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On September 29 2023 18:01 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2023 14:51 KwarK wrote:
Americans already accept European tax rates, America just has a shitload of stealth taxes which results in Americans having no idea what they're actually paying in tax. It's bizarre, Americans hate government so much that they go out of their way to create as much of it as possible. They'll happily live in condos or suburbs with HOAs and pay the dues imposed upon them for trash pickup and maintenance etc. without recognizing they've formed a very local government with tax powers. Or they'll live in an apartment complex where part of their rent is allocated to communal facilities without recognizing that they've privatized what would be a function of the town council in the UK. They'll pay $1000 for a hospital appointment that should only cost $500 without recognizing that the other $500 is a privately levied tax on hospital users to go into a pool for subsidizing those unable to pay. They'll complain about death panels while building them in as an intrinsic part of the function of private healthcare.
Americans are constantly inventing new kinds of governments without any concerns about planning, bureaucracy, accountability, or reining in petty tyrants. And all these new governments they create are empowered to compel payment from citizens attempting to live their lives. But we all know Americans would never accept European tax rates and so all of those payments compelled from citizens by bureaucrats to pay for communal services must be something else. This to me is the key and something I don't understand. Why would you want to save $100 in tax/year, but have to arrange your own private trash collection for $120/year? or wastewater disposal, or the infinite number of things that are cheaper when done in a more structured, communal way?
Quality or more choice are two explanations. If the products are exactly equal then you'd obviously prefer the cheaper one but whether the public or private sector is more efficient largely depends on the product or service provided.
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United States41936 Posts
On September 29 2023 18:54 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2023 18:01 EnDeR_ wrote:On September 29 2023 14:51 KwarK wrote:
Americans already accept European tax rates, America just has a shitload of stealth taxes which results in Americans having no idea what they're actually paying in tax. It's bizarre, Americans hate government so much that they go out of their way to create as much of it as possible. They'll happily live in condos or suburbs with HOAs and pay the dues imposed upon them for trash pickup and maintenance etc. without recognizing they've formed a very local government with tax powers. Or they'll live in an apartment complex where part of their rent is allocated to communal facilities without recognizing that they've privatized what would be a function of the town council in the UK. They'll pay $1000 for a hospital appointment that should only cost $500 without recognizing that the other $500 is a privately levied tax on hospital users to go into a pool for subsidizing those unable to pay. They'll complain about death panels while building them in as an intrinsic part of the function of private healthcare.
Americans are constantly inventing new kinds of governments without any concerns about planning, bureaucracy, accountability, or reining in petty tyrants. And all these new governments they create are empowered to compel payment from citizens attempting to live their lives. But we all know Americans would never accept European tax rates and so all of those payments compelled from citizens by bureaucrats to pay for communal services must be something else. This to me is the key and something I don't understand. Why would you want to save $100 in tax/year, but have to arrange your own private trash collection for $120/year? or wastewater disposal, or the infinite number of things that are cheaper when done in a more structured, communal way? Quality or more choice are two explanations. If the products are exactly equal then you'd obviously prefer the cheaper one but whether the public or private sector is more efficient largely depends on the product or service provided.
Now look at the micro governments Americans create and see if you can identify those.
Look at condo HOAs for example.
The answer is unremarkable, American exceptionalism is a lie, Americans are made of the exact same stuff as their brothers who didn’t get on the boat. They have the same biological needs and they have the same societal challenges. Europeans will, when confronted with a clear social need for the provision of X, address that need by working collectively to provide X. Whereas Americans will, in the same scenario, do the exact same thing because it turns out they still need X. And X still needs to be paid for and the people will still need to be compelled to pay.
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Going to be a wild decade as the ancient and decrepit in congress die off. I wonder what thats going to look like.
