What does a "small government" look like?

This is a serious question to the conservatives and libertarians...

YOU spend thread after thread talking about how the government is "too large." My question is what does a small government look like? Be explicit.

Please describe the funding obligations of a "small government" in regards to defense, infrastructure, public health, food, water, and environment issues. What would you fund and how (much)?

 

This is a good question … so I bet you get a bunch of bad answers. In my opinion the government should be self funding. When government builds a new road, a new school, opens a library or public swimming pool, the nearby land values increase where that infrastructure is put in place. In order for government to be self funding those services and infrastructure must be paid for by a tax on land values. The better the government services and infrastructure, the more the land values rise. If taxation were applied to land values as the primary source of government revenue, then those rising land values would provide the financing to pay for the governments activities.

"Not only was Henry George correct that a tax on land is non-distortionary, but in an equilibrium society ... tax on land raises just enough revenue to finance the (optimally chosen) level of government expenditure." – Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in Economics (2001)

 

I probably won't get any answers...

 

Okay, I'll try this again. A small government would be a government which is self funded by the increase in land values that its beneficial activities create.

 

What if your country has a lot of land that isn't fertile or much useful?

 

The land around Las Vegas was such a land before government spending increased its value by many fold. All government spending on the infrastructure at Las Vegas and the Hover Dam could have (and should have) been paid for by the increase in land values that resulted from that infrastructure. The Hover Dam was built for flood control, and land values increased all the way down the Colorado river because of it. Those who owned that land and benefitted from that infrastructure should have paid for that infrastructure through a land value tax. The way the system is run now, those people who benefitted by that government infrastructure just got rich, while the rest of us paid the price for their plunder … that is not what a small government looks like.

 

[video=youtube;7QDv4sYwjO0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0#t=11[/video]

 

FEDERAL government too large. If you're going to frame a debate, please try and frame it accurately.

Thanks in advance.

 

That is exactly what is implied.

 

10% for the feds of GDP sounds good, another 15% or so spent by the states.

 

What does a "small government" look like?

Something like this?

 

Ohhhhh.... It's implied..... It's hard enough to get a progressive to even acknowledge state government.

Personally, I'd cut about 60-80% of the entire federal government. WAY too much overlap like the Dept. of Education for instance, even though all the school functions are handled at a state level anyway...

Defense? We need to get back to the non-interventionist policy our founding fathers would have approved of.

Anything that can be done on a state level NEEDS to be done on a state level. Let the federal government defend the nation, work out treaties with other nations. Some regulation is needed.

Gone are food stamps, housing, cell phones, day care, Medicaid, ad infinitum. None of the social welfare belongs at the federal level.

Social security and Medicare are ok as long as they're self funded.......

And Jesus Christ... put in a balanced budget amendment already....

 

Any government that requires any kind of taxation in order to support it is too big.

 

Good question!!!

 

Not sure how you got lost.

 

Thanks for explaining with a lil more detail. Great example.

 

Where do get state government in that? Notice that word Defense?

 

Well then skip to the part of my post that has to do with defense. If you're readin impaired, hit the control+f and type in defense.

 

The opposite of what our huge money wasting behemoth looks like right now. If Government can't accurately keep track of where the tax dollars are all going.............IT'S TOO BIG!!!!!

 

Easy question , read : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire

 

Any news when Greece will change its labor laws so they can get some people working again? Shame to see a civilization that is so old go into decline before it has anything to brag about.

 

This idea right wingers have that each state should have vastly different laws, such as one state having unemployment benefits and another not is just not pratical in the modern world. What these people advocate is basically 50 different countries who should be allowed to ignore the federal government whenever they do something they don't like. It really boils down to them wanting to return to the articles of confederation, which was a total failure.

This idea also that states are just magically better is ridiculous as well, if most issues were left solely up to the states most of the south would still be segregated, no interracial marriage allowed, criminalizing homosexuality, forcing religion on people you get the idea. The right wing version of America is grossly outdated and simply not feasible in today's world.

 

the idea that 300 million people all governed by DC is also clearly not working, we need about 4 Canadian size provinces where we can have some of our distinctly different ideas of government put in place. We already have geographic approximation to it. If you disdain a regions politics, just move, why the instinct to control?

 

Yep!

 

That (in this modern world) makes no sense. (Do you REALLY believe that?)