Why should government be kept smaller, and restricted to only certain tasks?

[Foxfyre]

In over 235 years, I have never seen my government take property on a whim

You're 235 years old?. Wow.

Anyways, it's clear that you don't want government kept small and restricted in any way.

You are dismissed.

You still have not addressed my question

Why would you want to restrict the size of the government and the tasks they perform?

May I answer it?

When the federal government does more than it is Constitutionally mandated to do:

1. It requires funding, infrastructure, staffing, equipment and supplies all of which it must obligate the taxpayer to provide whether the taxpayer wants the program or project or not. And invariably when the program or project has run its course and/or outlived its usefulness, the government might find something to do and expand itself to include that something else, but it never scales itself back to the original size. It just doesn't have the balls to give up the power, prestige, influence, and personal increase in wealth that it provides.

2. The federal government by its very nature gets bogged down in excessive rules and regulations and processes and procedures that greatly reduces both its efficiency and effectiveness. Sometimes it gets so involved in just following the process, it loses sight of what it intends to accomplish entirely. It can spend months and years of expensive planning and writing and rewriting how the process will be done only to decide not to do it. Then those in government just shrug, don't give another thought to all that wasted money, and move on to something else that they probably won't accomplish either.

3. The system is designed to be wasteful because any department or agency that does not spend all its budget will have that budget reduced. So they find anything and everything to spend money on to be sure nothing is left at the end of the fiscal year and therefore they will merit a hefty increase. The bigger the budget, the more the people in charge merit in pay. Result? The government owns countless acres - square miles even - of unused land, buildings, and warehouses full of barely or never used and never will be used furniture, furnishings, equipment, and suppies.

4. The system is designed to increase the power, prestige, influence, and personal wealth of those elected, appointed, or hired to run the government, and that is a huge incentive for corruption, graft, and payola that funnels money directly to those same people or to those who will fund their campaigns and/or vote to keep them in office. It is corrupted to both those in government and those the government pays to keep itself there.

5. The government is inefficient and ineffective and excessively expensive whenever it does ANYTHING that can be done by the private sector.

6. Every dime the government spends it has to take out of the economy or obligate future taxpayers to pay. And when the government is growing and prospering more than the private sector is growing and prospering, it is a mathematical certainly that the government will increase while the private sector decreases until there is little or no private sector left.

 

[bripat9643]

You're 235 years old?. Wow.

Anyways, it's clear that you don't want government kept small and restricted in any way.

You are dismissed.

You still have not addressed my question

Why would you want to restrict the size of the government and the tasks they perform?

May I answer it?

When the federal government does more than it is Constitutionally mandated to do:

1. It requires funding, infrastructure, staffing, equipment and supplies all of which it must obligate the taxpayer to provide whether the taxpayer wants the program or project or not. And invariably when the program or project has run its course and/or outlived its usefulness, the government might find something to do and expand itself to include that something else, but it never scales itself back to the original size. It just doesn't have the balls to give up the power, prestige, influence, and personal increase in wealth that it provides.

2. The federal government by its very nature gets bogged down in excessive rules and regulations and processes and procedures that greatly reduces both its efficiency and effectiveness. Sometimes it gets so involved in just following the process, it loses sight of what it intends to accomplish entirely. It can spend months and years of expensive planning and writing and rewriting how the process will be done only to decide not to do it. Then those in government just shrug, don't give another thought to all that wasted money, and move on to something else that they probably won't accomplish either.

3. The system is designed to be wasteful for any department or agency that does not spend all its budget will have that budget reduced. So they find anything and everything to spend money on to be sure nothing is left at the end of the fiscal year and therefore they will merit a hefty increase. The bigger the budget, the more the people in charge merit in pay. Result? The government owns countless acres - square miles even - of unused land, buildings, and warehouses full of barely or never used and never will be used furniture, furnishings, equipment, and suppies.

4. The system is designed to increase the power, prestige, influence, and personal wealth of those elected, appointed, or hired to run the government, and that is a huge incentive for corruption, graft, and payola that funnels money directly to those same people or to those who will fund their campaigns and/or vote to keep them in office. It is corrupted to both those in government and those the government pays to keep itself there.