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On September 29 2023 18:54 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2023 18:01 EnDeR_ wrote:On September 29 2023 14:51 KwarK wrote:
Americans already accept European tax rates, America just has a shitload of stealth taxes which results in Americans having no idea what they're actually paying in tax. It's bizarre, Americans hate government so much that they go out of their way to create as much of it as possible. They'll happily live in condos or suburbs with HOAs and pay the dues imposed upon them for trash pickup and maintenance etc. without recognizing they've formed a very local government with tax powers. Or they'll live in an apartment complex where part of their rent is allocated to communal facilities without recognizing that they've privatized what would be a function of the town council in the UK. They'll pay $1000 for a hospital appointment that should only cost $500 without recognizing that the other $500 is a privately levied tax on hospital users to go into a pool for subsidizing those unable to pay. They'll complain about death panels while building them in as an intrinsic part of the function of private healthcare.
Americans are constantly inventing new kinds of governments without any concerns about planning, bureaucracy, accountability, or reining in petty tyrants. And all these new governments they create are empowered to compel payment from citizens attempting to live their lives. But we all know Americans would never accept European tax rates and so all of those payments compelled from citizens by bureaucrats to pay for communal services must be something else. This to me is the key and something I don't understand. Why would you want to save $100 in tax/year, but have to arrange your own private trash collection for $120/year? or wastewater disposal, or the infinite number of things that are cheaper when done in a more structured, communal way? Quality or more choice are two explanations. If the products are exactly equal then you'd obviously prefer the cheaper one but whether the public or private sector is more efficient largely depends on the product or service provided.
What fundamental needs do you believe that the private sector can satisfy more efficiently than a well-run, i.e. appropriately funded, public sector option?
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On September 29 2023 23:39 Zambrah wrote:
Going to be a wild decade as the ancient and decrepit in congress die off. I wonder what thats going to look like.
It will look way better than what we are currently experiencing, that's for sure.
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I hope this spurs some others in congress to retire. Given her kids got power of attorney last month, she was in no shape to actually be a congresswoman.
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It would have been better for both her and the US if she retired ten years ago and enjoyed the last few years of life with family.
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United States41936 Posts
Every year all the ones who didn’t die become a year older. Unless the turnover becomes higher (we stop re-electing incumbents) the gerontocracy will continue.
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Northern Ireland23737 Posts
On September 30 2023 00:38 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2023 23:39 Zambrah wrote:
Going to be a wild decade as the ancient and decrepit in congress die off. I wonder what thats going to look like. It will look way better than what we are currently experiencing, that's for sure.
I mean looking at some of the relative young guns coming in, notably on the GOP side of things I wouldn’t be too sure. I used to tend to ‘well things can’t get much worse!’ thinking before that burned me sufficient times.
On an individual level there’s nothing disqualifying in being old, and indeed experience can confer advantages.
When it’s so across the board institutionally then it absolutely does start to become a problem. Considering how disconnected generations are from understanding and empathising the prevalent problems of other ones, then add the additional distortion of relative wealth and I’m unsure how, even if they didn’t half arse it, how much of the gerontocracy could possibly be fit to govern in the modern age.
I’ve always found it an especially odd combination that approval for Congress as an institution is pretty much rock bottom across the political spectrum, but the incumbency rate is so damn high.
Failing people electing to boot out some of the limpets in the legislature I’m not sure how to address this particular issue.
Things like age caps, or term limits will preclude gifted public servants for continuing to do so, which doesn’t feel especially ideal or indeed fair.
