[rain_iwakura]

It's good economic policy based on what? Did you run a counterfactual already? Comparing the US to other countries is meaningless, it's not the same set of init conditions and variables.

Do you realize that those taxes go to fund public services and help people stay afloat, which I don't need a study to show you, creates far more customers for all these tax evaders in the first place? Go back 50 years to see what this country used to be and how much shit it got done and compare it to today. There are measures of productivity engineered in math, and then there is common sense: majority of existing infrastructure was built decades ago and now it costs billions in overrun projects to build a single station in NYC.

The current system works just fine in terms of punishingly taxing everyone on this website and the poor, that's why it feels like I'm contributing half of my salary to the federal government. What it doesn't do is take its share from extremely wealthy, who in turn DO NOT SERVE the economy because they're effectively stateless agents, who can put their money into Seychelles or whatever. Nobody would bat an eye if those billionaires would contribute the billions to the economy. Instead you get people crying about how "the government is inefficient, it gets nothing done, I'd rather the titan spend it as they see fit." But if this ship called United States floods they will be the first to abandon it, just like a famous critter.

I'm sorry but posts like this are the exact definition of bootlicking.