Translation:

When someone says something is free -> "I will pay for that and you will owe me nothing"

When the government says something is free -> "I will hold a gun up to Bob's head and make him pay for that for you"

@freemo
Yeah. Obviously.

Except if you want to pay and organize yourself the defense of this country and its democracy, currency and other institutions.

Freedom is not free.

@pthenq1 America managed to win the revolutionary war long before it collected taxes.

That said I am not suggesting taxes shouldnt exist. Only that calling it free is quite silly.

@freemo
Well. I am sure someone paid for it.
Besides, it is cheaper to organize a 18th century army than a 21st century one.

But indeed it is not free

@pthenq1 Yes people paid for it, but not through force and not through taxes is the point. It was voluntary.

People tend to underestimate just how little we need the government to organize and fund things. Not that I'm saying we should do away with taxes overall, but for the most part people think they can solve problems by throwing more and more taxes at a problem that just results in waste and very poor solutions, if they be solutions at all.

I generally feel taxes need to be minimized to just the absolute essentials. Though keep in mind I consider things like open-access education an absolute essential too :)

@freemo
The debate about the size of the taxes is an open and healthy one. Same the debate about who pays them and how much.

Current democracies are expensive. Modern society are expensive.
There are new costs. Education costs are higher. People live 2 or 3 times longer adding to the cost. Infrastructure is more complex. Our adversaries are bigger, etc.

The bill is not so low. In fact we have now deficit.

@pthenq1 Agreed. Also keep in mind how much taxes I pay depends alot on the country and how well their government spends it.

In the USA the government taxes the rich, and the poor as much as europe, in fact more in some cases. Yes so much of the money is wasted on the military or doing a shitty and inefficient job at solving most problems that I can easily argue that based on the current output of the government we should be paying half what we do in taxes, less if we cut our military spending.

On the other hand the Netherlands has some of the highest taxes in europe. Yet their cities and roads are as clean as they come, technology invesments are made for all sorts of public services, the infrastructure is amazing. Despite paying about the same as I would in america for the most part I dont mind spending the money on taxes because I feel im actually getting a good value in return.

@freemo in some Trump's years I paid more taxes than Bezos.

And I do not agree with that!

@freemo
Yes. Optimizing expenses would be healthy.
USA has the worst and most expensive Heath system in the world. That could be reduced minimum 90% without losing quality.

Defense must be optimized. But we would probably spend more. A China/USA world war is coming. Except if we move forward to a space race to mine, develop and colonize the moon and Mars (a more healthy alternative). In both cases we need an expansion of expenses there.

And the education system is incredible expensive an inefficient. It could be reduced the taxes and making universities free for the people at the same time. We need more engineers, no less.

Lot of optimizarions

@pthenq1 The USA health system isnt a governement expense. So sayings its expensive is a bit out of scope of the point here of government spending. That said I do agree the US system of healthcare needs to be reformed from a price perspective, just as the european healthcare system needs to be reformed from a quality perspective.

The rest I largely agree with yea.