5. The government is inefficient and ineffective and excessively expensive whenever it does ANYTHING that can be done by the private sector.

6. Every dime the government spends it has to take out of the economy or obligate future taxpayers to pay. And when the government is growing and prospering more than the private sector is growing and prospering, it is a mathematical certainly that the government will increase while the private sector decreases until there is little or no private sector left.

My answer was a lot simpler and more to the point.

 

[OnePercenter]

in 2010 Walmart earned a profit of $21.9 billion and paid $7.1 billion in income taxes so their effective tax rate was 32%.

The claim that it "displaces" 1.4 jobs for every job it creates is purely made up data.

Here ya go. Direct from faux news cousin.....Your own effective tax calculator!

What Is Your Effective Tax Rate? - WSJ.com

Note that the field on the right is labeled "Total INCOME"

So the money that the checker puts in the cash register isn't INCOME?

 

[oreo]

There's only one answer that why government should be kept small--that answer is OBAMACARE. No one on this board-liberal or conservative can honestly say that this isn't a disaster. We have spent 650 million dollars of which they have had 3 years to build and it's so screwed up--it's almost laughable. We have 5.5 million people that are getting their insurance policies canceled--after being promised over 40 times by Barack Obama that they could keep it if they liked--and they now have no place to go to get it--because the Federal Government doesn't have a working web-site. Most notably--the state run Obamacare web-site exchanges are working just fine.

Anything the Federal Government puts their fingers into they're going to screw it up.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Why would anyone want a government restricted to only certain tasks?

Why would anyone want a government that wasn't allowed to take all their property on a whim?

I have no idea.

In over 235 years, I have never seen my government take property on a whim

If you were 235 years old that statement might make sense.

As for government not taking property on a whim, have you ever heard of Kelo?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Why would anyone want a government that wasn't allowed to take all their property on a whim?

I have no idea.

In over 235 years, I have never seen my government take property on a whim

Shades of manifest destiny! I'm gonna faint.

I wonder if stealing all that land from the Indians, one of the multitude of things that rightwinger wants me to feel bad about, counts as taking property on a whim.

I wonder if Solomon Northrup felt better about being sold into slavery because it wasn't whimsical.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Anytime someone uses a subsidy to reduce their taxes, that lost (unrealized) revenue has to be made up. It's that simple.

A business expense is not a subsidy.

In finance, a subsidy is aid. A tax deduction is a form of indirect aid.

In real life, a subsidy is giving someone something they didn't have. Taking less of what they have is not a subsidy.

 

[Cecilie1200]

In that case, it is a subsidy to everyone who pays taxes because everyone gets to deduct expenses from their taxes. I guess that means that, in the big picture, you get to subsidize yourself.

Except we all know the real world doesn't work that way, which is why you sound so stupid for trying to argue unrealized tax revenues like it is a real thing.

a tax deduction is not a subsidy. A subsidy is a direct payment from the government. EIC is a subsidy.

Deductions targeted to reward specific people or mandate behaviors function the same as subsidies. Not sure why it matters what we call them.

It's this little thing called "communication". It's the purpose of language, and is achieved much better if one believes that words mean things, and chooses them precisely and accordingly.

 

[Cecilie1200]

true, but our left wing friends continually misuse the word 'subsidy'. just trying to set them straight.

Some of our more thoughtful libertarian friends are also misunderstanding exactly what is a subsidy and what is not too.

I'm not that interested in whether we call the games we play with the tax code 'subsidies' or 'incentives' or 'gifts-to-lobbyists'. But I would like to see the practice abolished. It's just plain bad government in my view.

Why?

 

[Cecilie1200]

So which constitutional right has been taken from me?

There are dozens of different plans, I've looked.

or even if you want any.

Sure, but what if you get cancer? I have to pay for your cancer treatment?

Um, whose idea was it that taxpaying strangers "have to" pay for anyone else's medical care in the first place? I love how you leftists put your shit ideas into place, and THEN insist that we all have to accept EVEN MORE of your shit ideas, in order to ease the burden imposed by your FIRST shit idea.

