[throwaway5752]

If this makes you mad, definitely don't look into the taxes of just about every other company in the US. Particularly don't look at defense, integrated oil E&P, agriculture, or residential construction. I bet those industries would love for you to be outraged about Amazon and it's 21% off a $10B base instead their total subsidies that probably are high tens of billions or greater.

[mikeq101101]

I feel better about the money staying in the hands of people that actually (and efficiently) provide useful services and products to people, unlike bureaucrats in the government who have no incentive to do things well and be efficient (and in reality have the opposite incentives).

[jakeinspace]

Teachers, road workers, federal engineers, soldiers, and federal law enforcement aren't exactly bureaucrats. And while there may be a bloating of bureaucracy in government, the private sector has plenty of accountants and middle managers as well.

[pathseeker]

>And while there may be a bloating of bureaucracy in government, the private sector has plenty of accountants and middle managers as well.

The difference is that companies with too much bloat die. There is no concept of that at all in the federal government because it just goes into more debt or taxes more instead.

[mikeq101101]

Teachers, road workers, and federal law enforcement do a terrible job, because of the incentives in the government jobs.

The soldiers and the endless wars are the worst examples of what the government can do.

[jakelazaroff]

Who do you think builds and maintains the infrastructure Amazon uses to provide those useful services? How do you think it gets paid for?

[pathseeker]

Depends on the infrastructure you are referring to. Things like roads are paid for with gas taxes and commercial trucking taxes that Amazon pays automatically in their shipping costs. They aren't exempt from that.

[harrumph]

>I feel better about the money staying in the hands of people that actually (and efficiently) provide useful services and products to people, unlike bureaucrats in the government who have no incentive to do things well and be efficient (and in reality have the opposite incentives).

Right, because tax money, once collected, simply vanishes into thin air and never, ever shows up as the income of private companies, nor drives entire sectors of the economy.

At least that's how it works under the purple skies of planet Libertaria.

[mikeq101101]

>Right, because tax money, once collected, simply vanishes into thin air and never, ever shows up as the income of private companies, nor drives entire sectors of the economy.

What are you trying to argue? Taxes are good, because some part of them is redistributed back to private companies?

[harrumph]

>What are you trying to argue? Taxes are good, because some part of them is redistributed back to private companies?

I'm arguing the fact that spending by government is literally the engine of our own and all other economies, and that libertarians are hilariously delusional about this bedrock fact. Without this spending/circulation there is zero facility nor security for the conduct of commerce nor is there income for the vast majority of the private enterprise.

When you rebut, please use a privately-developed communications protocol stack to do so.

[mikeq101101]

Can you list a few sectors of the economy that are driven entirely by taxpayer money through the government?

[harrumph]

>Can you list a few sectors of the economy that are driven entirely by taxpayer money through the government?

You can begin with a symbol -- the largest single private employer on the planet, the retailer named Walmart. A fully subsidized operation that, per its own filings, depends upon SNAP payments paid to its customers for its income. In addition to being dependent upon these payments the company depends on SNAP serving as payroll subsidy for its hundreds of thousands of workers who they choose to pay poverty wages.

Then for sectors, you may move to the depth and breadth of the energy, R&D, defense, security, health care, package freight and construction sectors, who, without their single largest governmental customers, would be a small fraction of what they are, employing a tiny fraction of historic levels.

Then there are sectors that are utterly dependent upon government subsidy, such as pharma research, agra, and transportation. Add to this the rest of the economy: sectors that would grind to a halt if not for indirect dependence upon public goods -- courts, roads and communications capacity funded by taxes.

Fact: taxpayers, uncompensated by any shares of stock, pay the bills and line the pockets of stockholders in most of really existing capitalism. Socialism exists and dominates for the rich while the market discipline that libertarians live to defend is in fact something that is reserved exclusively for the non-rich. Capitalist fables about the importance of incentives and market discipline fall on their faces the second you scrutinize flows of taxation as well as flows of appropriated value taken from workers under capitalism.

[himlion]

Luckily most people don't feel like that or we'd be living in a pretty bleak world.

[mikeq101101]

People having voluntary interactions instead of being forced, what a bleak world.

[himlion]

Negative externalities are best solved by a government.

[mikeq101101]

That is at least a controversial statement, not a fact as you put it.

[majewsky]

What other method exists for pricing in negative externalities? Honest question.

[BucketSort]

But it's ok because they create so much value for the economy, right?