[TimTheTinker]

> Politics is how the nations allocate resources to problems.

That's a hard pill to swallow, but I fear you're right.

Shouldn't government's priorities be establishing rule of law, courts & justice, national defense, and regulating commerce? How did massive taxes, a huge budget, and political fights over resource allocation ever get thrown into the mix?

A historian once said that democracy fails when people begin voting themselves into the nation's purse [i.e. voting for politicians who promise them money].

[behringer]

Because rich people don't get rich by spending money. With unfettered capitalism taxation is the best system available to keep the wealth from pooling at the top, so the government is needed to decide what to spend the money on.

[kortilla]

>Because rich people don't get rich by spending money

That’s an oft-repeated but incorrect trope. You can’t save your way to being rich. Rich people are either born rich or they spend lots of money on investing into businesses (their own and others).

You also made no supporting argument for why the government is needed to decide what to spend some peoples’ money on. If we eliminated the top 1% and gave everyone else in the US the resulting few thousand dollars each, do you think that would eliminate the need for taxation going forward?

[JDiculous]

Why should maximizing the well-being of the people not be a government priority?

Any system, including someone's anarcho-capitalist fantasy, determines allocation of resources. Some are just more humanitarian than others.

[kortilla]

Because it’s a fantasy to think there is even agreement on what “maximizing the well-being” means. The people running the re-education camps in China probably even think they are doing that.

[TimTheTinker]

A fundamentally American idea is that maximizing freedom results in maximum well-being of the people.

Though that idea was footnoted: not so with people lacking in moral virtue.