN.

That would preclude the vast majority of the Democrat audience from posting. On the other hand, it would go a long way toward reversing the trend of HN becoming more like Reddit.

Over-generalization much?

A lot of HN'ers either work in startups or founded one themselves. I'd say that will put them through enough adverse experience to know what they're talking about.

I'd like to see what percentage of American's tax is paid for building roads and public education, versus military. You make it sound as if U.S. government (or any other government for that matter) is really interested in people's welfare and companies like Apple are robbing people of their deserved money. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather $3B spent in tech R&D than intercontinental ballistic missiles.

This infographic is great at putting the fed budget in perspective: http://deathandtaxesposter.com/ tl;dr - mostly "defense"

Nope, that infographic is used to confuse people because it doesn't make clear that it's primarily showing the federal discretionary budget which is only ~40% of the entire budget: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY...

As the diagram has evolved they added a small total budget thing to bottom, but most people don't realize what it means.

"It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."

- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

As a not rich beleiver in socialism, I completely agree. But, are you sure governments really exploit the taxes for the good of people? Who is to say not paying taxes and creating jobs instead is not better than paying taxes to a government that's going to spend trillions on missiles and bombs?

I completely agree with you regarding our current tax-and-spend practices; but I think the flaw is not with taxation, but rather with corrupted democratic practices, both in the culture, and in the electoral-industrial complex. If government was truly an extension of public will, we would have mechanisms to pressure it to spend efficiently in ways that create infrastructure and jobs (operating system : software :: government : businesses).

Now, there's a case to be made that such corruption is inevitable, that power will always overwhelm the public good, and that distributed self-governance simply can't work. I think that view is merely born out of cynicism and a feeling of powerlessness, and it betrays a lack of imagination. If the enlightenment revolutionaries had thought that way, we'd likely still have nobles and kings.

Hey foenix, have you actually seen the way American governments (state, federal, local) spend money? I think it's almost certain that every dollar you spend on your tutoring business helps people more than the marginal benefit of another dollar spent by state or federal government.

Maybe some European countries do a better job of spending money, but we aren't Europe. Until our governments demonstrate they can spend money well it's good for society for businesses to keep as much as they legally can.

Edit: "more people" --> "people more"

There aren't any benefits.

Government is just a business model, when it comes right down to it that's what it reduces to. It doesn't magically have the ability to ignore the rules of economics or spend infinitely without consequence.

Anything provided by the government is purchased just as surely as you had purchased it from private enterprise. Effectively the only difference is you do not have a choice as to what is purchased, or how much it costs you.

Saying that modern democratic socialism is a hedge against entrenched control by special interests is so utterly divorced from reality I'm wondering whether this is actually a really well spoken troll? Look at the tax practices of general electric or hell, even those discussed in TFA and tell me that it's government that controls the corporations, and not the other way around.

Remember, government is just another business model.

The most worrying part of all this is a growing sense, perhaps not even such a definite movement, that the US government / political class is no longer trustworthy with it's citizens taxes.

Western governments are trapped by politcical stalemates and an underlying shift of economic power, and find they cannot / darent risk change in flawed fundamental policy no matter who is in power.

no wonder many on HN support Apple in paying less tax, if you don't think the government will spend it wisely even of you vote for some other guy.

So Ron Paul starts to look like a clear thinker

But is there really an option. Can we expect to do away with vast amounts of government and find it works better?

Because that is a one time experiment.

There's nothing wrong with taxation, so long as it is done for the right reasons and it is not abused. Today, in the US, taxes are levied on just about anything a politician can imagine. Believe it or not, at one point the EPA was pushing a tax on cow farts. I don't know if that passed but it provides a really interesting picture of how your money is being stolen with political creativity. Almost everything the average American touches is taxed in one way or another. People ought to be marching down the street furious about this situation. It is nothing less than surreal.

Yes, taxation is necessary. Or, perhaps I should say: Some means to pay for the basics of government is necessary. That doesn't necessarily mean taxation.

The explosion of government programs has crated a mess that is hard to untangle. If we want to survive as a nation with a decent standard of living we must fix this problem.

Your dollars are being devoted in huge proportions to the support of failed programs, unions, government workers and pensions. Period. It is one thing to want to remain true to an ideology and quite another to be able to pull out paper and pencil and engage in basic arithmetic. This problem does not require calculus in order to understand.

