[pavel_lishin]

Disagree with your uncharitable description of how taxes work, but agree that they seem to primarily be aiming at either rich kids going camping, or at governments who need to shelter a lot of people fast due to natural disasters.

You know what's missing, though? Any sort of toilet facility. The pretty picture of emergency relief in an urban center doesn't show any hygiene facilities at all.

[snapplebobapple]

It's not an uncharitable description of how taxes work, it's an accurate description of how stuff like this gets funded by government. somebody in government somewhere will fail to do any of the cost containment/search for alternatives you or I would do if we were spending our own money and they will put in an order for this, which will increase the deficit, which will eventually increase taxes. They don't have anywhere near as strong an incentive to contain costs/search for alternatives that we do because it's not their money or their problem (until they manage things so poorly that they cause a currency crisis).