Comment by malandrew | Hacker News Reader

Comment by malandrew | Hacker News Reader

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This raises the point that I don't think gets enough attention: taxes for many are a barrier towards life goals. For some like the folks you mentioned, it's a barrier to putting a roof over your head or buying your first home. For others, they can afford housing, but taxes are the difference between being able to save for retirement or not.

That's not to say that there aren't things of value we get for our taxes, but there are a LOT of ways that our taxes are squandered, especially at the federal level, which sadly is the largest chunk of taxes. We all pay the most in federal taxes and get the least in return for federal taxes. State taxes are the second most paid and we get see benefits from them than federal but less than local. Local taxes are often the least amount but the most likely to be spent on things that actually benefit you personally.

We could help everyone make better progress towards life milestones like owning housing and saving for retirement if we collectively held government accountable for how it spends our taxes and reduced taxes across the board.

In general, "not having enough money" is a barrier towards life goals, whether that's from the taxman, rent, commuting costs, fuel, wage suppression, wage theft, or whatever.

> taxes are the difference between being able to save for retirement or not

In countries with state pensions, some of the taxes are saving for retirement.

There's a lot to be said for the idea of reducing the friction of income taxes and shifting instead to property or land value taxes, though. It's a lot harder to conceal a building or move it offshore.

> In countries with state pensions, some of the taxes are saving for retirement.

It's only saving for the retirement of government workers at the expense of the private sector. That's pretty clearly theft. There should be absolutely no government programs give benefits to only government workers paid for by non-government workers. You're basically robbing Peter to pay Paul.

What? I'm talking about the UK state pension: https://www.gov.uk/state-pension/eligibility ; pay in for 30 years, get about £180 a week when you retire. For all workers.

But people who work for the government are, separately, entitled to have an employer-run pension scheme which pays some of their income as deferred compensation in a pension scheme. I don't think it would be more efficient to insist that they take out a private retirement scheme (is this "401k" in US-speak?) and then have to pay them more in the present in order to fund it.

Eh, a huge percentage of the population pays no federal income tax at all. They pay payroll taxes, but they also get a specific benefit from those taxes, it doesn’t disappear into some black hole of defense spending or whatever.

Edit: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/03/25/57percent-of-us-househol...

If the law is bad, you have to change the law.

If you instead choose to selectively enforce the law, political power is transferred from the legislative to the individuals who selectively enforce the law.

That's how you get Russia.

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