To simplify it dramatically with an example, I'd rather pay $3 on the toll road and $50k for a surgery myself than pay $10 in taxes towards the road and $100k in taxes towards the healthcare system but receive both of them for "free".
I understand the advantages of a social safety net, I do. But misappropriation of someone's hard-earned money is frustrating as well.
But at least they won't put you in prison if you decide not to buy their product.
[1] https://hbr.org/2018/03/is-lack-of-competition-strangling-th...
There's absolutely an equivalent, publicly elected officials lose re-election campaigns all the time.
If a government entity wastes too much money, their budget is increased for the next fiscal year. There is no feedback loop to govern the waste.
See: Everything you just talked about and cost-plus contracts. The US demonstrates both.
You can’t opt out of high taxes.
I highly doubt either any future city government would allow all the highways to be converted to privately owned toll roads.
I don't really think "Yankee Swap" is the best model for land management, my guy.
Roads, education, healthcare etc.
Also other people work as hard as you do.
And you know of course it's better for you obviously but only as long as you are part of that group.
There is a reason why people do gofundmes after they can't work anymore.
And the riots etc? Guess what social injustice increases either your life risk or the money you spend of protecting you.
Who has most from low taxes? Rich.
And yes I know I know hn also has plenty of fang people
That would be a nice scenario to choose to be in.
However, the US _government_ pretty much spends more per-person than those countries with a social net [1]. So in reality, you're paying those taxes of those social countries and also getting to pay private insurance ontop of that. Although current taxes are lower than the social countries since the government's expenditures are debt financed but if the USG were to stop they'd have to raise taxes to pay it with revenue and then you'll be really wondering why you're paying the same in taxes as the EU and not getting EU benefits.
[1]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.GHED.PP.CD?most_...
- cities designed around cars
- bad worker protection laws
- corporate welfare first before human welfare
- monopolies driving up prices.
Walking is obviously better than not walking, but something other than cars is to blame for the ballooning of the American public. 75% of America is either overweight or obese right now. That alone puts you at risk for about a million health issues and diseases.
Do you have a citation for that? I'm seeing numbers closer to 30% (which is still bad).
"Percent of adults aged 20 and over with overweight, including obesity: 73.6%"
Of course that also shows how many Americans are overweight since the scrawny track kid is considered super skinny.
There are certainly inefficiencies out there, and we should always be trying to root them out, but sometimes if you starve an organization of funding, it doesn't perform very well. Shocker!
If the last couple of years proved anything, it's that money is all made up. It doesn't mean anything, like points on HN or Reddit karma. You happen to be able to use money to trade for goods and services, but outside of that, it's a made up numbers game, like Monopoly.
https://taxfoundation.org/historical-income-tax-rates-bracke...
So, you'd have to show that since, let's say 1940, the QoL of Americans has improved as a direct result of lower taxes.
We should be able to look at things like salary, cost of living such as price of homes, education, and food all improving against inflation. So, unless you can do that, your argument for lower taxes is baseless and without merit.
> But misappropriation of someone's hard-earned money is frustrating as well.
Hard-earned money that is earned because of the society supported by the taxes that person pays. Without that society, you would not be earning the same amount. No hard-earned money is earned by an individual in the US.
So yeah, I'd rather have single payer healthcare, and we can just fire all of the leeches.
The whole point of a single-payer system is that you will spend less, by virtue of the government using its single-buyer negotiating power to push down prices.
And also by virtue of firing all the useless parasites and middlemen that create, consume, and shuffle the mountains of paperwork that surround US health insurance, advertising, billing, etc. Unsurprisingly, these middle-men don't look kindly upon being eliminated, and have somehow convinced half the country that if it weren't for their heroic efforts, grandma would never get a cardiac shunt, and that the world would literally end if Medicare was actually allowed to negotiate drug prices.
It feels like this is the main goal.
Do you actually have any sources for this?
This is a misunderstanding. These people are not "delivering service". They are doing "governance and administration". And administration size on Germany is acting like a ratchet: growing sometimes, but never shrinking.
No one stops to ask why the program or government office doesn't do it's job well, the issue is funding!
And no, it's not because of reduced taxation from rich to working class, or missing taxes on property or some other policy. These policies didn't change that much in the last decade or two. Yet throughout the last decade the state and social security systems had record income, record levels of employment and managed to run down pretty much every part of the public system from education, over healthcare to defense. The money just vanished.
I am very much convinced that Germany as a whole doesn't have an income problem, but a spending problem.