 

[dblack]

Some of our more thoughtful libertarian friends are also misunderstanding exactly what is a subsidy and what is not too.

I'm not that interested in whether we call the games we play with the tax code 'subsidies' or 'incentives' or 'gifts-to-lobbyists'. But I would like to see the practice abolished. It's just plain bad government in my view.

Why?

Because it violates the fundamental ideas of equal rights and rule of law. Everyone should have to obey the same laws. Our leaders have learned to use the tax code as backdoor legislation to force things on us we'd never tolerate as straightforward laws. The 'individual mandate' is the perfect case in point.

 

[Foxfyre]

Here ya go. Direct from faux news cousin.....Your own effective tax calculator!

What Is Your Effective Tax Rate? - WSJ.com

Note that the field on the right is labeled "Total INCOME"

So the money that the checker puts in the cash register isn't INCOME?

Not according to the government nor according to the insurance company who insures the policyholder against loss of income. The money the checker puts into the cash register LESS the cost of hiring that checker and all other employees, the wholesale cost of the product sold, all the overhead required for the checker to work, and all other expenses of running the business -- ie receipts less all cost/expenses of doing business equals the employer's profit or actual income..

 

[FA_Q2]

Not all that many years ago, the state of New Mexico and a barely incorporated Village of Rio Rancho put together a tax break for an Intel plant to establish itself there. Again it didn't take a penny out of anybody's pocket or put a penny into Intel's pocket. It was bait dangled out there to get a very large employer to locate on the high desert with few amenities when it could have chosen a more attractive location. Intel is now New Mexico's largest single private sector employer, pays massive taxes to the State of New Mexico and the city, has donated many wonderful things for the community, and the good jobs it has created have provided a market base for hundreds of other businesses providing a good living for tens of thousands that wouldn't exist without Intel. Rio Rancho is the fastest growing city in New Mexico, and the odds are good that it will be the largest in a few years.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, thinks that initial tax break was not a good investment and was not a huge benefit to all, i.e. promoted the general welfare.

A government initiative that benefits only one entity is of course immoral. But one that creates private sector jobs for many hundreds or thousands including providing a market base for many other private sector enterprises is a solid investment.

It costs nobody anything. And the benefits are huge.

Your land is prime land for raising crops. You, however, do not want to be a farmer and decide that you have no interest in developing your land. Perhaps you want to do something else with it. Maybe you like it the way it is. The rest of the community has decided that they want the tax revenue and goods that would be brought to market if your land was developed and they then decide that property rights no longer belong to you. Just to everyone else. They are allowed access to equal law but have decided that because things would be ‘better’ you don’t. It would be in everyone’s best interest if we simply remove you from your land and take what is on it. That is the exact same ‘logic’ that you have used to justify charging everyone else one rate but giving another entity a different one.


You are willing to give one business a rate that is lower or other incentives to move into an area but then that same rate is not applied to local competition. What you have done, in effect, is allow company X to price their products lower than the others that are already there essentially limiting competition from other companies. How can you think that is a good practice? That is the very heart of government picking winners and losers. It is how the government practices favoritism.

Your logic is the EXACT same logic that justifies Solyndra, Halliburton and a thousand other crony institutions that the government has backed. Are you really comfortable supporting those endeavors?


You state that the practice costs nothing. In that you could not be more incorrect. It does not cost tax dollars up front but that is as far as you are looking into it. What it does cost is competition and law. It changes the purpose of government from enforcing law to picking those that law is applicable to. It is the heart of why the government has moved into economic matters and as long as that practice remains there will ALWAYS be government right there bailing out banks and giving loans to campaign donors. As long as government retains the ability to give business the edge over its competitors then those businesses will continue to corrupt government in order to gain those favors from them.

The initiative took not one dime out of the public treasury. The initiative put not one dime into the pocket of Intel owners other than what Intel would subsequently earn. It raised nobody's taxes. It confiscated nobody's property. All it did was make what was a highly unattractive location more attractive.

