To add to that: There are also "compounding effects" from investments made by tax money, just as for any other investments, the difference is that the compounding gains are collectively owned and not controlled by an individual.
> A government agency spending $300 million in taxpayer dollars to produce sterilized flies sounds like a dream scenario for a DOGE team looking to cut waste, fraud, and abuse.
> Grocery shoppers could get hit with higher prices if the screwworm cases turn into a full-blown outbreak. That could cost $3 billion across the Southwest, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Good tax, or bad tax?
Returning to your question, though: Yes, I assert the cost of troubleshooting a "bad tax" may exceed the benefits of having addressed it.
"Look at the pros and cons of each one" is an enormous handwave; I've provided very clear evidence of our inability to do that successfully in a very topical and concrete case.
What DOGE did is not one I'd consider proper review, so bringing them up doesn't necessarily help your point. There definitely are ways to look at each tax and determine its worth, in a non-partisan way.
It is already done today. Academic panels, economists writing papers on impacts of various policies like rent control, monetary policy, and yes, taxes. Are some of them politically motivated or have academic disagreements? Sure, all people have personal politics and biases. But that is better than throwing up ones hands and saying we should accept all bad taxes because good ones also exist. By that logic, any tax I suggest should be accepted by you, because there is no way to tell if it's good or bad right?
Why are you taking Marxist as an insult? Maybe that's your first issue, it's an accurate label for someone who believes in the labor theory of value which is something Marx came up.
And yes, economists are human of course (unless they're now AI). Not sure how that changes what I said. Just because they disagree doesn't mean what they do isn't better than throwing your hands up and saying it can't be done.
> There definitely are ways to look at each tax and determine its worth, in a non-partisan way.
You then asserted those are:
> Academic panels, economists writing papers on impacts of various policies like rent control, monetary policy, and yes, taxes.
But Marx himself is an example of that process - an economist, writing papers on all this. You clearly don't agree with his conclusions, so now we're... right back where we started?
Nowhere did I say I have to agree with their conclusions to think that the work they're doing on analysis of policy is worthwhile, while your logic seems to be that it is not, which is what I disagree with. If that's not your argument then apologies.
No? I'm not an economist or policy maker so why does it matter what I think? As long as the economists can broadly agree, which they do on many topics, and enact that into policy, then that's fine. And is what happens today, functionally. So I really don't see how your argument to throw up your hands makes any sense, seems like you don't trust professionals to do their job.
Anyway, you're seeming to misunderstand me when I asked you questions as well, such as why you took Marxist for an insult for example when it accurately describes what I was talking about. I'm not the only one that will answer your questions, seems like there is some sort of sealioning you're doing in this thread.
We are tweaking a multi-trillion dollar system impacting hundreds of millions of people directly and billions indirectly. The impacts of those tweaks take years or decades to (imperfectly!) assess. Many of the tweaks and their impacts are a matter of deep partisan and academic contention.
I'm noting that our political system seems to generate lots of folks going "this is wasteful spending!" when it's… not.
That results in challenges in determining what's a "bad tax" and what's a "good tax", and the consequences of cutting programs may take time to show up.
You can still collect taxes without taxing people who have already been taxed in the form of needing to exchange a large fraction of their life for the wage.
I'm entirely onboard with reducing tax on low/mid income folks currently "exchanging a large fraction of their life for the small wage" in favor of increased taxes on the billionaire class, yes.
We have the current inefficient, corrupt, and incompetent government in the US because the anti-tax wealthy class threw an all-out tantrum over even the idea of paying a tiny bit more tax.
I live in Germany and I pay almost 50% of my income in income tax and social tax. There is always "just that tiny bit more tax" that will magically fix the system (it won't).
Turns out paying more money to an already corrupt government doesn't turn it less corrupt. Go figure, hm?
> I live in Germany and I pay almost 50% of my income in income tax and social tax.
I live in the US and pay less raw tax than that, for sure.
But I reported $49k in medical expenses (premiums, deductible, copays, stuff they won't cover) last year on my taxes, and I've got two kids going to college in a year, which may cost $10-40k/year for each.
My trade-off is not seeing a specialist for 6 months and more while paying 10k healthcare premiums a year for state mandated healthcare. Dermatologists in my city only take privately insured patients or self-paying patients. So I pay 300 Eur a visit anyway. On a third of a US software engineer's salary. I don't qualify for private insurance so im OOL.
I’m in the US. We have six month waits for specialists too. And we pay almost twice what y’all pay per capita. Inclusive of both private and public spend.
You forget that the college expense is temporary while the taxes are forever. And Germany still makes you get private insurance for medical. A single year of taxes in Germany based on my current American income would pay for all of that you just said. So then my question for you is. What were you doing with your money in those other years? I hope it was saving it. Because otherwise I'm gonna eye roll hard at you wanting to increase taxes on everyone just to get a small cut in how much you pay during one fiscal year. Seems silly.
I am very familiar with American student loans. I paid my 40k off in about 11 months by keeping my spending down that year. It was easy. I don't want to pay 15% of my income forever just because you can't budget. Also frankly your kids should be paying their own way through college. That's a nice gift you're giving them but it's 100% a discretionary expense and is basically you saying "I have so much money I can simply gift it to my kids". Shit I wish I had that.
I never said I was - I'll certainly try to help where I can. I don't have that kind of money; see aforementioned healthcare costs! They're gonna need loans, it's probably gonna be quite a bit more than $40k, and I'm pretty dubious in the current job market that they're gonna have $40k in discretional annual income on the other end.
> I don't want to pay 15% of my income forever just because you can't budget.
And I don't want to go bankrupt from ever-rising medical costs, but here we are.
We have an inefficient, corrupt and incompetent government in the US because we voted for it. And we keep voting for it. That's our revealed preference. We obviously like inefficient, corrupt, incompetent governments.
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