Yeah I mean, believe me, if I could cut the portion of my tax dollars that went to war to zero, I’d do so in a heartbeat. That’s just not how it works in the US though under either party.
AnimalMuppet•19m ago
There's a bit more to it than that.
Everybody wants the government to do things; nobody wants to pay for all the things that the government is doing. (If we had a balanced budget, tax rates would currently be nearly twice as high, which would provoke mass outrage and people being removed from office.)
Everybody has different lists of what the right things are for the government to be doing, but (almost) nobody has an empty list. Well, if it's going to do things, it has to get the money from somewhere. It's either tariffs or taxes or deficit. Deficit is the least honest.
So an honest person, wanting the government to do some things, should be willing to pay some taxes.
OgsyedIE•36m ago
A fair accounting of the costs would discount the items that are old and were going to be used somewhere else or scrapped if not used here, halving or possibly even decimating this estimate of direct costs.
That is direct costs, however. The indirect costs are astoundingly huge, as we all know.
petesergeant•7m ago
There are a very small number of things I agree with r/Conservative on, but that this was a stupid war to start that America definitely isn't winning is one of them.
exabrial•41m ago
OgsyedIE•39m ago
newtonianrules•37m ago
AnimalMuppet•19m ago
Everybody wants the government to do things; nobody wants to pay for all the things that the government is doing. (If we had a balanced budget, tax rates would currently be nearly twice as high, which would provoke mass outrage and people being removed from office.)
Everybody has different lists of what the right things are for the government to be doing, but (almost) nobody has an empty list. Well, if it's going to do things, it has to get the money from somewhere. It's either tariffs or taxes or deficit. Deficit is the least honest.
So an honest person, wanting the government to do some things, should be willing to pay some taxes.