The initiative resulted some 3,300 hundred very good paying private sector jobs in an area in which unemployment was high and people very much needed the work. Those 3,300 jobs provided an economic base that other businesses quickly moved in to serve, which in turn provided an economic foundation supporting more commerce and industry. Result? Providing an initial tax break for a large manufacturing plant has resulted in a thriving, prosperous community and created tens of thousands - probably hundreds of thousands of jobs.

It was an initiative that was win win for all concerned and absolutely promoted the general welfare.

It was good government.

[MENTION=6847]Foxfyre[/MENTION]
(Because I think some of these are getting buried as DBlack pointed some of this out already)

Completely and totally irrelevant as you piled right over my entire post completely missing the point. You are again focused solely on the fact that nothing was taken out of the treasury bust still fail to see that the REAL travesty is in the fact that one entity was allowed to not comply with the law where other entities were not. I can come up with a thousand different examples all outlining how this is absolutely corrosive.

You pay a 50% tax rate. Your neighbor, on the other hand, pays a scant 10% tax rate. He pays 40% less because the local company (company X) that produces water heaters and air conditioners donated to the local politician’s campaign. Now that politician has, using YOUR exact justification, decided to give your neighbor a huge tax break because he has purchased a water heater and air conditioner that ‘helped create local jobs.’ Nothing was ever taken from the coffers. Not one red cent in tax monies was expended. Never mind that now his competitor did not donate to the campaign and therefore could no longer compete with company X. Never mind that now, as a DIRECT result that competitor has gone out of business also ensuring that company X is able to charge even more for his product considering he now has less competition and prospective clients have less supply to purchase. It is all okay that you are paying way more in taxes because the politician did this in order to promote the ‘common good’ through policies that were ‘business friendly.’ Hell, the fact that the company paid the politician off is actually irrelevant – the policy still sucks and should be outlawed.

In the end you have still to overcome one basic fact – you are advocating for politicians to be able to apply one law to you and then NOT apply that law to your neighbor. THAT is sickening and completely contrary to the concept of rule of law. We cannot, under any circumstances, have a nation of laws when we are creating special groups of entities that are above that law. Your justification is the EXACT same justifications that are used in Solyndra, the bank bailouts and the auto company bailouts. EXACTLY THE SAME.

I don’t think that you realize it but your essentially advocating for democrat based concepts with a conservative façade over them. I hope that you can see the problem here because it is a doozy and one of the central reasons that the republicans have become the disaster of a party that they are today. They have lost the concept of law to the power of special interests.

 

[FA_Q2]

The court decided in favor of expanding the powers of the federal government. It ruled against the rights of state governments. In other words, it ruled against the rights of people to set their own laws locally.

No banana.

I get it now

You only support tyranny at the STATE level

Thanks for straightening that out for us fingerboy

The states were the parties contesting these laws. The Supreme Court ruled against the states. In other words, it failed to rule against itself.

Pretty easy concept to understand.

Citizens United.

You did ask for one after all

 

[FA_Q2]

First it's 'Well the plan we had is no longer available to us', then 'They amended the coverages'. So which is it?

That is an argument in semantics as they are the exact same thing. The coverage’s that she was looking for are no longer there and have been replaced by another set of coverage’s that are not as good but also happen to cost more.

Stop arguing against the simple FACT that this is happening. No one on their right mind is denying that this is the case for many Americans. It is an intrinsic part of the law.

Here ya go. Direct from faux news cousin.....Your own effective tax calculator!

What Is Your Effective Tax Rate? - WSJ.com

Note that the field on the right is labeled "Total INCOME"

So the money that the checker puts in the cash register isn't INCOME?

I thought that you had claimed to run a business at one time? I fail to see how anyone can claim that and misunderstand such a basic term. It is not income for all the reasons that Fox pointed out above (beat me to the punch here).

 

[FA_Q2]

I don't agree at all, except for Walmart. A company that in 2012 made 15.1B in cash profit, paid 0.01% effective Federal tax, displaces 1.4 jobs for everyone created, then dumps their employee healthcare on the taxpayers should be made to pay back every cent.

Where has anyone demonstrated that Walmart is responsible for the healthcare of its employees?

Every American has a <GOVERNMENT PROVIDED>* right to be taken care of.

