ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
This forum really needs an "embedded quote" option, gawd this is tedious to get the Q, reply and next Q for context...
G4G: At the very least they can admit that they already consumed benefits roughly equal to the taxes they paid...
ERD50: Debatable, very debatable - and I solidly do not agree.
It is a mathematical impossibility, but not a practical one.
For easy arithmetic, let's just say the Govt collects $100 in taxes from me, and spends $150 adding $50 to the deficit. So while they spent $150 for my $100 input, due to inefficiencies and the fact that I didn't get to specify how I wanted the money spent, maybe I only got $25 'worth' of benefits out my $100. But I could have got $100 worth out of that $100 if I kept it. So clearly, I did not "consume benefits roughly equal to the taxes I paid", since $25 is far less than $100.
Sure, I just pulled those numbers out of the air for illustration, but let's go back to the fact that us higher wage earners pay the vast majority of Fed Income Tax, that the Feds are handing out money to pay for my neighbor's "clunker" or my neighbor's high efficiency furnace, or electric car or whatever. I don't think it's a stretch that we wont get what we pay in, even if we ignore the future cost of that debt (which we will be paying also).
-ERD50
G4G: At the very least they can admit that they already consumed benefits roughly equal to the taxes they paid...
ERD50: Debatable, very debatable - and I solidly do not agree.
How?
If over the course of our lifetime our government runs up a huge amount of debt (spending > than taxes) AND we require future generations to pay a higher level of taxation than we paid to fund benefits we promised ourselves, how can it be that we didn't consume more, far more, in government services than our taxes paid for? It seems a mathematical impossibility for it to be otherwise.
It is a mathematical impossibility, but not a practical one.
For easy arithmetic, let's just say the Govt collects $100 in taxes from me, and spends $150 adding $50 to the deficit. So while they spent $150 for my $100 input, due to inefficiencies and the fact that I didn't get to specify how I wanted the money spent, maybe I only got $25 'worth' of benefits out my $100. But I could have got $100 worth out of that $100 if I kept it. So clearly, I did not "consume benefits roughly equal to the taxes I paid", since $25 is far less than $100.
Sure, I just pulled those numbers out of the air for illustration, but let's go back to the fact that us higher wage earners pay the vast majority of Fed Income Tax, that the Feds are handing out money to pay for my neighbor's "clunker" or my neighbor's high efficiency furnace, or electric car or whatever. I don't think it's a stretch that we wont get what we pay in, even if we ignore the future cost of that debt (which we will be paying also).
-ERD50