This applies to health-care, funding for universities/hospitals/libraries/etc., or just making sure people have food on the table. To exemplify this, aren't food donation campaigns sort of missing the mark. Yes they provide a valuable service, but the service it self shouldn't be required.

And in return for having you most basic needs like healtcare/education/food covered, why aren't people fine with paying some taxes for this? I thought I've had is that the nature of having states 'compete' against each other with lower taxes plays a part in this vilification of taxes. But surely this would only explain a small part of this problem.

Because certain people in government convince people that citizens can manage their money better than the government can. Forget about the purchasing power of pooling your money (by way of taxes). Then you have people like Mitch McConnell who calls programs for the less fortunate as "entitlements". The people who need these services don't feel "entitled". Not one bit.

And this is wrong? Look at the absurd high speed rail costs, or the bloated military budget, or SLS vs SpaceX.

Then you have people like Mitch McConnell who calls programs for the less fortunate as "entitlements".

"Entitlements" is a standard term used to distinguish those programs from discretionary spending.

Very simply, there are many sectors where the market works best. Healthcare isn't one of them.

But let's compare the two systems as they are, both dictated by the government. The US is actually rather heavy handed, imposing regulations on healthcare and pharma that most of the world doesn't share. For example, in most countries medical education doesn't require a previous non-medical degree. Pharmacists are often allowed to provide basic medical advice. And medicines are often approved more quickly and less expensively in Europe.[1] How much of the extra cost is due to over-regulation?

Also, how much of our costs are due to our unhealthy lifestyle? If we lived as healthfully as Europeans, we'd surely have lower medical costs.

We can't honestly compare the cost of medicine without controlling for factors like those.

1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452302X1...

High speed rail cost overruns are almost always due to how expensive eminent domain is more than anything. The estimations given to state officials are often an order of magnitude off how much land they would need to buy. Its also the kind of project beyond the scope of anyone but the largest companies to even attempt, so even if an investment firm could do the math to recognize the economic benefit of having high speed rail and thus they could capitalize on investing in it through other investments in other industries that would grow substantially in the presence of better transit they can't raise the capital to do it and the time frame to realize those returns is too long for any investor to consider reasonable. So we don't get public or private trains.

> the bloated military budget

Its not a money mismanagement at all though. The money allocated to the military that is squandered on hundred thousand dollar toilets and billions on fighter jets that don't even work and will never see practical application in aerial combat were all budgeted intentionally to make private defense contractors rich. Those contractors paid the bribe money to see the budget allocated to them and get a tremendous return on investment.

Something like comparing NASA and SpaceX can be reasonable, but you have to be nuanced about it. A large part of the SLS overrun, for example, was due to their contract with Boeing which was budgeted for 4B but overran time and money up to 9B. Thats "private enterprise" at work wasting tax money because they knew the oversight wasn't there to hold them accountable, as is the case with many government projects mired in corruption.

But you know what? If your government is corrupt, the solution is not to give private enterprise - those that corrupted said government - control over the functions government was supposed to fulfill. You fix your government. If NASA is unable to budget or deliver projects on time, you fire those given the responsibility of managing said projects, do independent investigations of why they failed, and if some party is culpable for the intentional sabotage or deception of the proposals arrest them. If theres a revolving door in Washington of defense contractors lining the pockets of congressmen for taxpayer money via the defense budget investigate and impeach the corrupt politicians. When you contract with a third party to budget infrastructure expansion make them culpable for failure to deliver or for budget overruns.

Is this a fact? Would private industry do it better?

I ask because the VA is the closest thing we have to a single-payer experience in the US. Active or inactive, the VA is willing to treat you the only requirement being that you served.

Yet, when people bring up the failing VA they always pass along the Walter Reed VA hospital horror stories. I looked into it and you know what, Walter Reed is a huge military hospital base. It's so big there are multiple hospitals on site. And that site has government run VA hospitals and contractor run VA hospitals. And they are all called Walter Reed. But guess what? All the VA horror stories from Walter Reed come from the same contractor ran hospitals.

> the VA is willing to treat you the only requirement being that you served.

They will make it very hard for you to qualify for VA disability by throwing bureaucracy at you.

I'm confused.

If these are the opinions of Americans, then I think I have found out why the "US is a Rich Country with Symptoms of a Developing Nation". Viewing taxation as direct threat of violence 10000% will result in a crumbling society that is built on democracy and taxation.

It's a frequent comment on HN and it's fucking stupid everytime.

The laws are clear, and you agree to them by living here. A taxation-related arrest will be done non-violently anyway, what on Earth are you talking about here?

Where is this threat of violence coming from?

The opposite of the monopoly on violence would be anarchy, which could be interpreted as a free market of violence.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

I can't find anything in that article that has any relevance to today.

Healthcare in the us is seriously fucked up. It's highly regulated and prices are set in an incredibly corrupt fashion. Insurance is misunderstood by politicians as a magic trove of money and then gets the blame when it falls short. We get quite honestly the worst of a privatized and the worst of a public system.

That is simply false. You will not be "carted off to jail, violently, if necessary". If you refuse to obey the laws of the country of course you will be arrested. They will not be violent! If you choose to pull out a gun or something and fight them, then you have initiated the violence and they will defend themselves. This is all fucking insane anyway, why are we even talking about this? You don't have a clear understanding of how the laws or modern society works.

You're not living under a threat of violence with taxation, my god. I can't imagine what kind of misconceptions you have that result in you thinking that a result of you not paying taxes could end violently. We have looooong surpassed that, and in fact, our Constitution written hundreds of years ago, while flawed, absolutely prevents the scenario you are describing.

Are we talking about the US? Perhaps you're not a person of color, so you don't understand what it's really like here.

[edit] actually may be an Objectivist, I guess. They argue the same.

When you buy car insurance, you’re not buying it for yourself, you’re buying it for everyone who has car insurance

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/one-womans-ultimate...

And then here's the data on improved access to health care: https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-opinion-on-single-payer...