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Comment by spiderfarmer | Hacker News Reader

This will be the downfall of the USA. With the government filling up with grifters, the people and companies who still pay up will feel like losers.

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Yep. Paying taxes is the right thing to do for the country. Yet the system gets purposely broken, people lose faith that any system could work, tax dollars run for the shadows, and the cycle accelerates. I don’t know what the fix is. We need to restore faith, but you need revenue to build faith, and revenue depends on established faith.

I'm not sure it's the de facto right thing to do. Recall that the USA didn't tax income until 1913, relying primarily on tariffs and excise taxes to fund the federal government. And yet, the country was doing just fine before that—expanding its infrastructure, winning wars, and growing its economy.

The introduction of income tax fundamentally changed the size and scope of government. With the current size of federal spending, much of it driven by entitlement programs, defense, and interest on debt, there is plenty of room to trim the fat. Bureaucracy, inefficiencies, and bloated administrative costs are all ripe for re-evaluation and the axe.

"Doing just fine before that" is an interesting interpretation of history.

The problem was low average productivity naturally leading to low average consumption. The problem was not low taxation.

Many of our modern conveniences and improvements are the direct result of public investments made possible through taxation. Without this funding, the level of development and quality of life we enjoy today might not have been achievable.

If you prefer living in 1913, you're a hopeless romantic.

And most are not. I repeat that the problem back then was a low average productivity and not insufficient taxation.

The USA started taxing income in the Civil War in 1861.

There were of course lots of other taxes being levied in the USA, poll taxes, property taxes, but the money went to state government rather than federal.

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