[ur-whale]

> Ideally there'd just be a 10% tax

With the added value that it mechanically keeps governments lean and fit, instead of the bloated, taxpayer money wasting leeches that they are in most socialist countries.

Socialism, a.k.a. a picture perfect example of the maxim "The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions".

High taxes that supposedly lead to social justice via re-distribution of wealth ALWAYS end up driving countries into the same ditch: gross abuse of public money making the poorest part of the population suffer the most.

Look at Venezuela, California and Cuba for perfect examples. Spain is not far ahead of them, check out their sovereign debt in case you have a doubt, and how many times they've had to be bailed out.

And if you have doubts that low taxes lead to healthier societies, it is indeed possible, I'd invite you to take a look at Switzerland, where taxes are super low, the institutions work like well-oiled Swiss watches, crime is quasi non-existent, infrastructures work, corruption is one of the lowest in the world and - yes - there are filthy rich people (who gives two fucks if they're rich? As long as your life is good. Unless jealousy of course.) but the so-called "poor people" in Switzerland have a way better life than most supposedly rich people in the rest of the world.

[disgruntledphd2]

> With the added value that it mechanically keeps governments lean and fit, instead of the bloated, taxpayer money wasting leeches that they are in most socialist countries.

OK great, what do you want to cut?

Generally, it's about 25% on education, 25% on welfare, 25% on health and then everything else is another 25%. Which of those things do you want to cut?

Education is generally net positive as you need future taxpayers to pay for your pension, health could be privatised but then you'll have lots of avoidable deaths, one could additionally cut welfare but then you're basically hurting poor and old people, or cut everything else which means no roads or public transport which seems less than good.

I think the big misconception people have around taxation is that some level of government revenue makes the entire economy much more productive. Is there waste? Yeah, of course, but it tends to be much lower than in the private sector.

[ur-whale]

First: gee, I wonder how the Swiss do it.

To your points:

>OK great, what do you want to cut?

The answer is largely dependent on the country you're talking about. But the generic answer: cut waste. That includes inefficiencies, duplication of effort, crazy useless shit the government wastes money on (see the unreal crap DOGE unearthed in the US for example), downright corruption. And when that's all said and done, cut every department budget equally by 50% the first year. When you deal with a parasite like most governments are on the planet, less food means a way more efficient and smaller parasite.

> Education ...

Your not getting my point. This is not about picking winners and losers in the belly of the beast. This is about reducing drastically the size of government overall. Period.

Now if you want to pick apart winners and losers, sure, let's do this ...

In in ideal world, a government should stick to regal functions: externals security (army), internal security (police), justice (enforcement of laws, property and contracts). End of story.

If you believe that including things like health, education and welfare in the R&R of govt is a good idea (I don't, it creates monopolies, which are inherently corrupt inefficient), fine.

In that case, make sure they're properly starved (small budgets) so they operate at maximum efficiency, decentralized so even if they're taxpayer funded there's at least a modicum of competition to keep them meritocratic, honest and efficient.

> Education is generally net positive as you need future taxpayers to pay for your pension

In countries where retirement management was designed like a ponzi scheme (new investors buy in so early investors can benefit), and where the age pyramid looks like a freaking Christmas tree, you would unfortunately be correct. In a properly designed retirement system, this is utter BS.

Retirement system should only be minimally mutualized. In an honest retirement system, you should mostly rely on what you have set aside during your work life, 401k style. And certainly not pray that there will be, 50 years down the road enough of the same suckers you are now to pay for your sustenance. When people stop making babies, guess who's going to be left holding the bag? You. That's who.

> Is there waste? Yeah, of course, but it tends to be much lower than in the private sector.

I'd love to see the data backing this claim.

But if we're talking impressions, my observation after a rather long life is the exact opposite: the private sector is far, far more efficient than governments except when corporations get to monopoly status and essentially become mini-governments (via crony capitalism) and with the exact same illnesses.

[regentbowerbird]

> see the unreal crap DOGE unearthed in the US for example

I'm surprised to see DOGE referenced as a source in jul 2025, are the savings from that particularly significant?

Only a fraction is actually accounted for: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4j33klz33o

DOGE staffer says "I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was.": https://www.npr.org/2025/06/02/nx-s1-5417994/former-doge-eng...

[disgruntledphd2]

> In in ideal world, a government should stick to regal functions: externals security (army), internal security (police), justice (enforcement of laws, property and contracts). End of story.

OK, so you want a 19th century government. That's a position that one can hold, but (unfortunately or fortunately) this is never gonna get voted for, so unless you're also against democratic voting, you should probably think about how to accomplish some of your goals in a society that actually can exist today.

> And when that's all said and done, cut every department budget equally by 50% the first year.

OK great, how do you choose who lives and dies? Cos that's basically what a 50% cut across the board will mean. Personally, I like that people without as much money as me don't starve to death on the side of the street, but obviously opinions differ.

> In an honest retirement system, you should mostly rely on what you have set aside during your work life, 401k style.

OK great, so your proposition is that poor old people should just die?

> And certainly not pray that there will be, 50 years down the road enough of the same suckers you are now to pay for your sustenance. When people stop making babies, guess who's going to be left holding the bag? You. That's who.

This is basically all developed world social security systems, so you're proposing again, that poor old people should starve to death on the side of the street.

More likely, what will actually happen here is that the voters (most of whom are poor) will vote themselves confiscatory taxes on people who have saved. And that's the better option! The worse one is that they'll just bring back the guillotine.

Note: I apologise for the potential emotionalisation of your points, but it's important to keep people aware of all the consequences of approaches like this.

While I definitely think that lots and lots of state problems exist, and could be fixed, I reckon that in many cases fixing these problems will require insourcing a bunch of work to the public sector. Good examples of where this would probably work are in constructing tendering and design, as well as software tendering and esign.

> But if we're talking impressions, my observation after a rather long life is the exact opposite: the private sector is far, far more efficient than governments except when corporations get to monopoly status and essentially become mini-governments (via crony capitalism) and with the exact same illnesses.

Having spent a bunch of my career in public sector orgs and the rest in the private sector all I can say is that they're about equally inefficient and stupid, just in different ways.

> I'd love to see the data backing this claim.

I'd love to see data backing your claims of the stupendous waste in government, but we can't always get what we want, I suppose.