Looks like DARPA's budget is about 3.5 billion a year vs. the overall defense budget of something like 715 billion. I'm betting that a lot more people would feel ok about paying taxes if more of it was going towards these types of projects rather than empire building in far away parts of the world.
The U.S. isn't empire building. It's mainly a policy of retaining superpower status for world peace.
Containment of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is largely the defining policy of the last 70 years.
Of course tons of blunders like Vietnam and Afghanistan. Tragedies. But there has not been a World War III nor have there been large scale wars killing a sizable portion of the populace such as most wars pre-WWII.
For further evidence that the U.S. isn't interested in empire building is the fact that in wars over the last 70 years, the U.S. hasn't gained land and tried to turn the countries into vassal states like in classical European wars or like USSR did. The U.S. aims to build allies not an empire.
The defense budget is in fact over 1.25 trillion dollars in real terms. We just don’t count it like most other countries. For example nuclear weapons are under the Department of Energy.
Defense is business in an abstract sense. DaaS is desirable for many nations instead of building domestic capability which would be far worse due to scale/reinventing-the-wheel. Look up US defense treaties with various nations across the world - this is a mutual agreement in exchange for IP, defense sales, assurance and guarantees, soft power, etc.
Right, so we need both. Defund the military, make sure rich people still pay their fair amount of taxes, and use that money to invest in science, education, healthcare, education etc.
US government would never balance its budget even if tax compliance was 100% and the tax rate was 100%.
The math does not check out and the taxes fund nothing except the interest payments on international debt.
The things that were going to get funded will still get funded, because they are funded by the debt issuance and the continued market tolerance for US government debt issuances.
So, no, tax avoidance has practically nothing to do with this. The "roads and schools [and innovations]" argument is particularly weak, because whatever wasn't funded was never going to get funded. The only limit to budget allocations is the market tolerance of the debt and currency. So again - since that market tolerance is extremely vast and expansive given the lack of liquid alternatives - if it wasn't funded, it wasn't going to get funded.
This is exactly the argument made by Mariana Mazzucato in The Entrepreneurial State. It argues that the state is a major driver of innovation. DARPA is a great example of that. It argues that governments should be receiving some of the returns that private companies make because of this innovation. E.g. Apple makes enormous amounts of money selling iPhones that is full of technology like GPS, Internet, etc. that wouldn't be possible without the state as a driver of innovation. It seems fair that they get a share of those earnings in return.
$25 million went to research that produced a life-saving vaccine and averted (or at least abated) a global crisis. Meanwhile the F-35 program at a lifetime cost of $1.7 trillion has produced basically nothing.
People's biggest criticism of taxation is all the government corruption and wastage that it enables, and IMO that is completely valid.
markkanof|4 years ago
demadog|4 years ago
Containment of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is largely the defining policy of the last 70 years.
Of course tons of blunders like Vietnam and Afghanistan. Tragedies. But there has not been a World War III nor have there been large scale wars killing a sizable portion of the populace such as most wars pre-WWII.
For further evidence that the U.S. isn't interested in empire building is the fact that in wars over the last 70 years, the U.S. hasn't gained land and tried to turn the countries into vassal states like in classical European wars or like USSR did. The U.S. aims to build allies not an empire.
1cvmask|4 years ago
https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/making-sense-of-the-1-...
https://tomdispatch.com/hartung-and-smithberger-a-dollar-by-...
systemvoltage|4 years ago
gnulinux|4 years ago
vmception|4 years ago
The math does not check out and the taxes fund nothing except the interest payments on international debt.
The things that were going to get funded will still get funded, because they are funded by the debt issuance and the continued market tolerance for US government debt issuances.
So, no, tax avoidance has practically nothing to do with this. The "roads and schools [and innovations]" argument is particularly weak, because whatever wasn't funded was never going to get funded. The only limit to budget allocations is the market tolerance of the debt and currency. So again - since that market tolerance is extremely vast and expansive given the lack of liquid alternatives - if it wasn't funded, it wasn't going to get funded.
JumpCrisscross|4 years ago
Sovereign debt buyers and FX traders strongly consider a states' ability to collect taxes.
hencq|4 years ago
paxys|4 years ago
People's biggest criticism of taxation is all the government corruption and wastage that it enables, and IMO that is completely valid.
golergka|4 years ago