Re:Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It H...
by nonbel on Friday December 14, 2018 @12:13PM
(#18682449)
>'The European interpretation is closer to "everyone pays into a big pot and we collectively decide how to spend it to make our country better"'
This sounds great, but if everyone was in favor of it there would be no reason to make this payment mandatory.
Re:Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It H...
by wongarsu on Friday December 14, 2018 @02:18PM
(#18683682)
Game theory tells us why it has to be mandatory: if everyone pays everyone profits, but for any one individual it pays off to stop paying as long as everyone else keeps paying (because they still receive roughly the same benefits). So most people stop paying, and everyone is worse off. It's basically the prisoner's dilemma.
Note how even denying non-payers all public services doesn't work. If you don't pay for the fire brigade but your neighbor does you profit (since a fire in his house is less likely to go out of control and jump over to your house). The resulting situation would be less fair than just forcing everyone to pay for firefighting services.
Even if I don't get that money directly, I benefit massively because fire brigades prevent fires from burning down entire neighborhoods, health insurance keeps the work force healthy, unemployment programs keep crime rates low and provide training, free education attracts profitable industries etc.
I don't need to have a child to benefit from free education, and I don't need to be unemployed to benefit from unemployment programs. I'm very much spending all that tax money on myself.