Regarding the HN audience. I am not sure that one can pass opinion based on the few that choose to be vocal and post. My experience is that most online communities are like icebergs: The bulk of the audience is never visible. Be careful about forming opinion based on the 10% that is above water.

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Understand that abuses by government, misapplication of taxes, and regulatory capture are simply a historical and current fact.

There's limited benefit to throwing good money in a hole when only a few pieces of it will catch on something useful.

> To be more concrete: you can't build a socioeconomic infrastructure on top of capitalism. You have to do it the other way around.

Well said. I have never really understood why so many people seem to think it has to be all or nothing when it comes to privatisation. Can't things be taken on a case by case basis? When I hear news about the US health care system, I often shake my head in disbelief.

Contrary to apparently popular belief, anything other than full-tilt, "privitise all the things" does not necessarily equal communism.

Roads, education, emergency services.

Ah yes, the classic tiny list meant to justify taking $6 trillion per year out of the economy in the form of taxation.

Roads? Laughable. Let's run that budget up against SS / Medicare / Military, and see where our taxes are really spent.

Education? Oh my, yes, the government is doing such a stellar job inflating the cost of education to infinity, while results get worse and worse.

Emergency services? The ones that people are increasingly having to pay extra fees just to use?

Special interests already control the items you listed. In case you missed that whole Federal unions thing; or the protected road workers unions that typically dominate at the state level. Or the teachers unions that protect their own to the harm of students, which is why we spend so much more than anybody else and get such radically worse results.

Government services in the US are about as far away from being in your hands of control as they could get. Which is why the TSA gets away with such extreme abuse, or why our infrastructure is collapsing despite the government having doubled in size in the last 13 years.

The level of ignorance and sheer stupidity in this comment is astounding.

- The government isn't inflating the cost of education. Education itself is. The 'technical' courses are requiring more and more expensive equipment and buildings. Combine this with the drop in funding from state governments and that is why tuition costs are increasing. It isn't just specific to the US but is happening worldwide.

- Education in the US definitely needs work but it is not radically worse than the rest of the world. The biggest problem with education isn't with the teachers it's with the general attitude of Americans. Frankly it sucks. There is an anti-intellectual, anti-work streak that doesn't in many other countries. People overwhelmingly PREFER university sports over university science achievements. So blaming teachers and teachers unions is misguided.

- TSA policies are similar to what exists elsewhere in the world so it isn't a US government issue. It is an airport safety issue.

- Of course infrastructure in the US needs work. But again the hold up seems to be with the politicians. How about elect someone else ?

Ad hominem is not a valid form of argumentation.

The government is massively inflating the cost of education. They back student loans with an unlimited supply of printed currency, and increase the backing every year, making it possible for the universities to conspire to increase costs. Which explains how EDU costs have continued to skyrocket through a intense recessionary period.

The TSA is a US Government issue. It is not similar to what exists elsewhere, unless you're talking about countries dominated by abusive police services. In my observation, Europeans are typically shocked at the abuse and ridiculous hoops Americans now jump through just to fly.

Infrastructure in the US needs work? We had 22 major power outages in 1992. We had 344 in 2011. Such has increased on average every year for 20 years. It doesn't need work, it's collapsing due to the misappropriation of tax funds. Or call it what it really is, theft by taxation and standard issue political lies.

- Government isn't massively inflating costs of education. It is rising in all major countries. What you are talking about is the cost of paying for education. Which is a completely different story.

- I am European. I fly 20 times a year. It is exactly what exists elsewhere. Or did you forget that it was the Netherlands that first introduced those scanners ?

- And you would have the money for infrastructure if you didn't go into two wars. So it seems the issue isn't taxation but how it is being spent. Which is an issue for the people who voted them in. You.

I agree with some of your points, but the last round of ridiculous checks at airports was pushed by American and British governments. Other countries were more than happy to lap it up, sure, but even the ones who would now like to scale back efforts, cannot effectively do that, because US authorities would screw them hard.

Part of the US competitive advantage during the XX century was a first-class air transportation network which was fast and flexible, spreading commerce and culture quickly and cheaply across a whole continent. As you noticed, now it's pretty much on par with what you'll find in that mess of balcanized frontiers and bureaucracy that is our beloved Europe. For them, it's a huge step back.

>The government isn't inflating the cost of education.

