I never said I was against all taxes. The government needs to pay for the services it provides. I do believe the government needs to limit its spending.
I am concerned at what points we tax, and eating the seed corn is not a good thing. We need capital to fund business creation and expansion. Fairness is secondary to people being able to find jobs and having opportunity. Our tax system is so badly screwed up because everyone needs their exception or rule as opposed to looking at where we need to tax and how to make it simple and sustainable.
"I would take economic stability over growth any day. It is commonly accepted that taxes prevent the overheating of an economy by absorbing capital that would otherwise be directed towards superfluous investments."
I would need to see some information on this, as it makes some rather large assumptions about the government's use of the money.
'Commonly accepted' may have been bit of an overstatement on my part. The last place I read about the taxes and overheating thing was in the 'The Affluent Society' written by J. Galbraith. Written in 1958, it was a best seller at the time. The book presents a really good critique about blindly pursuing economic growth.
Generally, I am of the opinion that as we make significant gains and improvements in efficiency, productivity, and technology the number of jobs created for each dollar directed towards investment and business creation will significantly shrink. This will make it difficult to achieve wide-spread prosperity by encouraging investment, as the wealth will increasingly be concentrated at the top (we are already seeing this happen). More likely, we will have to transition to a post-labor economy (there are a few random discussions about this on the internet, but as far as I can tell this is a fairly new idea). Unfortunately for those that lean on the libertarian side, a stable and successful post-labor economy involves high taxes and large social programs (of course this assumes that we can even attempt to make this transition).
Sorry, kinda went off on a tangent, but I think this idea is very relevant to any discussion regarding our approach to economic recovery. It may be a few decades or so before it is relevant, but this transition has been happening for quite some time (when was the last time you withdrew cash from a bank teller, or sent a letter through snail mail, etc).
I am concerned at what points we tax, and eating the seed corn is not a good thing. We need capital to fund business creation and expansion. Fairness is secondary to people being able to find jobs and having opportunity. Our tax system is so badly screwed up because everyone needs their exception or rule as opposed to looking at where we need to tax and how to make it simple and sustainable.
"I would take economic stability over growth any day. It is commonly accepted that taxes prevent the overheating of an economy by absorbing capital that would otherwise be directed towards superfluous investments."
I would need to see some information on this, as it makes some rather large assumptions about the government's use of the money.