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On September 30 2023 03:01 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2023 00:38 Mohdoo wrote:On September 29 2023 23:39 Zambrah wrote:
Going to be a wild decade as the ancient and decrepit in congress die off. I wonder what thats going to look like. It will look way better than what we are currently experiencing, that's for sure. I mean looking at some of the relative young guns coming in, notably on the GOP side of things I wouldn’t be too sure. I used to tend to ‘well things can’t get much worse!’ thinking before that burned me sufficient times. On an individual level there’s nothing disqualifying in being old, and indeed experience can confer advantages. When it’s so across the board institutionally then it absolutely does start to become a problem. Considering how disconnected generations are from understanding and empathising the prevalent problems of other ones, then add the additional distortion of relative wealth and I’m unsure how, even if they didn’t half arse it, how much of the gerontocracy could possibly be fit to govern in the modern age. I’ve always found it an especially odd combination that approval for Congress as an institution is pretty much rock bottom across the political spectrum, but the incumbency rate is so damn high. Failing people electing to boot out some of the limpets in the legislature I’m not sure how to address this particular issue. Things like age caps, or term limits will preclude gifted public servants for continuing to do so, which doesn’t feel especially ideal or indeed fair.
An idea would be that you have to move to keep a seat. You have a 1 term limit for your area, then you need to be elected in another electoral area. For the senate that would be another state. If multiple states think you are good enough to stick around then you likely are.
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On September 30 2023 03:01 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2023 00:38 Mohdoo wrote:On September 29 2023 23:39 Zambrah wrote:
Going to be a wild decade as the ancient and decrepit in congress die off. I wonder what thats going to look like. It will look way better than what we are currently experiencing, that's for sure. I mean looking at some of the relative young guns coming in, notably on the GOP side of things I wouldn’t be too sure. I used to tend to ‘well things can’t get much worse!’ thinking before that burned me sufficient times. On an individual level there’s nothing disqualifying in being old, and indeed experience can confer advantages. When it’s so across the board institutionally then it absolutely does start to become a problem. Considering how disconnected generations are from understanding and empathising the prevalent problems of other ones, then add the additional distortion of relative wealth and I’m unsure how, even if they didn’t half arse it, how much of the gerontocracy could possibly be fit to govern in the modern age. I’ve always found it an especially odd combination that approval for Congress as an institution is pretty much rock bottom across the political spectrum, but the incumbency rate is so damn high. Failing people electing to boot out some of the limpets in the legislature I’m not sure how to address this particular issue. Things like age caps, or term limits will preclude gifted public servants for continuing to do so, which doesn’t feel especially ideal or indeed fair. Our candidate is doing what I want, all the other congressmen are idiots!
Its stupid but apparently that is what it comes down to.
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On September 30 2023 03:16 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2023 03:01 WombaT wrote:On September 30 2023 00:38 Mohdoo wrote:On September 29 2023 23:39 Zambrah wrote:
Going to be a wild decade as the ancient and decrepit in congress die off. I wonder what thats going to look like. It will look way better than what we are currently experiencing, that's for sure. I mean looking at some of the relative young guns coming in, notably on the GOP side of things I wouldn’t be too sure. I used to tend to ‘well things can’t get much worse!’ thinking before that burned me sufficient times. On an individual level there’s nothing disqualifying in being old, and indeed experience can confer advantages. When it’s so across the board institutionally then it absolutely does start to become a problem. Considering how disconnected generations are from understanding and empathising the prevalent problems of other ones, then add the additional distortion of relative wealth and I’m unsure how, even if they didn’t half arse it, how much of the gerontocracy could possibly be fit to govern in the modern age. I’ve always found it an especially odd combination that approval for Congress as an institution is pretty much rock bottom across the political spectrum, but the incumbency rate is so damn high. Failing people electing to boot out some of the limpets in the legislature I’m not sure how to address this particular issue. Things like age caps, or term limits will preclude gifted public servants for continuing to do so, which doesn’t feel especially ideal or indeed fair. An idea would be that you have to move to keep a seat. You have a 1 term limit for your area, then you need to be elected in another electoral area. For the senate that would be another state. If multiple states think you are good enough to stick around then you likely are. That removes the entire point of supposedly having more local politicians who know the concerns and needs of their local community.
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On September 29 2023 23:39 Zambrah wrote:
Going to be a wild decade as the ancient and decrepit in congress die off. I wonder what thats going to look like.