Well, there is a semi-legitimate argument that the government making it easy to borrow large sums of money is encouraging price increases in higher education, especially in for-profit higher education where most of the students are borrowing the entire cost of their education.

Social Security is a pension system and should not be counted as an expense. Or, at the minimum the payments to vested retirees should not be counted. Social Security is not in trouble and the part that has trouble is easily fixable.

Medicare is actually a benefit to corporations. Corporations shifted retiree benefits (health care among such benefits) to Social Security, 401(k), and Medicare. Without Medicare worker would demand more money. Besides, it is unseemly for a country as rich as the U.S. to have millions of uninsurable people dying prematurely. Millions more than it currenlty has, that is.

Your statements about unions are without a basis is fact. It is quite obvious that labor, overall, has very little power in the country. Furthemore a majority of non-defense workers for the U.S. government are contractors. We live in an environment of regulatory capture. At the very minimum, the large corporations ought to at least pay to keep the system that they've captured.

> Social Security is not in trouble

This is a fringe viewpoint at best. With our current policies, the Congressional Budget Office predicts SS will become completely insolvent between 2036 and 2038 (p. 54 of http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/06-2...). The "easy" fix will require significant payroll tax increases, which seems politically unlikely considering we just REDUCED the FICA tax by 2%.

From the document:

Under its extended-baseline scenario, CBO estimates that over the next 75 years, the program has an actuarial shortfall equal to 1.6 percent of taxable payroll, or 0.6 percent of GDP (see Table 4-1). Thus, to bring the program into actuarial balance through 2085, payroll taxes could be increased immediately by 1.6 percent of taxable payroll and kept at that higher rate, or scheduled benefits could be reduced by an equivalent amount.

The fix is easy (not taking into account the Republican party's irrational view on tax increases). Repeal the tax cut. And not increasing taxes leaves a small actuarial imbalance.

Or just raise the wage base above the current $110,100.

Social Security cannot ever go "completely insolvent", which a cursory amount of education on the subject would teach you.

> Or, at the minimum the payments to vested retirees should not be counted.

There's no such thing as "vesting" wrt Social Security. All benefits are at the whim of Congress. Yes, including those being paid now.

Congress could decide tomorrow to divert all SS payouts to hookers and blow and retirees would have no legal recourse. (They could, of course, vote out incumbents in the next election, but that's no guarantee that the new rascals would restore the benefits.)

> Besides, it is unseemly for a country as rich as the U.S. to have millions of uninsurable people dying prematurely.

The US doesn't have "millions of uninsured dying prematurely". The available research suggests that insurance improves quality of life but doesn't have much effect on life-span. (The error bar goes from "no effect" to "there seems to be a very small effect".)

Social Security pays some benefits to people who have not fully paid enough into the system to have their benefits covered. I wished to exclude these people from consideration and talked about the portion of beneficiaries who have. The latter group is a very large majority of beneficiaries and I used the term "vested" w.r.t. to this group. The point ought to have been clear and being pedantic on it is pointless.

Congress could decide tomorrow to divert all SS payouts to hookers and blow and retirees would have no legal recourse.

You don't understand the role the judicial branch plays in the U.S. if you think this is true.

It's clear that millions of peoples' lives are adversely affected by lack of access to health coverage. I should have phrased my statement differently. As it is, it is incorrect. It is true to say that at present the situation is unseemly (and immoral).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21308569

>>Congress could decide tomorrow to divert all SS payouts to hookers and blow and retirees would have no legal recourse.

> You don't understand the role the judicial branch plays in the U.S. if you think this is true.

Are you suggesting that there's some law that gives SS recipients a claim on payouts or a constitutional provision?

In the case of "a law", theu can be repealed by Congress and the judiciary won't stop (and shouldn't) stop them.

If you're suggesting a constitutional provision, precisely which provision do you think guarantees SS "rights"?

For example, http://www.ssa.gov/estimator/ says "Your estimated benefits are based on current law. The law governing benefit amounts may change because, by 2033, the payroll taxes collected will be enough to pay only about 75 cents for each dollar of scheduled benefits."

> It's clear that millions of peoples' lives are adversely affected by lack of access to health coverage.

Not in the US. They have health coverage. What they don't have is insurance.

Yes, there are limits on the "free" coverage in the US. Surely you don't believe that any place else is different.

We already have enough taxes to pay for roads, education, and emergency services. What we don't have enough money to pay for is a huge government bureaucracy which ends up being a money pit.