why don't they have socialised health care, like other first world nations that get taxed up the ass? Where the hell does all that money go?
Nobody knows, but it is good proof that governments can't handle anything and so we need less taxes and less spending.
i know big brother eats a big chunk of it. everybody's on the payroll you know. the war on drugs, the war on terrorism. how much does war cost? no, not in lives, but in dollars? i know from driving on them that our roads are built to last only a few seasons, and i know from traveling abroad that there are better ways to get around. i know that our politicians are not public servants; they are celebrities. i wonder how much it cost to blow up the world trade center? how much is the bailout for irresponsible and greedy capitalists costing us? how much does the administration for our absolutely insane income tax system itself cost?
Most of it goes into the churn. Something like ten percent of the U.S. workforce are civilian government employees at the various levels: federal, state, county, city, school district, fire district, flood control district, mosquito abatement district, etc. Quick show of hands: How many of you think they produce ten percent of the goods and services that comprise our economy? The federal government alone has about sixteen layers of bureaucracy, people who do nothing but go to meetings, fill out reports, and then go home screaming because they couldn't accomplish anything this year. I'm not exaggerating. When I wrote the project management handbook for the IT staff of a federal agency, in my first draft I plugged in all the industry-standard figures for overhead, including the one that blows away most private sector managers: In a standard 8-hour day the average worker can only log 6.5 hours to his project. My federal liaison laughed at me and said that their people were lucky to log ONE HOUR to their project, on a good day. Regarding socialized medicine: we could not afford it. My wife was a social worker in the health services department of the world's largest municipal government for a couple of decades, with an office in a gigantic public hospital. The inefficiency was astounding. Sure they did a magnificent job of saving lives, but for every doctor, nurse, or other actual medical or support staff, there must have been twelve administrative staff sucking off tax dollars in assignments they couldn't get done because the system was so broken. The same is true of government schools, law enforcement, courts, sanitation, animal control... and most especially charity. I have posted this statistic several times before, and it is admittedly about ten years old but I guarantee that it has gotten worse, not better: If the various levels of government took all the money they collect to "devote" to their welfare programs, and simply divided it up and handed it directly to the poor people, every family in America below the poverty line (roughly $17K annual income) would immediately have an annual income of FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. Instead, they barely make a dent in the poverty problem, much of that money is sucked up by people who are not really needy but know how to game the system, and most of it goes into the paychecks of hundreds of thousands of administrators who sit around and administer each other all day. NOT to illegal immigrants, contrary to the wave of mean-spirited propaganda. Regarding schools, again this is about ten years old but if anything it's gotten worse: New York City probably has the highest percentage of Catholics among its population of any American city. The Archdiocese of New York runs the parochial school system, which has fully HALF as many students as the city public school system. Yet the parochial schools have ONE-TENTH as many administrative staff. It's progressive, not to mention hopelessly complicated in a zillion other ways, so there's no easy answer to that question. My wife and I would, I suppose, be called "upper middle class," with no children. Last year we paid about 12% of our income in federal income tax and about 1% in state income tax. We paid an additional 9% of our income in state property tax on our two residences. (We currently live in two different states because of my job and it's a better deal to own a residence in both states and pay the tax than to pay rent.) We pay somewhere between five and eight percent sales tax on most purchases except groceries (restaurant meals are not exempt). I had to replace my car last year and paid $1,000 vehicle tax on a used SUV. The total state and federal tax on gasoline is about fifty cents per gallon. These are the major taxes but there are many others that increase our total significantly. Since we are both now self-employed we no longer pay into the Social Security system but when we did it was about six percent of our salary--and you DON'T get what you pay for. It's a Ponzi Scheme and it will collapse before long, but probably not in our lifetime. In any case we're not foolish enough to rely on it. People in the lower income brackets, of course, pay proportionally much less in income tax, especially if they have children. But since more of their income goes into purchases than investments, they get hit at the other end with sales tax. Of course they don't usually own their own homes so they don't pay property taxes, but their landlord does so like all his other expenses it factors into their rent.
In addition to Fraggle's great post, let's not forget that the US pretty much foots the bill for the defense of the entire free world.
The size of a bureaucracy increases as the square (or perhaps the cube) of the size of the population it claims to "serve," because its shape is a pyramid. The UK, France, Japan, et al. are significantly smaller so their bureaucracies are disproportionately smaller and have a chance at being more efficient. China and India are much larger but they simply haven't attempted to create a bureaucracy of the scope of ours; they don't have the GDP to do it! The only comparable country was the old USSR, and it was famous for its dismally inefficient bureaucracies. Once you got very far from the major cities, medical care in the Soviet Union was frighteningly primitive. A friend of mine needed an emergency appendectomy while on a tour there, and they used an old pre-war ether machine for anesthesia.
Do you think that this would be alleviated if each separate state ran its own socialised medical system? As far as I am aware, Australia has a system where the Federal Government dishes out money in the form of grants to each State Government. This State Government is then responsible for putting that money to use in the delivery of hospital services (inpatient services are free in Australia). It would work fine, but other health services that are naturally intertwined with hospital practice (ie. Medicare, PBS) are the responsibility of the Federal Government. So often there is confusion and fighting between the State and Feds over who does what, and as a result funds mysteriously disappear. I'm of the personal opinion that healthcare should be solely the responsibility of each State, and that each State should be able to levy taxation to fund it. But I'm in the very small minority. Most would argue that healthcare should be solely the Federal Govt's responsibility, which I think is insane. You are correct about inefficiency being inherent in socialized medical systems. I don't think it's just the bloated bureacracy though. It's also the fact that the money being spent belongs to everyone, and therefore no-one. As I'm sure you know, people tend to be far more liberal in splashing around money that isn't theres! On the plus side, people are not denied treatment, and are given more than is necessary. Especially in regards to medication, which is handed out like candy.
So the U.S spends all this money to receive only ingratitude in return. That sounds like a bad investment. Is the U.S administration retarded? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It's a hold over from the cold war. You know how government is. Once it starts doing something, it never wants to stop.
