"I helped create the GOP tax myth. Trump is wrong. Tax cuts don't equal growth."

The system is set up for you to pay your taxes in US dollars. The vast bulk of tax revenues are in US dollars. My W2 says US dollars paid not Euros. You are grasping at straws here. I lived abroad and had tax equalization as part of my package. My individual tax return was a huge document, it costs my company 10 grand a year in fees just to file my taxes. I did not pay one cent to the US treasury in Francs, not one penny.

 

When push comes to shove they will take it in whatever form you've got it.

As an experiment don't convert any of your wages into Dollars. Keep them in Francs.
See if you don't have to pay any tax.
Your French bank has a deal with the US government. They will take your Francs.

I get your story about the history of the dollar. But taxes are not just paid in dollars and never have been. In preference, sure. But in goods and services otherwise.

 

Agreed it is so unquantifiable a return on your money that no one can hold any faith in it's honesty. We know from our own human experiences that faced with such a lack of accountability, no reasonable standards of integrity can be expected.

We simply have no proof if our taxes are well spent or not.

They may be delivering us "heaven on Earth" as advertised, but they might not.

 

You don't really seem to be understanding. If you walk into an IRS and attempt to pay in anything other than a dollar, will they take it? No.

The real problem here is that you don't really understand what taxes are for in modern fiat economies.

You think that taxes are taken to fund spending. That is not why the government collects taxes.

The government creates money by crediting bank accounts. When you get your tax return or a Vet gets a disability check, there's no account that's drawn from. There is no transfer of dollars behind the scenes. There is just a bookkeeping entry in a big spreadsheet indicating how much money was given out and that amount is subtracted from the amount collected in taxes. If the number is positive the government added money to the economy via the money is created (what you call the deficit). If that number is negative the government took more money out of the economy than it put in via spending (what you'd call a surplus).

We know this is true because governments create spending bills and begin spending money before the taxes are collected.

When people don't pay their taxes it leaves more money in the economy than the government intended. If the takes property or foreign dollars the tax debt isn't absolved until they are converted into US dollars, thus the US government sells the property and/or exchanges the foreign dollars. In both cases, the government uses the property to remove US dollars from the US economy. In either case, the property or foreign currency is returned to the private sector and US dollars are removed from the economy.

 

I don't walk into the IRS to attempt to pay anything.
If I don't pay, they will come to me and they will take anything of value. Whatever currency I've got, barter goods even.
And it's always been this way.

And the rest of what you just said, gibber. I CBA to read it. Really, really out there stuff. Cloud cuckoo land.
If I don't pay any tax the government has more money. Sure. Excuse me if I don't bother to find out more.

 

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance. - Thomas Sowell

 

so??? yes we are all richer thanks to roads but would be richer still if they were built by the private sector in a capitalist economy. Do you understand?

 

Better to dwell on in my own ignorance than to share more of yours.

 

more trivial pursuit because you are afraid to make the case for liberalism. Why waste your time?

 

Oh I sure do! I cannot imagine a worse example, LOL. Roads built by the private sector have to swerve around the property of every recalcitrant old cat lady and stop at the property marker of well heeled businesses. Publicly built roads get to go miles and miles and miles and miles . Sometimes they can go all the way from one American coast through to the other using this little trick of the trade https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/eminent_domain ,using uniform standards of construction, signage and naming. Its also kind of useful that the same government entity that is responsible for developing a coherent transportation system through a city, and enforcing safety on the roads including where the streetlights, curve speeds, and four way stops has ultimate control over the whole damn thing.

 

If you have any idea what your point is please let me know. Thanks

 

Were the railroads state built then?

 

some were some not, guess which ones did better?

 

Almost all were built with state help, and those that were not almost all went bankrupt because the value of all desirable infrastructure is taken by landowners.

 

Privately built roads have an unrelieved record of financial failure because their value is appropriated by landowners. Publicly built roads are also exclusively a subsidy to landowners, but governments do not go bankrupt so easily.

