Your comment about the US tax rate is misguided though. While we might technically pay less than some European countries (not much less, in some cases), we also receive a lot less in return.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-myth...
A vast amount of US tax dollars go towards social security--a creaky, shuddering retirement plan that many expect will collapse before they ever benefit from it--and defense. When ~32% of your paycheck evaporates with no clear benefit like those enjoyed in European countries, it makes sense to complain.
Why is this uncontroversial?
>A vast amount of US tax dollars go towards social security--a creaky, shuddering retirement plan that many expect will collapse before they ever benefit from it--and defense.
I'm not a fan of the defense spending, and I've heard it is quite inefficient. Social Security, however, seems very efficient and effective: elder poverty is nothing compared to what it was before Social Security, and the administrative overhead on the program is tiny.
Also, it's not creaky and shuddering at all. All it needs for indefinite, perfect solvency is to have its contribution cap lifted so people actually pay in proportion to their incomes.
>When ~32% of your paycheck evaporates with no clear benefit like those enjoyed in European countries, it makes sense to complain.
I don't see how Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act are "no clear benefit". They seem like society's lifelines to me.
Carmack is totally right. Most Americans are totally right. The government in the US is totally huge, bloated, and wasteful.
What's really foolish is that they attribute that quality to the fact that it's government, and by definition governments are incredibly incompetant and wasteful. Nope, it's just their government.
American's never seem to ask why their civil service is so poorly run in comparision to other developed countries. They just seem to want to punish it out of fury.
1. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/US_per_capita_spending.h... 2. https://www.cihi.ca/en/spending-and-health-workforce/spendin...
It's actually quite amazing what happens when government is efficient and successful. One of my favorite examples is the UTA Trax. Built initially off the support of the liberal core in SLC, they did something rare: they built it on time and cost efficiently, and then operated it cost efficiently. And magically, even though every expansion proposal put it deeper into the most conservative areas in the entire country, and passage depending almost entirely on pure red votes, every expansion proposal has passed easily. Because when you actually deliver on your promises, people are willing to part with their money.
That's just not so.
Canadians are required by law to pay medical premiums in the amount and manner determined by their province. It's currently C$75 per month for a single person in BC, with subsidies available to those with low income. It's paid just like any other utility bill.
Overall people seem happy with the system, though most of them have nothing else to compare it with.
I don't know what you're getting at with "most of them have nothing else to compare it with". Are you suggesting that Canadians are ignorant of other countries health care systems? Certainly not of America's - many Canadians go to the States to vacation or have relatives there and have first or second-hand experience with it. Also the whole world got to watch the insane debate over ACA.
Objectively, the health care outcomes aren't any better in the States than in Canada, despite the fact that it's essentially twice as expensive once you add in their insurance premiums.
That government cannot be made to work for the people IS controversial (and kind of un-American, really). That evidence of wastefulness weakens the usefulness of government IS controversial. That a wasteful democractic government at least ostensibly answerable to its constituents isn't better than any alternative IS controversial.
You're basically saying, "he said the sun's coming up tomorrow and we're all going to die in a horrible conflagration, and really the sun coming up tomorrow isn't a particularly controversial opinion".
You can see this at work in industries with monopolies or duopolies: how many people are over the moon about the service and support they receive from, say, Comcast?
Carmack's point seems to be that an entity with no competition and the ability to requisition cash at a whim is inherently wasteful and broken.
Large systems that have been able to stand the test of time and deliver good have had safety mechanisms to deal with the danger that they stop providing value.
Governments have a different (and in some ways, more competitive) check mechanism to companies probably because the catastrophic failure of government is even more traumatic than the catastrophic failure of companies.
Undermining trust in the systems (engaged citizens, the press, elections) that keep government honest is exactly the wrong way to go about solving this problem.
But your government is exactly a duopoly -- there is no real competition -- not because it's a fundamental property of government but because you have a very strict two party system. Do you live in a Comcast or Time Warner city? Do you live in a Republican state or Democrat state?
The real damning part is that there have been concerted efforts to reduce taxation in the US for decades but the net result seems to be that you still pay about the same amount but you get less and less for it.
My wish for your country (and mine for that matter) is that people stop focusing merely the bottom line and more about what you want to achieve. Single-payer health care, for example, requires taxation but would ultimately be a better use of your tax and personal money than the system you have now. But that is really wishful thinking, the political tides have turned everywhere in the world and there mere thought of destroying entire industries for the good of a nation is completely unpalatable.