*NOTE: Government reserves the right to define, change, substitute or otherwise deny any ‘right’ that it deems necessary for the betterment and greater good of any entity that it deems more important than you. Terms and conditions on exercising those rights apply. Rights not available everywhere or to everyone. See your local government office for a list of rights that you are currently privileged by your government masters to enjoy.

There, DBlack, I fixed it for you. You realize that you *almost* let the term god slip in! For shame…

 

[FA_Q2]

Hard to compete with voters who's rather depend on the government to get what they feel they "need". Sorta puts to shame the old generation who rolls up their sleeves and works hard to supply a better life for the next generation. Now we simply vote for a system that will do it for us, making each generation less appreciative and more selfish than the last. There used to be a time when parents were motivated by passing down strong, solid work ethics to their children. Government entitlements have changed all that.

Hate to break it to ya....

But everyone votes based on what they "need"
Especially the wealthy who get more of what they "need" from politicians than anyone else

Indeed. I'd like to see what the lobbyist group for $7.50/hour workers looks like. Where are their offices in D.C.?

They have none. Of course you don’t seem to realize that the policies YOU push are the exact ones that create those lobbies for the major companies and big business interests. Those lobbies are there to get those tax breaks that the left demands the government be allowed to offer, those loans that the left demands the government supply and the regulation that the left demands the government must do in order to push the political agenda of the moment (green energy et al)

You cannot complain about the lobbyists that your own ideology creates. That is yet another case of whining about the need for a big government solution to a problem created by big government.

 

[rightwinger]

You're 235 years old?. Wow.

Anyways, it's clear that you don't want government kept small and restricted in any way.

You are dismissed.

You still have not addressed my question

Why would you want to restrict the size of the government and the tasks they perform?

May I answer it?

When the federal government does more than it is Constitutionally mandated to do:

1. It requires funding, infrastructure, staffing, equipment and supplies all of which it must obligate the taxpayer to provide whether the taxpayer wants the program or project or not. And invariably when the program or project has run its course and/or outlived its usefulness, the government might find something to do and expand itself to include that something else, but it never scales itself back to the original size. It just doesn't have the balls to give up the power, prestige, influence, and personal increase in wealth that it provides.

2. The federal government by its very nature gets bogged down in excessive rules and regulations and processes and procedures that greatly reduces both its efficiency and effectiveness. Sometimes it gets so involved in just following the process, it loses sight of what it intends to accomplish entirely. It can spend months and years of expensive planning and writing and rewriting how the process will be done only to decide not to do it. Then those in government just shrug, don't give another thought to all that wasted money, and move on to something else that they probably won't accomplish either.

3. The system is designed to be wasteful because any department or agency that does not spend all its budget will have that budget reduced. So they find anything and everything to spend money on to be sure nothing is left at the end of the fiscal year and therefore they will merit a hefty increase. The bigger the budget, the more the people in charge merit in pay. Result? The government owns countless acres - square miles even - of unused land, buildings, and warehouses full of barely or never used and never will be used furniture, furnishings, equipment, and suppies.

4. The system is designed to increase the power, prestige, influence, and personal wealth of those elected, appointed, or hired to run the government, and that is a huge incentive for corruption, graft, and payola that funnels money directly to those same people or to those who will fund their campaigns and/or vote to keep them in office. It is corrupted to both those in government and those the government pays to keep itself there.

5. The government is inefficient and ineffective and excessively expensive whenever it does ANYTHING that can be done by the private sector.

6. Every dime the government spends it has to take out of the economy or obligate future taxpayers to pay. And when the government is growing and prospering more than the private sector is growing and prospering, it is a mathematical certainly that the government will increase while the private sector decreases until there is little or no private sector left.

Thank you for your honest and well thought out response. I wish other posters on this thread would emulate you

We function better as a society than we do as a bunch of individuals struggling to survive. A society makes us stronger and better able to function. They provide us with security, take care of the weaker members, infrastructure. We also ask our society to provide free education, monitor our food and water supplies, provide healthcare for those who can't afford it as well as thousands of other tasks.