Same as it always has. This gerontocracy is not a new thing, except that people are generally living longer. The future is going to look very much like the present. It'll just be the guys that are currently in their 60s and 70s that will eventually be in their 80s and 90s running the show. Eventually, even the current young congressmen will be old congressmen.
As long as people favor incumbents, the gerontocracy will continue.
On September 29 2023 18:01 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2023 14:51 KwarK wrote:
Americans already accept European tax rates, America just has a shitload of stealth taxes which results in Americans having no idea what they're actually paying in tax. It's bizarre, Americans hate government so much that they go out of their way to create as much of it as possible. They'll happily live in condos or suburbs with HOAs and pay the dues imposed upon them for trash pickup and maintenance etc. without recognizing they've formed a very local government with tax powers. Or they'll live in an apartment complex where part of their rent is allocated to communal facilities without recognizing that they've privatized what would be a function of the town council in the UK. They'll pay $1000 for a hospital appointment that should only cost $500 without recognizing that the other $500 is a privately levied tax on hospital users to go into a pool for subsidizing those unable to pay. They'll complain about death panels while building them in as an intrinsic part of the function of private healthcare.
Americans are constantly inventing new kinds of governments without any concerns about planning, bureaucracy, accountability, or reining in petty tyrants. And all these new governments they create are empowered to compel payment from citizens attempting to live their lives. But we all know Americans would never accept European tax rates and so all of those payments compelled from citizens by bureaucrats to pay for communal services must be something else. This to me is the key and something I don't understand. Why would you want to save $100 in tax/year, but have to arrange your own private trash collection for $120/year? or wastewater disposal, or the infinite number of things that are cheaper when done in a more structured, communal way?
A big part of this is visibility. When you give your tax money to the federal government, where does it go? In my state (IL), we only get $0.60 back for every $1 we give to the federal government (https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal-government/) while a couple other states get over $3 back for every $1 taxed.
So no, my $100 to the federal government is not buying me $100 worth of services even before you consider the jacked up costs of federal services compared to a competitive free market. Disclaimer, the word "competitive" is key, not all markets are competitive and federal spending may be more efficient than dealing with private monopolies (like in healthcare).
Currently, 29 states are getting less back from the federal government than they put in. So right from the start, you can hopefully see why people would have issues with taxes to the federal government.
Going slightly more local, my state also has flat rate income tax of (4.95%) and a lot of people would question how well it's being spent. I don't have stats for this, but it doesn't take much to realize our infrastructure is not particularly good in many areas. A few other states have no income tax and haven't looked any worse from a tourist's perspective. As has been discussed in this thread before, plenty of houses outside Chicago and its immediate suburbs are running off of well pumps rather than city water. Are we getting our money's worth from the state for the 5% income tax? Maybe, but it's hard to tell. There have been plenty of scandals around lucrative contracts going to buddies of our state politicians.
City taxes are better (IMO) as it's generally easier to see where that money goes. I live in a nice suburb so my property taxes go to things like having city water, sewer, and garbage (although I still get a separate bill). It also goes to the local schools which tend to rank well academically. We even have a nice park district with parks and facilities I sometimes use. At the city level, I can see where my money is spent a little more clearly than county or state taxes and a lot more clearly than federal taxes.
If you get all the way down to HOAs, then the money should be very clear. X dollars are for garbage collection. Maybe it's more expensive than at the city level, but you know exactly where your money is going and what it's paying for. I'd generally rather pull it back to City as my preferred level (my HOA does not collect any dues, as I prefer). At the city level, I can get a little more efficiency while still keeping the money local, but I can understand the appeal of taking local to the extreme at an individual or HOA level and having a full accounting of everything.
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United States41936 Posts
Let’s take an example of an innocently mismanaged HOA. Local residents in an unincorporated housing development do exactly as you suggest. They elect some well meaning honest laymen to the board and those laymen decide what services the covered area requires and then tax the residents to pay for those. Hopefully we can all agree it’s a tax to a local governmental authority.