 

wrong of course the more communism the more failure JJ HIll was most private and most successful

 

Wrong again. Hill got federal land grants, and more importantly, bought up vast federal lands for a song, which he then sold on and profited immensely from BECAUSE HE WAS THE LANDOWNER. I told you landowners take all the value of infrastructure. Hill only avoided going bankrupt by BEING the landowner, which enabled him to recapture not only the land value his railroads added, but the additional land value everyone else added, especially all the immigrants Hill brought in. Hill was heavily subsidized by government, like any landowner, and the measure of that subsidy was the vast increase in land value he obtained over and above what his railroads created.

 

Was Hill evil and Churchill good?

 

The Great Northern was the first transcontinental built without public money and just a few land grants, and was one of the few transcontinental railroads not to go bankrupt.

 

Hill profited from evil, as all the privileged do. But I don't call people evil just for taking advantage of an evil system that happens to be in place in their lifetimes. Similarly, I don't call American Founders like Jefferson and Washington evil because they owned slaves, let alone someone like Marcus Aurelius. It's when people try to rationalize and justify the evil system to prevent it from being reformed that they become evil.

I don't think there's much doubt that Churchill was a great man, and I am pretty sure that he was also a good one. After all, he was a scion of an aristocratic landowning family who spoke out against landowner privilege, which is pretty convincing bona fides in my book. But he was a Victorian, after all. Judging his less laudable actions by modern standards rather than Victorian ones is neither informative nor fair.

 

Because it was a major landowner and land speculator, not just a railroad. Without its land profits it would certainly have gone broke. The full value of transportation infrastructure is taken by landowners.

 

Government accounts are open to the public to examine. While there are certainly inefficiencies, democratic countries' governments do tend to get good value for money, as proved by the size of the subsidy their spending provides to landowners. Land value is NOTHING BUT the market's estimate of how much more the landowner will take from society by owning the land than he will pay in taxes on it. That is not only more than they pay in taxes; it is more than everyone else pays, too.

There is a strong positive correlation between government spending as a fraction of GDP and typical indices of human well-being. The astronomical value of land in countries with high government spending as a fraction of GDP is further evidence that landowners are getting excellent value for taxpayers' money .

 

The records may be there and we may even have access to those records. But the interpretation of what is well spent and poorly spent is a very subjective matter and two people will be unlikely to agree on them that closely.
One would only have to look at a parliamentary debate to see that there is no agreement on that.
Basically the political divide goes like this...left wing says government = good value for money. Right wing says government = bad value for money.

And their own self interests motivate their opinions. Those who pay taxes think they are poor value for money and those who get paid by taxes think they are excellent value for money.



Indices of human well being. Wow. That's not going to be an index I place any value on myself.
I'll leave you to draw whatever conclusions from them that you wish to.

I'm not sure I draw any connection between high land prices and taxpayers money. Land owners pay tax on their land.
Agricultural subsidies in my (EU) country work out at about 0.2% of the value of the property. (I'd earn more if I left the money in a savings account).
I don't think it affects the price. It has never affected my commercial decisions in this regard.

In high tax economies pretty much everything costs a lot of money. (Not just land) All prices are high, because tax is added to everything.
If 50% of the economy is government spending, then the price of everything else must be doubled to pay for it.

 

Okay, okay, you don't have to keep on about your celebration of imperialism!

 

Sure. But to some extent it can be measured objectively by the wealth it gives to landowners.

Which is really amusing, as wealthy, privileged conservatives are the ones whom government spending enriches the most.

That contradicts your previous statement. Wealthy, privileged, right wing conservatives are the ones who are always whining about not getting value for their taxes, but they are the very ones whom government spending enriches the most.

I am aware that you only care about you.

How do you think we can make government spending more efficient if we don't try to measure its effects? "If you don't measure it, you can't manage it."

I know. I have to do that thinking for you, because you refuse to do it yourself. Google "Henry George Theorem" and start reading.

I DARE you.

Land value measures how much more they can expect to take from government and the community by owning the land than they will pay in taxes on it.

You never benefited from government-provided services or infrastructure when using your land? That is most certainly false.

The Voice of Ignorance. Prices are high in high-tax economies because people there are so rich they can AFFORD to pay a lot for stuff.

Ah, no. Government spending on desirable services and infrastructure REDUCES COSTS of pretty much everything but land, because you have to pay landowners full market value just for permission to access the economic advantages the government services and infrastructure provide. If you think government spending increases prices, try buying anything where there is no government.