(12-21-2022, 10:17 AM)Lucky2Last Wrote:

(12-21-2022, 08:53 AM)mikesez Wrote: This podcast I was listening to brought in a British-Indian economist, and he commented that Americans already comply with taxes far beyond what most people in other countries do.  He pointed out that most Americans will spend hours to check math that only adds up to a few dollars of difference in their tax liability, just because we have a cultural obsession with accuracy and compliance, according to him. And he thought this new effort to create even greater levels of compliance was just nutty. 

Anyhow this is all a good thing in my opinion.  The alternative is to increase the tax rates.  I prefer no increased rates. So do you.  And a population that spends too much effort trying to meet the letter of the law is preferable to one that spends too little.

No. That is not the alternative. If you truly wanted no increased tax rates, the alternative would be to reduce spending. 

Truth be told, I have no problem with the government enforcing the tax code. However, ours is so convoluted, that it's inevitable you can and will miss something, not too unlike our legal system. Collecting said taxes could also be made easier by simplifying the tax code. Yet, leftists are not attempting to solve either of those issues. Why not? 

I know in your establishment little brain there exists no room for the possibility of tyranny. However, leftists simultaneously support modern monetary theory AND a bigger IRS. Why? That doesn't make sense. Modern monetary theory is the idea that so long as it is accepted as a public good, people will trade it regardless of value. Meaning, the government can print as much as they want as long as the people are spending it. In other words, there is no need to tax anyone since revenue is not gained through taxation, but rather the manufactured value of the currency by the existing powers. The same people who designed that theory also reimagined taxes as a public disciplinary tool. You reward those who do well and punish those who attack the system. The IRS will either end up becoming a police force or, at the very least, the legal impetus for arresting people who become a public nuisance. 

If you could at all come off this position that the government works for us, you could start seeing the writing on the wall, man. You are such a naive ideologue. You could be a great thinker if you'd just challenge some of these ideas instead of warping the entire world to make them make sense.

Conceptually, yes, reduced spending is an alternative.  But in reality, even Trump wasn't willing to spend much capital on it. It's not politically feasible to adopt a policy most people don't want 

I agree that folks like AOC endorse MMT, but I doubt Biden or most of his advisors do.  If they did, 8% inflation disabused them of it.

And I definitely wish the tax code was simpler.  I was a fair tax guy and a flat tax guy.  I fully agree with everything you said about that.  But again, not feasible unless you're willing to endure an onslaught from all the wealthy special interests exploiting loopholes today - not just corporations but many scions you have never heard of.

Perhaps some stricter enforcement might be the harsh medicine we need to unlock some consensus around simplifying the code.

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