But what these people don’t realize is that because it’s an unincorporated development it’s infrastructure is not run the same way as the adjacent houses a half mile up the road. That’s all city infrastructure. But the housing developer didn’t feel like paying the city to install and adopt infrastructure in his new development and so created a HOA to be responsible for upkeep.
They should really be creating sinking funds for sewage line replacements and capital projects etc. but they don’t realize that because at their old house in what they think is the same town that wasn’t how it worked. Then something breaks and they need to pay a few million and that’s when the real fun begins. The HOA is forced to issue a special levy on homeowners to cover the last 10 years of under billing them because they failed to budget correctly because government is hard.
But the homeowners are pissed. One of them moved in last month and doesn’t think this is his fault, the guy who sold him the house is the one who was under billed. He just bought this house and now you’re telling him that you’ll put a lien on it unless he coughs up $30k. They protest and collectively fire the old HOA board. The new guys come in and decide they want to take on some debt to cover this, secured by the promise of future levies from the residents. They go with that plan and then immediately start listing their houses for sale because the indebted HOA isn’t obviously a liability that a new homeowner would be aware of and so they can pass the burden.
Over time the population of homeowners in the division goes down as people try to escape the levy to pay down the debt. Maybe some houses get foreclosed on but the bank can’t easily sell them because now they also have a lien on them so no clean title. The levy on the remaining residents is increased and the core services the HOA was meant to be providing like trash pickup etc. get slashed. This creates a feedback loop, slowly crushing the remaining residents under what is technically not tax and technically not government if we were to believe Introvert.
Nobody in that story was corrupt or malicious or even all that incompetent. It’s just government is a fairly technical job that needs to get done right. When Americans don’t build a proper government to do the governing and don’t let it tax them to fund operations then that doesn’t somehow exempt them from the need that the government would have met. It just forces the creation of quasi governmental structures with quasi tax levying powers that subsequently fuck them over.
The internet is full of Europeans expressing their amazement at just how unfree Americans are. American employers selecting which doctors their employees are allowed to see. Tyrannical retirees mandating what flowers people are allowed to grow in their front gardens. School libraries banning books to meet the ridiculous demands of illiterate church goers. But Americans don’t see that the government that fills the gaps they left open is still government.
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Yes, you're taking the example of a well meaning, but mismanaged HOA and then somehow claiming the government is better. The same government that is about to shut down because they can't agree to raise the debt limit to meet the amount they already agreed to spend? That's the government you want to trust with your money?
Perhaps its the bureaucrats that you trust? The same bureaucrats that need to have an English Driver's License translated to English? The infrastructure in America isn't failing because of stellar competence and foresight at government levels. It's failing because of the incompetence of government at various levels, elected and bureaucratic.
The bigger an organization gets, the more wasteful it is. The more employees it has, the more employees can coast by on doing little to nothing. Those are assumptions I'm making, but I'm pretty sure they're good assumptions in both the private and public sectors. Keeping things small and lean is generally better for efficiency (there are exceptions on cost of scale) and I want my government dollars to be spent efficiently whether it's the HOA or national government. Be big when it's an obvious advantage, small otherwise.
I don't see anything in your theoretical post against HOAs that would necessarily be handled better by a big government. They're also going to have short sighted people who run into problems and then run up too much debt and then have to raise taxes to meet the unforeseen circumstances. It happens at all levels from the HOA to the National government.
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United States41936 Posts
If you’ll recall, my point was that these are examples of kinds of government and taxation that Americans invent so that they can claim to be free of government and taxation. It was originally in response to the ludicrous claim that Americans would somehow never accept the these things.
The HOA in that example is a government. Just a bad one that was created by a sleazy real estate developer longing to be free of the tyrannical municipal authority and their endless obsession with properly maintaining urban infrastructure.
