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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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We need to shrink the deficit and spur growth. If you can do those things, you can make the debt load manageable.

Regardless, your own statement suggests why we need taxes.

Well this is where it gets political I suppose, because I think the simple solution to reducing the deficit and spurring growth is to privatize or delete large parts of the government, starting with inefficient ones.

And my whole point is that taxing income requires an inefficient bureaucracy to operate because of the byzantine issues it creates for itself, and obviously disincentivizes wealth creation. A leaner government would solve those problems better by having to rely on simple rules that are harder to evade.

Hence minarchism as the solution to debt crises, all hail our glorious leader Javier "General AnCap" Milei, etc.

Of course you're free to maximize taxation revenue instead, that's what we are apparently deciding to do here in France to solve this very problem. I'm not exactly expecting this to succeed however.

Look I am more than happy to cut government. I’m with you! However one needs to face reality. Practically even if we cut government, we still need an income tax (at least in the nearish term) and the bureaucracy isn’t primarily due to the IRS