get_involved
Gold Member
- Jul 16, 2009
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- #21
Remember, folks -- this is the same government we're constantly reassured is responsible enough to efficiently manage our healthcare.
Well the reality is this: liberals whine about raising taxes. Well what they clearly can't get through their dense fucking heads is if all the useless shit the government pisses away money on was cleaned up and taxpayer dollars were used more effectively they might see Republicans be a little more willing to budge on that issue if it was truly needed. But I have a real damned hard time seeing a valid argument for raising taxes so we can throw it down the shit hole on crap like this.
I assume that the "useless shit" you refer to includes money that is lost to outright fraud. What I can't get through my "dense fucking head" is how a financial entity of the size of the US government can reduce the rate at which it is the victim of fraud to zero.
This reminds me of some other bizarre "concessions" I've heard people make:
- I'll compromise on taxes when the rate at which tax money is lost to fraud drops to zero
- I'll compromise on voting laws which restrict legitimate votes when the rate of illegitimate votes drops to zero
- I'll compromise on immigration reform when the rate of illegal border crossings drops to zero
- I'll compromise on counter-terrorism policy when the threat of terrorism drops to zero
- I'll compromise on sentencing reform when the rate of parolee recidivism drops to zero
These are of course vastly different policy matters, but those sentiments (all of which I've seen or heard expressed, often by elected officials) all suffer from the same logical flaw. All of the conditions describe are substantially less likely than independent porcine flight. It is rarely possible to eliminate a problem entirely, and enacting policies intended to do just that will lead to enormous costs without achieving that worthwhile goal.
Fraud should be prevented as much as is practical, but I cannot credit using a finite fraud rate to justify regressive tax rates.
How much fraud and waste is practical?