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On September 30 2023 06:32 RenSC2 wrote:
Yes, you're taking the example of a well meaning, but mismanaged HOA and then somehow claiming the government is better. The same government that is about to shut down because they can't agree to raise the debt limit to meet the amount they already agreed to spend? That's the government you want to trust with your money?
Perhaps its the bureaucrats that you trust? The same bureaucrats that need to have an English Driver's License translated to English? The infrastructure in America isn't failing because of stellar competence and foresight at government levels. It's failing because of the incompetence of government at various levels, elected and bureaucratic.
The bigger an organization gets, the more wasteful it is. The more employees it has, the more employees can coast by on doing little to nothing. Those are assumptions I'm making, but I'm pretty sure they're good assumptions in both the private and public sectors. Keeping things small and lean is generally better for efficiency (there are exceptions on cost of scale) and I want my government dollars to be spent efficiently whether it's the HOA or national government. Be big when it's an obvious advantage, small otherwise.
I don't see anything in your theoretical post against HOAs that would necessarily be handled better by a big government. They're also going to have short sighted people who run into problems and then run up too much debt and then have to raise taxes to meet the unforeseen circumstances. It happens at all levels from the HOA to the National government.
So this seems to be a new take on American Exceptionalism, in which you are arguing that America isn't exceptional because it is better, but rather than America is exceptional because it is incompetent. Somehow American bureaucrats are just more incompetent than bureaucrats elsewhere... and that elsewhere includes France, Italy and Spain, so it has a pretty high bar for incompetence!
Bureaucrats in America, we will argue, are so incompetent and inept that it is far better to have everything at as local level as we can possibly imagine, because then only a few people get fucked by the local incompetence, while if we were to deal with this at a higher level, the incompetence would affect more people, just look at the national debt ceiling debacle!
Now just as an aside, I don't think home owner organizations are something unique to the US. They may be even more awful in the US than elsewhere, but we were met by a surprise similar in kind if not in scale when we bought our apartment a few years ago. In fact, one of the selling points was that the community contributions were (and still are) very low. Those low quarterly contributions are because we (and with we, I mean the first home owners) decided that the monthly contributions cover the cost of basic maintenance and cleaning, and everything else will be paid for ad-hoc. That includes retiling the roof at whatever point that will become a necessity, and has already included replacing the sump pump that pumps our sewage out of the tank we have and into the muncipal sewer. Now I've lived here for a few years and I've come to terms with the fact that at some point our roof will need retiling for a few thousand euros, but if I were to be hit with that bill the moment I bought the place I would be quite upset. At the last home owners meeting, I argued for increasing the community contributions (ahem, taxes), so that eventually we'd build up funds to cover this kind of thing and it was voted down. So mostly my take-away message is that we need to move out before the roof needs retiling 
But from having seen the John Oliver bit about HOAs, they sound particularly malicious in the US, where it seems that for every instance of Tocqueville's lauded association, there is a corporation behind it squeezing a buck out in whatever way they can, because while you may want to associate for any little thing, either nobody wants to, or if Ren is right, nobody is capable of, actually running the association and performing its basic tasks, so a corporation is pulled in to manage it, and then the fun really starts!
Anyway, coming back to the main point: I don't think the US is exceptionally incompetent, and obviously there are things that are better run at hyperlocal level (such as having a building association that is in charge of retiling the roof when it is needed) and there are things that are better run at national level. I don't think pointing at taxes and saying "for every $1 we pay in Illinois, we only get $0.6 back, so the federal government is shortchanging us" when that is kinda the whole point of a national tax: the rich people of Delaware, Massachusets and apparently Illinois, pay for the social security of poor people in New Mexico and Mississippi. Now I'm sure New Mexico and Mississippi have other redeeming qualities, but having a functioning economy is apparently not one of them, but they are part of the USA, and thus you need to buckle up and ensure that they aren't left by the roadside. If you don't want to do that, then what you probably actually want is to secede.