We established a Constitutional government to execute those societal functions. We give them broad latitude to do what needs to be done. We decide what we need our government to do through the election process. That process decides how big or how small a government we need and what functions we want them to perform

 

[dblack]

Excellent exchange. The real issue here is finding consensus on the purpose of government - that's where the disagreement lies.

You still have not addressed my question

Why would you want to restrict the size of the government and the tasks they perform?

May I answer it?

When the federal government does more than it is Constitutionally mandated to do:

1. It requires funding, infrastructure, staffing, equipment and supplies all of which it must obligate the taxpayer to provide whether the taxpayer wants the program or project or not. And invariably when the program or project has run its course and/or outlived its usefulness, the government might find something to do and expand itself to include that something else, but it never scales itself back to the original size. It just doesn't have the balls to give up the power, prestige, influence, and personal increase in wealth that it provides.

2. The federal government by its very nature gets bogged down in excessive rules and regulations and processes and procedures that greatly reduces both its efficiency and effectiveness. Sometimes it gets so involved in just following the process, it loses sight of what it intends to accomplish entirely. It can spend months and years of expensive planning and writing and rewriting how the process will be done only to decide not to do it. Then those in government just shrug, don't give another thought to all that wasted money, and move on to something else that they probably won't accomplish either.

3. The system is designed to be wasteful because any department or agency that does not spend all its budget will have that budget reduced. So they find anything and everything to spend money on to be sure nothing is left at the end of the fiscal year and therefore they will merit a hefty increase. The bigger the budget, the more the people in charge merit in pay. Result? The government owns countless acres - square miles even - of unused land, buildings, and warehouses full of barely or never used and never will be used furniture, furnishings, equipment, and suppies.

4. The system is designed to increase the power, prestige, influence, and personal wealth of those elected, appointed, or hired to run the government, and that is a huge incentive for corruption, graft, and payola that funnels money directly to those same people or to those who will fund their campaigns and/or vote to keep them in office. It is corrupted to both those in government and those the government pays to keep itself there.

5. The government is inefficient and ineffective and excessively expensive whenever it does ANYTHING that can be done by the private sector.

6. Every dime the government spends it has to take out of the economy or obligate future taxpayers to pay. And when the government is growing and prospering more than the private sector is growing and prospering, it is a mathematical certainly that the government will increase while the private sector decreases until there is little or no private sector left.

Thank you for your honest and well thought out response. I wish other posters on this thread would emulate you

We function better as a society than we do as a bunch of individuals struggling to survive. A society makes us stronger and better able to function. They provide us with security, take care of the weaker members, infrastructure. We also ask our society to provide free education, monitor our food and water supplies, provide healthcare for those who can't afford it as well as thousands of other tasks.

We established a Constitutional government to execute those societal functions. We give them broad latitude to do what needs to be done. We decide what we need our government to do through the election process. That process decides how big or how small a government we need and what functions we want them to perform

My answer to the question is different than Foxy's. For me, the need for restricting government's scope and reach has nothing to do with its inherent efficiency or wastefulness. Even if we could streamline government and eliminate all corruption, I'd still want to see it explicitly limited to certain functions. For me, it comes down to the fact that the essential means of government is coercion. That's what distinguishes it from all other social institutions.

The libertarian ethos is based on the idea that the primary threat to social stability is the initiation of force to achieve our ends - i.e. bullying is bad. The concept of government rests on the assumption that the only way to deal with a bully is to respond in kind. We create government as an organized means of self-defense. From that perspective, the only justifiable use of government force is in achieving that end.

Hmm.... It occurs to me I could bloviate about this for several more paragraphs, but it's Thanksgiving. So, I'll sum up for now by saying that government should only be used in situations where the application of violent force is justified. As a simple litmus test, if you can morally justifying killing someone who stands in the way of something the government is trying to do, it's probably a proper function of government. Otherwise, we should look for better alternatives that embrace voluntary cooperation.

 

[bripat9643]

I get it now

You only support tyranny at the STATE level

Thanks for straightening that out for us fingerboy

The states were the parties contesting these laws. The Supreme Court ruled against the states. In other words, it failed to rule against itself.

Pretty easy concept to understand.

Citizens United.

You did ask for one after all

You have named on legitimate one. That's about all I can think of.