I find the government functions very well given it's necessarily a large institution (which all are bureaucratic and inefficient, including businesses) and perpetual (it can't go out of business and be replaced, but we do replace management!). Transportation infrastructure (roads, airports, etc.), food safety, education, science (NASA, NSF, NIH), courts, military, regulation of banks, national parks, etc. etc. Think of NASA - the greatest explorers in the history of humanity, with nobody even close - is a government agency.
Government's biggest problem is the lack of participation from citizens and obstruction from the GOP. The post office delivered my mail fine for my entire life until the neo-reactionaries got hold of it and (intentionally, I think) ruined it.
"Too bad, but it's your monarch. He's anointed by God. You must care about him".
Not really a very strong argument.
> Think of NASA - the greatest explorers in the history of humanity, with nobody even close - is a government agency.
USSR had dozens of space projects, all by a government ministry. Doesn't mean you'd want to cherish the regime and all its inefficiencies & injustices.
And the Chinese government was building huge ghost cities where no-one lives at the greatest pace in human history, with nobody even close. Yet that isn't considered a positive achievement.
The thing is governments are taking resources out of economy. People don't devour money, they'd spend them or invest anyway (using their own scale of preferences). They could go to a cafe, sponsoring this industry, to a journey, buy a new car, start a new business. But after the central authority takes that much away, there will be that much less for the industries of people's preference. That means new people wouldn't be hired, new car models created and produced, new enterprises started; no new building would appear that otherwise could. And the central authority will at best build something useful at twice the price; because private citizens are motivated to be efficient, the state bureaucrats don't. And at worst, the funds will be squandered, directed to their oligarchic pals, stolen.
> "Too bad, but it's your monarch. He's anointed by God. You must care about him".
It's not a monarch. I assume you live in a democracy. The reason you think people are anointed is that you don't participate. I promise: Participate, especially in local politics, and you'll see how much government depends on citizen participation, and how powerless most people make themselves by bizarrely excluding themselves.
Get off Parler, or whatever and read a history book, because Reagan’s economic policies echo even today. Even without a labeled time axis, there are countless economic charts where you can easily pick out 1981.
If you don't want to be banned on HN, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, use the site as intended from now on, and drop the ideological warfare please. (No, we don't care which ideology you like or dislike. Either way, it destroys what this site is supposed to be for.
Actually you're way, way over the bannable line already but I don't want to ban you and not the other person when as far as this thread goes you were behaving equally badly. If you don't want to be banned on HN, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, use the site as intended from now on, and drop the ideological warfare please. (No, we don't care which ideology you like or dislike. Either way, it destroys what this site is supposed to be for.
> The argument is that cutting taxes will spur economic growth
So what do I care for some abstract growth? If my well-being isn't rising, and it isn't if you take away through taxes, excises, indirect taxes half of what I earn with hard toil, not interested.
> cover for their real goal of simply cutting social programs under the guise of “we can’t afford it”
And that's a good thing.