[refurb]

will just gravitate from the high end to the low end, screwing over those at the high end

Gov'ts are providing a service. Competition is a good thing.

If one company was charging $1K for a computer and another charging $500k for the exact same thing, would you say consumers are screwing over the first company when they buy from the 2nd company?

[kuschku]

So you propose we have no social services, schools, etc?

[refurb]

Where did you get that from? Am I suggesting companies don't produce any computers any more?

I'm suggesting having gov'ts compete on spending efficiency is a good thing.

If I get the same level of services from country A and B and country A's tax rate is 25% lower, then guess where I'm going?

[kuschku]

Companies do not care about long-term spending, that’s the thing.

Education only makes an effect 30+years out.

Most companies care about the next quartal, if you’re lucky.

[refurb]

Really? Total private R&D budgets are greater than $100B per year. I'd say that's long term focus.

[kuschku]

Lol. That's nothing. Alone the German government spends more than that on publicly funded research, and there's about 200 countries more on the planet.

If companies would be so long-term focused, have you ever seen one lobby for higher corporate taxes in exchange for free public colleges and schools of highest quality, to ensure they get the best possibly educated workers? No? Exactly.

Have you seen companies spend their money with plans of how the world will look like in 50 or 100 years?

The most ambitious projects are from Musk, who is doing them with lots of subsidies because even he couldn't fund them otherwise, and they're about 5 years out in the future.

Have you seen a private company spend hundreds of billions every year into fusion research, because it might have results in decades?

Have you seen private companies focus on building transit networks and cities of the next century, slowly, part by part?

No.

The most ambitious private project ever planned was Walt Disneys epcot, but it was never built, and the name just reused for a themepark attraction.

Private companies have more available funds combined than most governments, yet still soend orders of magnitudes less on education for the next generation, on optimizing cities for the future.

You see companies actively destroy cities so they can get a little cheaper results for themselves this quarter.

Saying "private companies will be willing to pay twice the tax if they get more profit in 100 years" is just wrong, because no private company has ever planned like that, and will ever plan like that.

Except for the German Mittelstand and a handful of Japanese medium businesses, most comoanies haven't even existed for a century or longer.