| thranx said: Wow long post. I may not have time to reads it all. I have not made much money. I grew up poor and work hard and make what i need. I should be able to buy a house soon, but I would say I am baely middle class. No problem for me as I am happy with what I have and that is what matters to me. I am not against taxing the rich because I feel like I will be rich. I doubt I will be. I dont want to tax the rich and give to others because in America it is not done well. It encourages bad behavior and since we started doing it our problem has gotten worse. Yes the police, and infrastucture help get me to where i am, but the schools and hospital really didn't play a rle. Education in Southern California is a joke. They teach to the lowest common denominator. Had I never went to school I would be exactly where i am now. One of the reasons I dont want the government choosing how to spend money. They suck at it. Maybe in Austraila the government is better at it. But not in the US. Take a look at public schools in ca vs private. You will find that most private schools spend less per student and get better results. The poor are not taxed. They pay no income tax if you make less than 10,000 (around ther any ways). SocialSecurity is something everyon has to pay but you are supposed to get back. I think it would be better to take that away and force people to pay into their own retirement funds( is that how it is in austraila? But even than I would people have to make that choice to look after their future istead of the government doing so.
The private sector could teach every student. Why could they not? What woudl stop it? Poor people still have a recourse. They could ask a charity for assistance, or a church. But I will give you I do think that every child should have the oppurtunity to go to school until about 15-18. College on the other hand should be privatly funded. The current american health system is not a private nor a public one. Its a gaiant mess that is why we have so many problem. Its private in that you buy health insurance, but it so regualted that they took all of the capitalism out of it. Health providers dont really have to compete against each other.
I think the government is less efficent at doing things because they have no motive to be more efficent. Why should they try fdo more with less if there is no compition to do so. Instead what hapens is various departments try to get the most funding and than must use what they ahve. The compition I see in private secotors would not allow this. You can really see this in the school system. If the government showed it was able to spend money well without waste i would be more willing to give it my money, but as it my money is far better spoent going to a church or a charity or directly to a poor person i see on the street.
I don't knw if you have lvied in the US. But if you haven't it may be hard to compare to Austraila. I have never lived in Austraila so its hard for me to compare. But within the us we have very different states, and California is one that tends to tax the rich more and have ore socail services, and it is in bad shape. Compared to other states that have less socail programs and less taxes.
Also Society does not equal government. While i did get to where I am with help, most of that helkp came from other people, from the church, from sports programs, and from neighbors. None wich needed government involvement. And school was the biggest let down for me, my most used government resource. But that is just anectoda.
Thank you for your thought out response. |
When I said "You made a lot of money with hard work? Good for you", I was paraphrasing Elizabeth Warren, and using it in a hypothetical sense. As in, it was a rhetorical use of "you", not referring to you, thranx.
As I noted before, if government is doing a bad job with the money it collects, the solution is to fix government, not to destroy it. You're a democracy - the people should throw out the old, decrepit parties that you have right now, and put in place some parties that actually have some capability. It might also take some adjustments to your constitution - remember, Australia is a much younger country than America, we got to see the elements of the American system that worked and didn't work before we made our constitution.
My point regarding income tax for the poor is that you tax them to begin with. Why tax them, only to give the money back to them? That's just added bureaucracy. In Australia, you just don't pay income tax if you don't earn enough to reach the tax-free threshold. And regarding Australia's equivalent of social security, I did address that a bit, but I'll explain a little better. It is legally mandated that a certain proportion of any person's wage goes into a "superannuation account" - an account held by a private bank that promises a reasonable rate of growth, but you can't access until you reach retirement age (with certain special exceptions). You may then pay extra into it, if you so desire. Note that the money that goes into superannuation does not get taxed prior to going into that account - it is only taxed when you draw it out, once you reach retirement age. The idea is that people with superannuation accounts shouldn't need government support in the form of an aged pension, and thus superannuation reduces cost to the government, and does so without the problem that America faces (your social security taxes pay for current retirees, and America's social security fund is running out of money because of an aging population).
Forcing the poor to depend on the charity of others to have any chance of survival or improvement of their lot in life is coldhearted and disgusting. Society, through the government, works to raise the lot of EVERYONE in the country. And doing so generally actually makes the country a better place. Compare Australia and America, once again. And no, the private sector could NOT teach every student, because not all students can afford to pay for education, and the private sector is mandated to make money. And no, churches aren't a solution, either. It might interest you to learn that Australia has only one private university (we don't separate out "colleges") - the rest are all public universities.
Government has MASSIVE motivation to be more efficient. But more than that, they have no motivation to be profitable. What this means is that more of the money can go directly to where it's needed, rather than trying to maximise profits. Consider Medicare vs private health insurance. What's more, government is accountable to the voters (or rather, it's supposed to be). If government allows its programs to become anything but efficient, the people are supposed to kick them out for failing to do their job. But of course, in America, the electoral system is so screwed up that the Democrats and Republicans, both of whom have no actual problem with government waste, so long as it benefits THEM, have a duopoly on politics. When it is discovered that something government-owned or government-run in Australia is being run badly, the government gets a major thrashing over it. On the other hand, private companies are only accountable to shareholders, who care much more about profits than anything else.
I haven't lived in the US, but I have many ways of learning about it, including friends who do live over there. And in Australia, we're taught about places other than Australia (whereas a lot of Americans would have trouble even locating Australia on a world map). California isn't in a bad state because of liberal policies. It's in a bad state because of mismanagement. This is supposed to result in a change of government at the very next election. Schwarzenegger was elected, drove up debt... and was then elected again. California's problem was continuous borrowing of money to pay for things and spending badly. The fault for California being in such a bad state lies at the feet of the voters, not on liberal policies.
And of course society doesn't equal government. But government's purpose is the government of society, hence the name. It is the central pillar on which society is founded. And as described so well by Americans, it is supposed to be "by the people, for the people". But then, America has optional voting (in Australia, it's mandatory), which results in "get out the vote" (read: moneyhatting) being more important than actually convincing the majority that you're the right candidate. America has first-past-the-post voting (in Australia, we use the preferential system), resulting in a two party system that is nothing more than a duopoly. America has the electoral college system, which means that you get "swing states", and the other states don't matter as much, when it comes to presidents. In so many ways, America's system is screwed up. But the solution isn't shrinking government, it's fixing government.
To summarise the whole point of this, I'll repeat it again - the problem with America isn't that government is big. It's that it's screwed up, it's broken. You need to fix government, not just shrink it. Much of your current system is now well over 200 years old, and is based in outdated thinking. Even Australia's system is getting outdated, screwed up by the 24 hour news cycle... America's system is groaning under the weight of it all. The problem in America has an idiotic devotion to the constitution as it currently stands, as though people in 1776 could understand such concepts as the internet, television, or even POLICE (which didn't exist at the time that the constitution was written).