That's what Brexit did. The Brits said they were tired of paying for Poland. Or something. And left the EU. It dumped them seriously in the shitter, that did. And the British economy is far less entangled with the EU overall than Illinois's economy is with the USA, so good luck with seceding! I tell the same to my Catalan colleagues who still want independence from Spain.
Now there is clearly an argument to be had about whether it's fair Illinois only gets 60 cents back for every dollar of federal tax. Maybe it should be 80 cents. Or $1.20, or only 40 cents. I don't know. In theory that's what you elect your conressmen for, to figure that shit out. Of course, I'm also happy to agree that your congress is in a particularly deplorable state right now and couldn't figure their way out of a wet paper bag, but I don't think that is due to exceptional American incompetence. Rather it is due to an archaic constitution and an inordinate amout of faith placed in people who already hold a position for the simple fact of holding it. I really cannot imagine that anybody in Georgia is benefited by MTG representing them, but there's a good chance she will keep her seat merely because she already has it. And her presence (or if you prefer a similarly problematic Democratic example, Steve Manchin) has an inordinately large effect on national policy.
Once again, not a uniquely USian problem. We currently have a kingmaker situation here in Spain, where a small independentist Catalan party can play kingmaker to either a left-wing or a right-wing coalition. It's ironic, because they align politically with the conservative and populist policies of the right, but the Spanish national right are fascist, and absolutely LOATHE Catalan nationalism. Meanwhile, the left are open to at least discussing the idea of granting a blanket pardon for everybody involved with the 2017 referendum, including the political leader of aforementioned Catalan independentist party, so he gets to hold the government hostage until he is given a pardon. But at least the other parties have the option of saying "nope, fuck it, we'll risk new elections", and that's why relying on a 250-year-old constitution probably isn't the best idea either.
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As a quick note to clarify something: while I agree what Tocqueville wrote, especially as an observation of America at the time, I would say that posting that was mainly to note that Americans have always used these smaller, often private or semi-private associations for things. So the idea that "Americans still pay it but they don't know it" is kinda missing the point. I'm not exactly advocating for the return of militias, for example. Most Americans would prefer money be raised and spent more locally where it is theoretically more suited to the needs of the community and more accountable. In practice this is imperfect, as often most citizens, espeically nowadays, don't really care enough to organize or hold people accountable. But of course Americans wouldn't accept raising the federal tax rate to European levels or introducing a VAT, and they would still oppose it even if you framed it the way Kwark did. They would certainly oppose it if they were asked to pay for those things on top of what they already do pay. The preference for smaller groups is a consequence of American history, both the people who came here and how they lived. Trying to convince Americans to abolish these smaller institutions so the feds or even the state can take over is going to have to overcome a bias against it from the very beginning. Perhaps this bias exists more on the right, but even on the American left this bias exists. It's one of those things that would take a very long time to change.
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United States41936 Posts
They're not necessarily smaller institutions, just not part of a recognizable and accountable governmental structure. The health insurance industry isn't small, for example. But it plays its role in creating death panels and the bureaucracy of healthcare resource allocation that controls the healthcare of average Americans. The lack of a recognizable government there does not mean that Americans aren't being governed, or that power is wielded more locally than it otherwise would be.
They're still making deductions from your payroll and you're still unable to exert any meaningful choice, the plan is prenegotiated between your employer and the insurer with all the implicit budgeting and spending allocations already decided. You have zero representation in terms of where those payroll deductions go, how much is spent on admin/waste, what is covered, and so forth. There is a fiduciary duty for the insurer to maximize shareholder value which can be understood as maximizing payroll deductions and minimizing healthcare service provision.
This isn't some kind of special American small government because Americans are too free to pay taxes. This is a privatization of big government. Again, the idea that Americans are uniquely opposed to governance or taxes is a fairytale, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny, there is no objective truth to it. Americans just really like telling themselves stories about how special they are and this is one of those.
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EPT
